By Pastor Ellis White At 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, November 17, 1963, a small group gathered for the very first service of Chapel Hill Church. They opened with a hymn: “The Church’s One Foundation.” This Sunday, we’re opening our service with the same hymn. I keep thinking about that. Nobody in that room could […]
Author: Pastor Ellis White
6,579 Days
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor I have a math degree. I like precision, and I like things that can be measured. Parenting has cured me of both. You can read every article, ask every friend with older kids, plan the perfect response to a bad morning—and somehow still get it wrong by 8:15 am. There’s […]
This Sunday, We’re Making Room
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Last Sunday, a dad walked through our doors for the first time, two elementary-age daughters in tow, looking for kids’ check-in. Our remodel is still catching up with itself in one embarrassing way—with all the changes, we didn’t have the signage up yet to guide him. He stood there for […]
There’s No Better Time Than Right Now
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Something happens in September. The slow, untethered pace of summer gives way to something more structured. Kids go back to school. Routines return. People start thinking again about what they want their weeks to look like—and what they want their lives to look like. Psychologists call it the “fresh start […]
Coming This Year to Chapel Hill…
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor I got to be gone for an entire month this summer, and I don’t take that lightly. Thank you to Pastor Julie and Steve Maxwell, our COO, for leading our staff while I was away. Thank you to Pastor Julie, Caleb Bagdanov, and our guest preacher, Pastor Mike Moses, for […]
Celebrating Cara and Looking Ahead
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor There are seasons in the life of a church that invite us to pause and give thanks. Today is one of those moments. For the past 10 years, Cara Taylor has faithfully served Chapel Hill in countless ways. During that time, many of you have watched her not only lead […]
250 Years of Freedom—and One Very Teary Brit
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor I must have been seven or eight years old, standing in a playground in England, talking with some friends about the United States. I don’t remember exactly what was said. But I remember the feeling—this quiet, almost inexplicable sense that one day I would live there. Thirty-something years later, I […]
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Something Is Happening Here
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor A mom—not a churchgoer herself—recently texted another parent and said something that stopped me in my tracks when I heard it. “I don’t know what happens at that student ministry, but it has completely changed my daughter’s life.” Her daughter had been invited to Easter last year by a friend. […]
The Man Who Changed Everything for Me
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor I was 22 years old when I met him at a conference in Oxford, England. He saw something in me I couldn’t see in myself. He invited me into his world, let me sit in the front row of his ministry, and spent the last 15 years shaping me—as a […]
Something New Starts This Sunday
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor There’s a moment in any season of waiting when you can feel the shift—when what you’ve been hoping for stops being around the corner and actually arrives. That moment is this Sunday. After more than a year of searching and praying for our worship ministry—and five months for our children’s […]