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Calvary Chapel Distinctives Paper The Sociological Cycle of Church Growth First off I just want to say that this paper was very challenging for me to write. I’ve grown up all my life in a Baptist church and haven’t had any Calvary Chapel experiences or prior knowledge. My church doesn’t fit into the description of the Baptist Bible Fellowship, which is a good thing I take it, but it is still very different from the Calvary Chapel way. I understand that this class’s function is for me to gain knowledge on how Calvary Chapel runs and their basic beliefs & doctrine and it is doing a great job at that. I had to really wring out the facts from this paper and extract all the data I could, but I was able to do it. Just from a teaching standpoint, I know that other Calvary Chapel “Lifers” will be able to pull much more out of a paper like this and I trust that you realize that. Here goes nothing. I generally found that as I went through the paper, Calvary Chapel has a lot of same characteristics as fundamentalism. For example, fundamentalists, “avoid state and society.” Just from listening to the Chuck Smith mp3’s I have realized how important this aspect is in Chuck’s life; thus it is reflected in Calvary Chapel. For example, Chuck only pays in cash (within reason). Why is this? It is because he is avoiding state and society, a fundamentalist idea.
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