Chuck Smith

Hey guys, I've been listening to Chuck Smith and well I really like his stuff (haven't heard a whole lot)- I've been listening to "going through the bible" where he goes book by book. I was wondering of anyone knew anything about him or even read his books or listened to him.

Chuck Smith is the founder of the Calvary Chapel movement.

At least one of the speakers at the SI revival conferences (specifically the Victoria one) are members of that movement who have worked very closely with Chuck.

Several sermons on SI come from Calvary Chapel speakers.

I have listened to his Q&A show, as well as the one you mentioned, and have been blessed by both. He seems to be used by God to bring a good number of people back to the Lord Jesus.

While I am not a member of the Calvary Chapel, I have attended a few of their services at different locations through out the northwest, and oft listen to their local radio station.

So, I guess I could say that I would encourage you to continue listening to Chuck. Just keep your eyes focused on the Father, and see what He will reveal of Himself through His servant.

Jason Smith
Oregon

Yes, Chuck Smith is the founder of Calvary Chapel. While I don't agree with everything that he teaches, he is a great Bible teacher. You can listen to much of his audio commentary (amongst others) via the Blue Letter Bible online.

BTW, my wife and I really enjoy listening to Skip Heitzig. He is a pastor with Calvary Chapel in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He comes on the radio where we live, but you can listen to all of his messages in his teaching library for free online (via a quick Google search).

I hope this helps.

Chuck Smith is an excellent Bible teacher, you will learn much sound doctrine in listening to him.

I heard an interesting story from my pastor (A Clavary Chapel pastor) the other day about Chuck.

He said that when Chuck was young he had about 50 sermons that he had put together and he preached those sermons at a church and then moved to another church. That happened until he started the first Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa where he ministered to mostly hippies and later the whole Jesus Movement came out of that in the late 60's and 70's. Anyway, he reached his 50 sermons and thought maybe it was time to move on but instead he decided to stay and begin to teach the Bible book-by-book, verse-by-verse, and that is where the "through the Bible" teachings come from. They are very good, God has granted him some wonderful insight.

In Christ,

Ron

I have been involved with Calvary Chapel/Fellowships my whole Christian life and still attend and serve at a CC.

Though I have not listened much to Pastor Chuck's sermons, I know a vast amount of people whom have been growing in Christ as a result of these ministries. Three generations (not complete) of my family have come to faith as a result of this mans obedience to God and the continued promotion of Bible teaching. I love the balance of what happens when someone teaches all the way through the Bible instead of emphasizing only certain aspects of it.

Chuck Smith is an anointed teacher. The Calvary Chapel “movement” focuses on line upon line teaching; this is a very unfortunate rarity in churches of the West today. I have found that many churches preach topical sermons only and this allows for preachers to stay on their favorite subjects and avoid others. Topical sermons are powerful and have their place but in my opinion there is no substitute for the entire Word of God… precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line.

The following is an excerpt from Chuck Smith's book "Harvest," where he gives accounts of the early beginning of the Calvary Chapel ministry.

"My greatest frustration would come when I would prepare what I felt to be a powerful evangelistic sermon that would surely convert the most hardened sinner. And when I would arrive at church to my dismay there was not a single sinner in the whole congregation.

As i would sit on the platform looking over the congregation, I knew them all by first name, so I knew there wasn't a sinner in the house. During the song service I'd pray that God would somehow send sinners in and when my prayers were not answered I had to preach my evangelistic sermon to the saints. There was no hope of conversions. As a general rule I would add a few points in which I would castigate those in the congregation for their failures to be the kind of witnesses that the Lord wanted them to be. I told them if they were serving the Lord and were doing what GOd wanted them to do they would have brought some of their neighbors along to hear the Word of God and to be saved. I would begin to beat the sheep because thy were not effectively reporducing or witnessing for Jesus Christ.

My heart aches when I think of those early days of my ministry, how I was creating guilt-ridden, frustrated believers. They were guilt-ridden because what I was saying was correct. They weren't being the kind of witnesses that they should be for Christ. Their lives weren't measuring up to biblical standards. They were frustrated because they desired to live victorious lives, but they just didn't know how because their pastor was emphasizing evangelism rather than feeding the Body of Christ.

This was the first lesson. Traditionally I felt that the primary purpose of the Church was the evangelization of the world. But biblically, Paul in Ephesians 4 tells us that the primary purpose of the Church is to build up the Body of Christ to perfect the saints for the work of the ministry. The church exists to bring people into a maturity and a unity of the faith so that they would no longer be as babes but might fully develop in Christ Jesus. With my constant emphasis on repentance from dead works and the doctrines of baptism, I had failed to bring the people into a fully matured relationship with the Lord and they stayed in a state of spiritual infancy."

Pastor Smith then goes on to lament his tendency to run out of topical material to preach for a few paragraphs then says this.

"Suddenly I was under pressure to find more texts and more sermons. About this time I was reading the book 'The Apostle John' by Griffith Thomas. In one of the chapters he had outlined studies on 1 John. As I studied those outlines I found that they were excellent sermon material and there were approximately forty of them. I decided that if I taught through the book of 1 John on Sunday mornings, we could spend another year in this community that we had come to love. I bought several commentaries on 1 John and began an exhaustive study of the epistle. I expanded the outline studies of Griffith Thomas and we spent a year on 1 John.

The interesting thing is that during this year our church experienced greater growth than we had ever seen before. We also had more conversions and more baptisms than we had ever experienced in the past..."

All quotes from "Harvest," Word For Today Publication. Copyright Chuck Smith.

Wow guys thank you so much for the insight on Pastor Smith. i went home and listened to some moreof his stuff from the through the Bible series and i am very impressed by his teachings. I will continue to be blessed by his teachings :) thnk u all and God bless !

If you go to the Blue Letter Bible (http://www.blueletterbible.org/), you can search through the Bible.

The Blue Letter Bible contains lots of resources about and each verse. You can click on a "C" to access a concordance containing the Hebrew or Greek lexicon. If you click on "L," you have access to a list of audio and video tools -- including a verse-by-verse commentary by Pastor Chuck Smith (amongst others).

It is well worth bookmarking.

Amen! You can't go wrong with Chuck Smith's teaching. He is solid as a rock. He keeps it simple too. I gave my life to Jesus from an offspring of his ministry in the 70's. He was and still is a mighty man of God. But someone hit it on the head. Keep your eyes on Jesus. The Holy Spirit will teach you as you need to be taught. He loves to take us to Jesus. Amen and Glory to God.