History
A Legacy of Christian Discipleship at 3800 Fairview Street
Santa Ana, California · Est. 1973
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A Legacy to Inherit
Your child steps onto a campus where the Holy Spirit has moved for over fifty years. That heritage is alive in the very soil of this place. While the methods and tools are designed to meet the needs of this generation, the calling to raise up young people, equipped to impact the 21st century world remains the same!
Prepared for the World
From preschool to senior year, the Church partners with the School to equip students to go boldly into every arena of life: college, career, family, and community as faithful and capable young people.
Find Belonging at Calvary
For more than fifty years, families have trusted this campus with what matters most, the education and formation of their children’s hearts, minds, and souls. The invitation is the same today as it was in 1973: come, and see what God is doing at 3800 Fairview Street.
To learn more, visit calvaryschools.org or call (714) 662-7485.
THE STORY BEGINS: CALVARY CHAPEL
In the spring of 1961, twelve people gathered for worship in the community room of a trailer park on Newport Boulevard in Costa Mesa. The room was humble, the crowd was small and the Spirit of God was present. Led by Reverend Floyd Nelson, this informal, non-denominational fellowship grew quickly, and by 1965 the congregation had purchased a small church building on Church Street in Costa Mesa.
That same year, a pastor named Chuck Smith arrived. He had spent nearly two decades searching for a church where the Word of God could be taught freely, without pretense or politics. In Costa Mesa, he found it and what followed would become one of the most consequential chapters in modern Christian history.
THE JESUS MOVEMENT
Pastor Chuck Smith began his ministry at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa with a congregation of twenty-five and a quiet, radical conviction: that the straightforward teaching of Scripture, offered without judgment, would change lives.
What no one could have predicted was who would come. As the countercultural upheaval of the late 1960s swept through Southern California, Chuck and his wife Kay opened their home and their church to a generation the world had written off, hippies, surfers, addicts, wanderers. They were welcomed without condition, loved without reservation, and introduced to the living Word of God.
In just a few years, mass baptisms were being performed in the Pacific Ocean; sometimes 500 at a time at Pirates Cove in Corona del Mar. The church outgrew every building it occupied, eventually setting up a circus tent on the newly purchased property at Sunflower and Fairview that seated over 2,000 people and was filled almost nightly. The Jesus Movement had found its epicenter.
THE CALL FOR A SCHOOL
It was out of this same spirit of transformation and discipleship that Calvary Chapel Schools was born. In 1973, church families came to Pastor Chuck with a vision: to extend the teaching of God’s Word into the daily formation of their children. What began as Maranatha Christian Academy, with 400 students, was the message of Christ, expressed in a classroom.
As that first generation grew, so did the vision, and in 1987 Calvary Chapel High School opened its doors. Today, more than 50 years later, CCS enrolls students from age 2 through 12th grade in a fully accredited program built on Athletics, the Arts, Academics, and Spiritual Formation, continuing the same calling that filled the tent on Fairview Street: to raise up a generation grounded in truth and prepared to impact the world.