Twenty years ago, singing, clapping, Bible-studying youth regularly packed out Calvary Chapel’s enormous tent in Costa Mesa, California. Chuck Smith, their pastor, helped give birth to the Jesus People movement that redirected thousands of lives, young and old, and changed the face of American Christianity. But after years of nurturing a church-cum-denomination, Chuck felt the need for some personal refreshment. He found it right where he had begun.
In the sixties and early seventies, the most successful and rewarding part of my ministry was my Monday-evening classes for young people. I’d sit and talk with them from the Word of God, and kids started getting excited about Jesus and about serving the Lord. We’d have an amateur-hour kind of concert in which the kids shared their music. Out of it came the talent we eventually showcased through Maranatha! Music.
The ministry grew, and other agendas pushed at my time. I got so busy I eventually dropped the Monday-night studies, letting others handle them. I was essentially out of that ministry.
A couple of years ago, however, I looked around and realized many of the “kids” I had nurtured in the first wave had teen-age kids of their own. I’d been so busy developing their parents that I had neglected the young people.
So I decided to become involved again with the Monday-night studies. I patterned the evenings as I had in the sixties, and the ministry has caught on once more. We have from fifteen to eighteen hundred kids on Monday evenings. It’s exciting; a whole new generation is getting turned on.
A while back, a couple of high school boys came up to me and said, “We’re interested in going into the ministry. Can you talk with us about it?”
“I’d love to,” I said, and I set up an appointment. When they arrived for the appointment, I invited them into my office.
“Well, uh, I think you’d better come out,” one replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think everyone will fit into your office.”
I followed them into the auditorium, and there I found more than a hundred young guys interested in the ministry-a whole new batch of kids wanting to devote their lives to serving the Lord! These kids aren’t waiting for formal education, either; they’re already witnessing on the streets and in the parks.
These kids are talented. God didn’t cut off the talent with the first batch in the sixties. Who’s to say what this new wave will do-the songs they’ll write, the churches they’ll begin, the lives that will be turned around?
From that contact, I started a Saturday-night training class for the ministry, more or less like Spurgeon’s lectures to his students. I’ve had a lot of fun encouraging them to use their talents for the Lord. To see great things happening in them revitalizes my own sense of ministry. I’ve been helping to run what has become a big organization, but this is a chance to do again what I really enjoy.
I’ve returned to my first love in ministry.
-Chuck Smith, Sr.
Calvary Chapel
Costa Mesa, California
Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
