History of Calvary Chapel Sarasota
Calvary Chapel of Sarasota started April 15th 1987 In the living room of a local dentist's home. Carl and Valerie Dixon were arranging to return to Canada when they were approached by a small group of people who asked if they would consider starting a new Church. The vision was for a verse-by-verse teaching format along with contemporary worship.
The first service was attended by 35 people and a new Church was formed called Agape Christian Fellowship. There was immediate growth and after only six weeks the group had grown and started meeting in the cafeteria of Fruitville Elementary School. The space there became limited within six months and arrangements were made to move to Cardinal Mooney High School and take over the cafeteria building along with several classrooms Sunday morning and evening. While at Cardinal Mooney Pastor Carl and Valerie were required to return to Canada for a nine month period due to problems obtaining a permanent resident Visa. When they returned to the Church (with their permanent visa's in hand) further growth caused the Church to move again and start meeting in the beautiful Seventh Day Adventist Church on Proctor Road. One year later they moved to the present location at 3800 27th Parkway. When the congregation first moved to this location and rented the facility it was in very bad condition and much of the building could not be used.
The second year at the present address Pastor Carl came in contact with the Calvary Chapel Movement and attended a South East Pastor's Conference at Merritt Island Florida. Pastor Chuck Smith talked to Pastor Carl about being in fellowship with the Calvary Movement at the conference and within a few weeks Agape Christian Fellowship came into fellowship with Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa plus hundreds of Calvary's around the country and the world. It was the decision of the Church leadership to change the name of the church to reflect our fellowship with the Calvary Chapel movement. In 1996 the building at 3800 27th Parkway became too small because of slow but steady growth, so the Church purchased the land and building, and entered into a renovation program that would add the much needed space. The Church has been very fruitful during its growth. We have a heart to see the world reached with the Good News of Salvation and therefore we have an extensive missions program with many short-term missions, native ministry support and our own incarnational long-term missions.
We are fortunate to have a great youth leader in Pilgrim Benham who with the help of many volunteers offers exciting opportunities for the Spiritual growth of our young people through The Great Adventure student ministries.
We also have a full children's program each Sunday and Wednesday, which is overseen by Cameron McGough and assisted by many very faithful workers.
The day-by-day practical problems of running a growing church are overseen by the pastoral staff as a team with the tremendous aid of our office manager Karen Docter.
There are too many ministries to list here such as the terrific Calvary Community, our home fellowship groups, that if we tried we would always be guilty of leaving someone out. We try to help the people that come here understand that everybody is needed in the Church Body and no one person is more important than another. That is why it says on the front of our bulletin - MINISTERS - The Entire Congregation.
If someone were to ask us to state our vision -- the answer would be worship & the WORD & Taking it to the World!. We desire to help people understand the Bible for themselves and worship our God in Spirit and in Truth.