Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa Affirms Women Pastors. Other Calvary Pastors Say No.

The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.

Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, long associated with the Jesus Movement and the late Pastor Chuck Smith, has publicly clarified that it ordains women as pastors—not merely women in non-pastoral ministry roles. Pastors elsewhere in the Calvary Chapel movement have answered that the practice departs from the biblical convictions that shaped the movement.

The Christian Post reported Sunday on the announcement and the backlash. Church Leaders published a related Nov. 9 account. Both reports describe a doctrinal dispute inside a recognizable evangelical network, not a civil-court order.

What Costa Mesa announced

Lead pastor Char Brodersen, a grandson of Chuck Smith, told the congregation on Nov. 1 that the church believes and practices the ordination of both men and women to pastoral ministry. According to the Christian Post, he said the church has been practicing that approach for almost a decade and that women already serve in every echelon of ministry there.

Brodersen called women's pastoral ordination a secondary issue and urged charity toward Christians who disagree. He also said men and women are created in God's image and are essential to serving the church, the home and the world. Those are his congregation's stated convictions. They are not a finding that every Calvary Chapel must follow Costa Mesa.

How other Calvary pastors answered

Church Leaders reported that Pastor Josh Blevins, speaking for the Calvary Chapel Association's Heartland Regional Team, called Costa Mesa's decision a significant departure from the biblical convictions that historically shaped the Calvary Chapel family. The Christian Post likewise quotes the Heartland team rejecting a sound biblical basis for ordaining women as elders and pastors under the association's distinctives.

Senior Pastor Scott Gurwell of Calvary Chapel Liberty in Missouri issued a statement affirming the indispensable ministry of women while reserving the offices of pastor and elder for biblically qualified men, citing passages in 1 Timothy and Titus. Other pastors quoted in the Christian Post said they had already distanced themselves from Costa Mesa's direction after Smith's death and the later formation of the Calvary Global Network.

Church disputes over doctrine and authority remain a live national question, as seen in a different denominational setting in West Virginia Court Blocks 33 Churches Leaving the UMC With Property. Doctrine Is Not a Lawsuit Shortcut.

Neither report claims that Costa Mesa has been forced by a civil court to change its practice, or that the Calvary Chapel Association can seize the Costa Mesa campus. The news is a public clarification inside a famous church and a public refusal by other pastors who still use the Calvary Chapel name. Brand continuity and biblical fidelity are not the same question, even when they collide in the same week's headlines.

Opinion: Do not rename the pastor's office to keep a brand comfortable

Scripture honors the ministry of women without treating every ministry title as interchangeable. The New Testament's qualifications for elders and overseers speak of qualified men. A church that wants a different practice should say so plainly. It should not redefine the pastoral office and then call the disagreement unimportant.

Christians can disagree about secondary questions without hatred. Ordaining women as pastors is not a secondary question in the same sense as carpet color. It concerns the church's public teaching office and the authority of the text. Calling it secondary does not make the passages in Timothy and Titus disappear.

Pastors who refuse Costa Mesa's practice are not automatically cruel. They are trying to keep church order under Scripture. Costa Mesa is free to teach what it teaches. Other congregations are free to refuse the name, the network or the innovation. The worst option is pretending that fidelity and fashion are the same thing.

Pray for the people in these churches. Teach the whole counsel of God. Honor the gifts of women without surrendering the offices God has defined. A movement that began by opening the Bible should not end by sanding down the passages that make modern audiences uneasy.