Calvary Chapel has been formed as a fellowship of believers in
the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our supreme desire is to know Christ and be
conformed to His image by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are not a
denominational church, nor are we opposed to denominations as such, only to
their over-emphasis of the doctrinal differences that have led to the division
of the Body of Christ.
We believe the only true basis of Christian fellowship is
Christ's Agape love, which is greater than any differences we possess and
without which we have no right to claim ourselves Christians.
We believe worship of God should be spiritual. Therefore, we
remain flexible and yielded to the leading of the Holy Spirit to direct our
worship.
We believe that all people are, by nature, separated from God
and responsible for their own sin, but that salvation, redemption, and
forgiveness are freely offered to all by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When a person repents of sin and accepts Jesus Christ as personal Savior and
Lord, trusting Him to save, that person is immediately born again and sealed by
the Holy Spirit, all his/her sins are forgiven, and that person becomes a child
of God, destined to spend eternity with the Lord.
We believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in the
Scriptures, and that they are valid for today if they are exercised within the
scriptural guidelines. We as believers are to covet the best gifts, seeking to
exercise them in love that the whole Body of Christ might be edified. We
believe that love is more important than the most spectacular gifts, and
without this love all exercise of spiritual gifts is worthless.
We believe worship of God should be fruitful. Therefore, we
look for His love in our lives as the supreme manifestation that we have truly
been worshipping Him.
We believe worship of God should be inspirational. Therefore we give great place to music in our worship.
We believe worship of God should be intelligent. Therefore our services are designed with great emphasis upon teaching the Word of God – the Bible – that He might instruct us as to how He would be worshipped.
We believe in all the basic doctrines of historic
Christianity.
We believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, that the Bible, Old
and New Testaments are the inspired, infallible Word of God.
We believe that God is eternally existent in three distinct
persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We believe that God is the personal, transcendent, and
sovereign Creator of all things.
We believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human,
that He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, provided for the atonement
of our sins by His substitutionary death on the cross, was bodily raised from
the dead, ascended back to the right hand of the Father, and ever lives to make
intercession for us.
We believe in the personal, visible, and pre-millennial second
coming of Jesus Christ to the earth. He will return with His saints and set up
a kingdom of which there will be no end.
