From Small Beginnings & Big Faith
Built on a firm foundation.
We exist to:Love Others.
Preach Christ & Him Alone.
Nurture Believers in the Faith.
“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”
-Matthew 7:24-27
The history of Calvary Chapel begins with a small church near the beach in Southern California that received a new pastor named Chuck Smith.
Chuck had been with the Foursquare denomination for several years. He attended Life Bible College in Los Angeles but, after 17 years with the denomination, he left it for the freedom to teach the Bible. In the Haley’s Bible Handbook he read that he could teach the Bible verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter, and book-by-book.
As he began Bible studies the Lord blessed his ministry. Chuck felt the call to Calvary Chapel was God’s will, even though it was a smaller church than he was then pastoring.
The small Calvary Chapel began to grow in 1965, with a new group of barefoot kids who were coming and sitting on the floor because the pews were full. The elders came to Chuck to complain that the dirty barefoot young people were ruining the carpet. Chuck’s reply was that it would be better to remove all the carpet than to remove the hippies that had come to church to hear God’s Word.
This was truly the beginning of the “Jesus Movement” that grew to touch the whole country and parts of the whole world.
Calvary Chapel continued to outgrow buildings, and had a huge tent before building the campus at Costa Mesa, California.
As people left Calvary Chapel for other parts of the country they longed for the simple verse-by-verse teaching and the contemporary worship-style.
New Calvary Chapels sprang up weekly. first in Southern California, and then up North and in the East. Some started by listening to audio cassettes of Chuck Smith in living rooms. Some of Chuck’s young people grew under his teaching, and became teachers themselves. Some from other denominations wanted to pattern themselves after the Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, so they became Calvary Chapels.
The Bible College that started in the 70’s has now blossomed to include training in the USA and abroad.
Calvary Chapel is not another denomination, but rather a fellowship of like-minded churches. Because so many took the Calvary name without the guiding principles, Pastor Chuck wrote the book, Calvary Chapel Distinctives, to clarify exactly what makes a Calvary Chapel distinct from other churches.
Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2011, Pastor Chuck continued to preach and oversee administration at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa (California).
Chuck Smith, the evangelical pastor whose outreach to hippies in the 1960s helped transform worship styles in American Christianity and fueled the rise of the Calvary Chapel movement, died on Oct. 3, 2013. He was 86.
Calvary Chapel Fellowship Wichita
The history of Calvary Chapel Fellowship begins with Pastor Don Duncan in 2008 through 2016.
Calvary Chapel Fellowship’s Founding Pastor Don Duncan was born and raised just east of Los Angeles, California.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, he went from Howdy Doody to Haight Ashbury. He accepted the Lord in Sunday School at age 11, but by 14 he had caught a bad case of “terminal cool”. By 1967 he had left home and gone to San Francisco, for the “Summer of Love”.
Don married and had a son in 1970 and a daughter in 1973.
A life of drugs and alcohol sent him “up the river” where he had time to think and returned to his first love, Jesus Christ.
With his training in air conditioning and refrigeration, he went on to open his own business called Faith Refrigeration in 1976, which was very successful.
In 1979, sensing the call to ministry, Don left the business to work full-time for Calvary Chapel in West Covina, California.
Ordained in 1980, and with no formal training other than Calvary Chapel, he and his wife, Sue, accepted the call to move their family (4 children) to Wichita, Kansas to pioneer a new church.
In 1984, a K-12 Christian School was founded. Hundreds of students have attended and gone on to receive honors and scholarships because of the foundation from the school.
Beginning in 1986, Don began to make several short-term mission trips to Asia, Europe, Africa, Haiti & Mexico.
Additionally, several of Don’s associate pastors have gone on to pioneer their own churches in several states.
In 1999, Don retired from the pastorate for medical reasons. Leaving the church and school in capable hands, he moved to Sedan, Kansas to become a rancher.
in his “retirement”, he remodeled a turn-of-the-century building and opened a teen center, bringing in Christian bands. He also remodeled another building, and opened a Christian child-care center, with his wife. He was a founding board member of Big Brothers and Sisters in Chautauqua County.
When requests to teach brought him to Wichita several times, Don decided in 2004 to move closer to Wichita. With a 103 year old house on 40 acres and a mortgage, Don returned to the secular workforce. After a few months at a farm supply store, Don was hired as the Executive Director of Downtown Augusta Inc. His love of construction and restoration were fulfilled in this position as he worked with the state and local government to help merchants restore their downtown buildings.
At this time, Don and his wife were granted guardianship of 5 of their grandchildren. So the search for a better paying position brought him to Habitat for Humanity of Wichita, to manage a retail store selling donated building supplies.
In 2008, Don was lead to start a Bible study in Wichita. It blossomed into a new church – Calvary Chapel Fellowship.
Pastor Don went home to be with the Lord in December of 2016. His vision lives on at Calvary Chapel Fellowship.
CCF Wichita Current Pastor Wayne Cash
2017 to Date
Wayne grew up in organized religion and fell away in the 80’s due to the legalism of do’s and don’ts, only to find the joy of the Lord at a place called Calvary Chapel Wichita in 1988.
Most of his life in ministry has been spent as a bi-vocational assistant pastor. He has been involved in ministry since 1990 and has served at several Calvary Chapels. He was called to Calvary Chapel Fellowship in 2017, after God took Pastor Don home.
Wayne has a heart to continue the ministry that was set before him; to love the sheep and to feed the sheep, that they may reproduce, and we worship in unity.