Calvary Fellowship

[MandyLaLa]

This seems to be a new church that's sprung up in my area (New England) they don't have they're own building so they currently meet at a local public high school.

 

My 2 questions, what does anyone know about this church, are they patriarchal, born again, fundie, fundies-lite etc....

 

And also how is it possible for a church to meet at a local high public high school. Shouldn't that be like illegal or something.

[1CrazyMama]

It's fairly common for churches to meet in school buildings. It isn't illegal because the church is paying to use the building, and in our area, there are no signs or anything put up during the school week.

[greek_chorus]

I don't know much about them since I don't go to church and have never attended this particular church. They are all over the place where I live and I have several FB friends who are members. I would describe them as being fundie-lite at the very least, but then I'm a left-of-center-liberal so my perception is likely skewed. They do believe in the Tribulation following the Rapture and I sure don't know any Catholics or Episcopalians who believe that nonsense. The people I know who attend this church don't wear frumpers and the women even wear pants and have jobs, which keeps them from being hardcore fundie, but they're all incredibly, ridiculously conservative. I'm sure there are others on here who know a lot more.

I do know of churches that meet in public places like high schools. I don't believe this illegal since it's a public space and schools often rent space to outside organizations during off-hours and it would be discriminatory not to allow churches to meet if they want to rent the space. I believe the Supreme Court has a couple of decisions on this but I don't know cases.

[thetabmeister]

I tried one in my area about a half a year ago, and they were all like "we are so great because we're not like all those other churches out there" and they played a video first thing in their service; it was of a contemporary church with praise songs and a band and a relevant modern message, and everyone was laughing and carrying on like how hilarious is this, but then when they did their own music portion it was --you guessed it, praise songs and a band, and the pastor's message was relevant and modern and mostly just a (pretty obvious to me) self-declaration of how smart, witty, and theologically gifted he thinks he is. I nearly walked out but for the sake of being polite...the only time I actually walked out of a church was when the pastor starting laughing hysterically and fell on the floor and writhed around and then like 10 other people did it.......actually i think I more RAN out...but yea, Calvary Chapel is just another sham. Like most churches. They aren't reverent or anything but they do love to obsess about sex(that came up 3 times in the 30 minute message) and standards. Run away. Go to a methodist church. :)

[MandyLaLa]

How does Calvary fellowship differ from Calvary chapel?

[thetabmeister]

I don't know.... :oops:

[EmiGirl]

It could be independent of a denomination. Really the only way to know what a church believes on subjects is to go. In fact, in many cases you'd have to ask the pastor where they stand on issues. You get that with even within denominations though. For example, not all churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention have the same standings on even the big issues like Calvinism (predestination).

[PennySycamore]

Calvary Chapel is rather famous for their homophobia so I hope there's no relation between Chapel and Felowship.

[Ramona]

why would it be illegal for them to use a school on a non-school day? the school kids aren't being made to attend.. schools here get used by brownies and craft groups and sports programs and whatever else too... the organizations come, do their things, clean up, and leave.

[chaotic life]

Googling Calvary Fellowship appears to bring up an independent church with three campuses. However, their link to "Bible College" goes directly to Calvary Chapel Bible College in Seattle. So, I suspect it's just a group of Calvary Chapel that is trying to mask their affiliation with the national "not a denomination" affiliation of Calvary Chapels.

Calvary Chapels are notorious for their homophobic behaviors, their subjegation of women and their arrogant exclusion of children in worship. They are acutally militantly ugly about children in service in most locations. I've heard of a *few* that allow children to even be in the sanctuary but usually they require children to be stashed far out of site for fear they will disturb people's worship experience.