This article was originally posted by Josh Turansky in 2007

For years now Calvary Chapel has ministered to thousands of people. And from the start of the movement people have asked why Calvary Chapel has been so successful. Many people look back on the decision to welcome hippies into the church as the reason for Calvary Chapel’s great success. Others would point to the openness to contemporary worship as a cause for success. Maybe one would suggest our stance on the Holy Spirit made us successful or the way that we viewed eschatology.

But as good as these things were, they were not the true reason for Calvary Chapel’s success.

God has blessed Calvary Chapel because of how it handled the Bible. Calvary Chapel esteems the Bible zealously, holds to it emphatically, examines it thoroughly, and trusts in implicitly. Calvary Chapel believes the Word of God is written by God (inspiration), does not have error (inerrancy), is able to be interpreted literally (clarity), and it is applicable to all of life (authority). This is why God has blessed Calvary Chapel.  We have been consumed with our love for the Bible.

And it was from this foundation on the word of God that Calvary Chapel acted. We had the “hearing of faith” as it says in Galatians 3:5. We obeyed what we read. This obedience to the Word lead to a ministry to hippies, an openness to spiritual gifts, contemporary worship, pretrib and premil eschatology, a middle road between calvanism and arminianism, the emphasis on the New Covenant Grace of God, and the strong stance against humanistic psychology.

But lets not forget the foundation: the Bible. The danger is to focus on the right actions and forget the foundational cause of those actions. Jesus’ Church is not built by man’s abilities and man’s energies. Jesus builds His Church on His foundation: the Word of God.

We are not the first great move of the Holy Spirit upon a generation. We are only a part of the most recent awakening that has taken place. There was the great reformation of the 1600s, the awakening of 1727. the awakening of the 1790s, the awakening of the 1830s, the awakening of 1859, and the awakening of 1885. Then there was the Jesus movement of the late sixties. But when we look back at all of the recent works of God we see over and over the foundation of the Word of God. Men and women were called back to the Bible by the inward tug of the Spirit. And this is true of Calvary Chapel’s foundation as well.

Sometimes we can act like we created verse-by-verse teaching or were the first ones to invent a Spirit filled worship service. Nothing could be further from the truth. Calvary Chapel merely represents a recent group of believers that have obeyed the basics of Christianity. This was our foundation: The Word of God.