Calvary Chapel Escondido: “Just come as you are!”

Calvary Chapel Escondido

• Contact: 2245 E Valley Pkwy, Escondido 760-487-8098 www.calvarychapelescondido.com
• Membership: 100
• Pastor: Rick Greene
• Age: 44
• Born: Oceanside
• Formation: Marietta Calvary Bible College
• Years Ordained: 14

San Diego Reader: How long do you spend preparing your sermon?

Pastor Rick Greene: We do expositional teaching in our sermons. It usually takes me seven or eight hours a week to prepare. I teach on the New Testament on Sundays and on the Old Testament on Wednesdays. We go verse by verse through the whole Bible, which means it takes about seven years to go through the entire Bible as a congregation. We try to do a chapter a week, generally.

SDR: Why Calvary Chapel?

PG: Each Calvary Chapel church is independent, but it’s also a family of churches which share the same philosophy of ministry. The main thing is the teaching of the Bible. That movie that just came out, Jesus Revolution, which was about the beginning of the first Calvary Chapel started by Chuck Smith. When I became a Christian, it was at a Calvary Chapel, and when I heard about the hippies being allowed to come to church—Chuck Smith told them, “Just come as you are!”—that meant something to me, since I grew up in a traditional church that I couldn’t connect with. But to feel that I could come to a church as myself and be accepted was a big thing. And the teaching of the Bible which they emphasized made me feel at home with this group of churches.

SDR: What is the mission of your church?

PG: To love God and love others, and specifically to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Acts 2:42 — “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer” — is the verse which reflects the four basic principles of the Church: (1) the apostles’ teaching is teaching the Bible; (2) fellowship is the church community and smaller groups within that community; (3) breaking bread is having meals together but also communion, the Lord’s Supper; and (4) prayer is our times of prayer and worship together. So, we do these four things and trust Jesus to build his church as we do what he’s called us to do.

SDR: Where is the strangest place you found God?

PG: I went to Nepal in October, one of the most unreached places on earth—with less than one percent of Christians in the region. We have a mission work that’s going on there among those who are involved in other superstitious religions in the area. To see them come to faith in Christ through the simplicity of the Bible, then to see them get trained up in the Bible and go back to their villages to bring Christ where people don’t know anything about him, and to see them sometimes facing persecution, is all so amazing. They’re still going out to spread the news because they have Jesus in their hearts. Jesus still goes to the deepest, darkest areas — and the Bible is still working.

SDR: Where do you go when you die?

PG: Those who repent and believe in the Lord Jesus will go to heaven, and those who reject him will spend eternity apart from him, which is hell. Of course, God doesn’t desire anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance and to believe in his Son. That’s why we like to share the good news, the Gospel, with everyone.