Calvary pastor’s impact still felt years after he left pulpit




AMBASSADORS OF FAITH—Beccy and Larry DeWitt have served the community for 40 years through Calvary Community Church. The church grew to more than 3,500 church members under the Rev. Larry DeWitt’s leadership. After resigning as senior pastor in 2003, DeWitt launched the Cornerstone Network, a global media ministry. DIANNE AVERY/Acorn Newspapers

AMBASSADORS OF FAITH—Beccy and Larry DeWitt have served the community for 40 years through Calvary Community Church. The church grew to more than 3,500 church members under the Rev. Larry DeWitt’s leadership. After resigning as senior pastor in 2003, DeWitt launched the Cornerstone Network, a global media ministry. DIANNE AVERY/Acorn Newspapers

When the Rev. Larry DeWitt left a thriving congregation in Indiana and moved his wife, Beccy, and three children across the country to California to take over a struggling church with 60 members, even his offspring had their doubts.

“I thought my parents were crazy,” said son Kirk DeWitt, who was 10 at the time. “We were leaving security, friends, family and a house to an unknown existence.”

It was February 1976 and the elder DeWitt was going through a self-described midlife crisis. He felt called to start a church that would appeal to people who wouldn’t normally be interested in Christianity.

The flailing church he took over eventually became Calvary Community. Today, the congregation of thousands meets in a multi-million dollar facility next to the 101 Freeway in Westlake Village.

Larry DeWitt retired from his position at Calvary 15 years ago and now works in global ministries, but his impact is still felt in worship halls across the country.

The pastor said his singular goal during a lifetime of ministry has been to reach people with the love of Christ.

“We came out here with a dream,” the 81-year-old said. “We started with faith and a whim God wanted us here.”

When he landed in the Conejo Valley over 40 years ago, one of his first decisions was to move the church’s Sunday services from an A-frame chapel on Skyline Drive in Thousand Oaks to the banquet hall at Los Robles Golf Course, which was known historically as the Hungry Tiger restaurant.

DeWitt said meeting outside the four walls of a church removed a barrier for some people to attend. The first person they reached was wearing a jogging suit.

“Sometimes it’s harder to get into church than it is to get into heaven,” DeWitt said. “What if there was a church that didn’t ask for your money? What if it made your life better on Monday morning?”

The strategy worked, and within three years the Calvary congregation had moved into a rented warehouse in Westlake Village and grown to 500 members. Within five years they had 1,000. At the warehouse worship center on Via Colinas, Sunday services regularly drew 3,000 people, with more than 9,000 attending a total of nine services on Easter. Parking and other facility issues plagued the industrial park where they met, and DeWitt began to consider moving into a nearby building which had previously been used as an electronics plant by Eaton Corp. for specialized defense manufacturing.

DeWitt bought the 35-acre property for $18 million and sold 18 acres to David Price, a golf course magnate who for three years had been searching for a location for a Christian high school. Price built Oaks Christian School, which opened its doors to students in 2000.

Next door, DeWitt gutted and remodeled the former defense contractor facility into a “celebration center,” raising the building’s roof by 16 feet to accommodate an auditorium of 2,800 seats, around 1,000 more than the Fred Kavli Theatre at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

The size of Calvary’s congregation allowed the church to launch support groups that other churches didn’t offer at the time, like divorce recovery classes and disability ministries.

“My only focus has been on figuring out how do we love people to Christ,” he said. “Life goes better with Jesus.”

Beginnings

DeWitt’s father died of cancer on Father’s Day 1959, the same week DeWitt was scheduled to receive his pre-med degree from Wheaton College in Illinois. The grieving son missed his graduation to attend his father’s funeral.

The Michigan native said one of the last things his father, a milkman who was deeply religious, told him was to live his faith out fully.

“If you’re going to serve God, serve him with all of your heart,” he said.

DeWitt put his plans to go to medical school on hold while he helped take care of his newly widowed mother. It was during this time he found himself drawn to ministry. He worked as a youth pastor before attending Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. After he finished divinity school, DeWitt studied archaeology in the Holy Land then led congregations in Northern California and the Midwest before making the jump to Thousand Oaks.

He retired as senior pastor in 2003. Since then, he’s worked with the Mission America Coalition and Global Media Outreach, an organization that aims to spread the Gospel online. DeWitt’s “prayer, care, share” model has become a popular tool for churches to promote a lifestyle of evangelism among their members.

Impact

Rob McCoy, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Newbury Park and a member of the Thousand Oaks City Council, lovingly refers to DeWitt as the “Bishop of the Conejo.” He said DeWitt has set the bar high for ministers, but at the same time he’s willing to help others reach new heights.

“He is one of the kindest, wisest visionaries I have ever known,” McCoy said. “When I first met Pastor Larry, I thought to myself, ‘God, why didn’t you just make another Larry DeWitt instead of me?’”

DeWitt’s son, Kirk, who is pastor at Conejo Church, said his father is talented at giving object lessons and often gave out items— including mustard seeds, nails and salt shakers—to help drive home the application of Scripture to everyday life.

He counts himself among the more than 500 people who have been sent out in ministry from his father’s church.

“Calvary has influenced churches all over the place to be creative in the way they reach out to their community,” Kirk DeWitt said.

Beccy DeWitt said she and her husband only accomplished what God gave them the grace to do.

“We think the whole Calvary story is a miracle,” she said.