Saving Grace started out as a home Bible study around a campfire. It grew from two to four to eight. As people became hungry for God's word, more came; twenty, forty, sixty. More and more people came, and lives were changed as they met the risen Lord.
As time progressed, God raised up a teacher, Trent Douglass. Once He drew Trent to Himself, God began to give him an incredible hunger for God's word. However he was born with a severe reading disability, called dyslexia. As God was working on him, others stepped up to teach God's word. It would be about a year and a half before his life was transformed enough to start teaching. Those who knew him laughed at the idea of him becoming a teacher. Yet, God made it obvious that He was going to use him. During this time God made it clear that it was time to start a church, so we went to Him in prayer. What followed were a series of miraculous events, which led to the establishment of our fellowship and the obtaining of our present facility.
He has truly done exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we could ask or think? From a simple beginning, God took average people and transformed them to start a church, Calvary Chapel Saving Grace.
1 Corinthians 1:26-29 "For you see your calling brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. . . But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence."
What We Believe
Calvary Chapel has been formed as a fellowship of believers in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our supreme desire is to know Christ and to be conformed into His image by the power of the Holy Spirit.
• We believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, that the Bible, Old and New Testaments, are the inspired, infallible Word of God.
• We believe God is eternally existent in three separate persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• We believe God the Father is the personal, transcendent, and sovereign creator of all things. We believe Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, that He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, provided for the atonement of our sins by His vicarious death on the cross, was bodily resurrected by the power of the Holy Spirit, ascended back to the right hand of the Father, and ever lives to make intercession for us. After Jesus ascended to heaven, He poured out His Holy Spirit on the believers in Jerusalem, enabling them to fulfill His command to preach the Gospel to the entire world, an obligation shared by all believers today.
• We believe all people are by nature separated from God and are 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 exercised within scriptural guidelines.
• We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by Whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life (Romans 8:13-14, 1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19-20, Ephesians 4:30, 5:18).
• We await the pre-tribulation rapture of the church, and we believe that the second coming of Christ with His saints to rule on the earth will be personal, premillennial, and visible. This motivates us to holy living, heartfelt worship, committed service, diligent study of God’s Word, regular fellowship, and participation in adult baptism by immersion and Holy Communion.
