A little over a month after the state imposed stringent “lockdown” policies in the name of combating COVID-19 — and after multiple failed attempts to get Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom to respond to requests for guidance — Pastor Jack Hibbs decided the best thing he could do in this time of national crisis was to give people in his community access to the most “essential” of institutions: the church.
On May 21, Hibbs and more than 1,200 other pastors in the state notified Newsom of their plan to reopen the doors of their churches by the end of the month. On May 31, Hibbs’ Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, along with hundreds of other churches in the deep blue state, did something that had somehow become an act of defiance — they offered people from the community a chance to worship together. The doors of Hibbs’ sizeable church have remained open since, with thousands of believers flocking to the place of worship every weekend. The outcome, Hibbs told me in a raw and revealing interview, has been the opposite of what state officials warned would occur. Reopening has resulted in countless lives saved — physically, financially, emotionally, and spiritually.
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