One Leader Among Many

Pastor Char Brodersen leans into a different leadership model at historic Calvary Chapel church

When Char Brodersen becomes the senior pastor at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa next year, he will be stepping into a role that comes with a tremendous family legacy.

Brodersen’s grandfather, Chuck Smith, started the church in 1965 in the infancy of the “Jesus Movement” and served as senior pastor until his death in 2013. During that time, the Calvary Chapel movement expanded to over 1,000 churches worldwide, with the Costa Mesa congregation growing to become one of the largest churches in the U.S. by the early 2000s.

When Smith died in 2013, his son-in-law Brian Brodersen took over as senior pastor. Brodersen is now passing the torch to his son as the culmination of a four-year leadership transition process. Char will become the sole senior pastor in January 2025 when Brian retires.

Char is grateful for the fruitful legacy of his father and grandfather. As he looks to the future, he sees an opportunity for a new kind of collaborative leadership. “Chuck was a larger-than-life leader of a revival movement,” acknowledges Char. “But over time, the movement became attributed to Chuck alone, with the church focused on a singular leader.”

Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, like many other Calvary Chapel churches, has always held to a church leadership structure that is centered around a senior pastor, rather than a plurality of elders. Some have termed this the “Moses model” of leadership, and it’s a model that Costa Mesa is beginning to move away from. “We are seeing our church go from the senior pastor model to more of a collaboration of leaders,” he says.

He points to Ephesians 4:11-12, where Paul states, “And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ.” Rather than looking to one leader to meet the needs of the congregation, Char wants his congregation to recognize that many leaders are needed to build up the body of Christ.

“No one individual is anointed by God: We all have the Spirit and a gift to bring,” says Char. “Jesus is the one the meets our deepest needs and he has scattered the gifts throughout the body.”

A different leadership philosophy isn’t the only change Char is implementing in Costa Mesa. He has also begun incorporating different styles of preaching on Sunday mornings. While Calvary is well known for its verse-by-verse approach to preaching, Char believes it is also important for Christians to grasp the larger storyline of the Bible. For the past year, he has been preaching through larger themes in Scripture, focusing on entire books in a sermon, while helping his congregation grasp how all the parts of Scripture fit together.

“It is still a Bible movement, but we are trying to go deep into the pool of Scripture,” says Char. “I want them to see how the whole Bible finds its answer in Jesus.”

Char credits his time at Western Seminary in helping him appreciate the literary aspect of the Bible. At Western, he was exposed to authors like John Sailhamer, John Walton, Jonathan Pennington, and others, who helped ignite his passion for biblical theology. He learned that the authors of Scripture are addressing specific communities in a way that connects to the larger redemptive story.

Not only did Western shape his theology, it also gave him a community and mentorship to help him navigate the highs and lows of ministry. He has stayed in touch with several of his fellow cohort participants, participating in a chat group on an almost weekly basis: “A huge part of the gift of seminary was having companions to journey through life with. They are my brothers and sisters in arms.”

Char is one of hundreds of Calvary Chapel leaders who have taken advantage of Western’s Partnership Grant available to Calvary Global Network churches. He along with many other Calvary pastors have discovered that seminaries like Western can be enriching communities where ministry wisdom can be enhanced and biblical wisdom deepened. “Hopefully people can look at me and say, ‘You can go to seminary and actually increase your faith, not lose your faith.’”