By Rachel White, Pastor of Next Steps It hit me recently, somewhere between Evelyn’s birthday and getting Ezra ready for his first year of middle school, that we don’t have an elementary schooler in the house anymore. Evelyn just turned 13, so we are newly, officially parents of teenagers, and Ezra is right behind her. […]
Blog
Put Sunday on Your Calendar First
By J.J. Bland, Director of Chapel Hill Preschool As summer begins to wind down, I always reach that moment when reality settles in. The slower pace, spontaneous backyard barbecues, late-night teen gatherings around the fire pit, and unhurried evenings are coming to an end. Our preschool teachers are already stopping by their classrooms, decorating bulletin […]
When Grief Changes Everything
By Katie Nelson, Director of Care Ministries I can easily recall the day my sister called me with the news. It was August 7, 2024, the day after Adelaide died. I heard something different in her voice…heaviness, crisis mode, shock. I walked outside to the back lawn. “Adelaide died,” she said. As the weight of […]
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 […]
When the Plan Changes
By Julie Hawkins, Associate Pastor of Ministry Summer changes the rhythm. For some of us the school year ends and the whole household reorganizes around weekly camps and planned time away. For others the calendar may not shift, but something in the air feels different anyway from longer days to a slower pace, the sense […]
Pulling Up a Chair
By Rachel White, Pastor of Next Steps “We were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.” (1 Thessalonians 2:8) Investing Time in Communities That Don’t Yet Know Christ It’s tempting to think of Christian witness as something that […]
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 […]
Who’s In Your Neighborhood This Summer?
By Julie Hawkins, Pastor of Ministry The garage doors are open. The sprinklers are running next door. The mountain is out! This is summer in the Pacific Northwest, and for a few warm months, the walls between our lives come down just a little. We’re outside. Our neighbors are outside. Kids appear from houses you […]
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 […]
The Good Work of Marriage
By Katie Nelson, Director of Care Ministries Our wedding day was really sweet and incredibly fun. Though the skies were gray in Seattle, I was assured that the photographer would be able to capture the colors even more brilliantly. So don’t worry, Katie, I told myself. Worry might be a disposition of mine, but I […]
Thank You and Praise God
By Cara Taylor, Director of Outreach June is a time for celebrating! The sun returns, students reach milestones, and Chapel Hill looks back on a year of serving others. While the world presses on us to make these marks of our own performance and worth, the good news of Jesus makes them moments of gratitude […]
Refreshing Our Lobby & Coffee Areas
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Over the years, one of the things we’ve come to recognize is how quickly people form an impression when they walk into a space. Long before a song is sung or a message is preached, something meaningful is already happening. In those first few minutes, people are quietly asking, “Do […]
Welcoming Two New Leaders
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor As you know, we’ve been prayerfully searching for the right leaders to help guide two vital areas of our church—Worship and Children’s Ministry. Thank you for your patience, your prayers, and your trust in the process. We’re excited to share that God has provided in a powerful way. Seth Wolfe, […]
Raising Kids Who Actually Live Their Faith
By Rachel White, Pastor of Next Steps Growing up, I had a front-row seat to what real, everyday faith looks like. My grandparents modeled a heart for mission and a deep love for God’s Word. My dad and I would sing worship songs together before bed. My mom made space for honest conversations about how […]
Helping Families Find and Follow Jesus
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor A lot of parents are asking the same question right now—even if they don’t say it out loud: Am I doing enough to help my kids actually know Jesus? Not just attend church. Not just learn the stories. But truly find and follow him. That quiet concern is real. And […]
The Yes You Almost Didn’t Say
By Jesse Yi-Gray, Director of Music Have you ever said yes to something without feeling fully sure? Not a bold, confident yes. A hesitant one. A yes behind gritted teeth or a nervous laugh. The yes that came with more fear than certainty. The yes you almost didn’t say. Sometimes, it’s those hesitant yesses where […]
More than a Moment
By Julie Hawkins, Pastor of Ministry Easter Sunday has come and gone, but what we witnessed here at Chapel Hill last week is not something that fades with the calendar. Over the course of our Easter services, more than 100 people raised their hands to commit their lives to Jesus. Each one of those hands […]
The Day Everything Went Dark
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Jesus is under arrest. The crowd has turned. His friends have scattered. The night has given way to a morning filled with accusation, injustice, and fear. And if you were there, you would be asking one question: where is this day going? Will he fight back? Will God intervene? Will […]
Join Us for Holy Week at Chapel Hill
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Holy Week is the week at the very heart of our Christian faith. It starts with Jesus, the humble king, entering Jerusalem on a donkey to the praise and shouts of the crowd. It moves through the darkest of hours as Jesus is betrayed, beaten, crucified, and buried. But it […]
Seven Date Nights That Could Change Your Marriage
By Rachel White, Assistant Pastor Ellis and I are in what I like to call the “taxi” season of parenting. We split camps and one parent takes one kid to an activity here, and the other parent takes the other kid to an activity there. If we are lucky, we can sneak in a little […]
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Changes in Kids Ministry This Spring!
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Seventy-two percent of followers of Jesus say they first came to faith before the age of 18. That means most people who will ever follow Jesus begin that journey while they’re still kids. Which is why children’s ministry isn’t a side program in the church—it’s one of the most important […]
These Are the Days We’ve Been Praying For
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Fifteen thousand churches closed in the United States last year. That’s 41 churches every single day. That number should stop us. Each one of those churches was more than a building. It was a well. A place where living water flowed—where people were baptized, marriages were restored, children were discipled, […]
You Picked Up Your Phone…Then What?
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Have you ever picked up your phone to check one thing—and resurfaced 27 minutes later wondering what just happened? You opened it to check the weather. Or respond to a text. Or look up one quick detail. And somehow you ended up in an entirely different corner of the internet. […]
Come and Search
By Julie Hawkins, Pastor of Ministry This week, the Church enters a season called Lent. For some of you, that word is familiar. For others, it may feel mysterious or unnecessary. So let’s begin simply. Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter. Just like Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before he […]
Dry Bones and Living Hope
By Caleb Bagdanov, Director of Student Ministries Tomorrow, a team of 34 high school students and 11 adult leaders from our church will head to Ensenada, Mexico to serve alongside our partners at Rancho Agua Viva Ministries. As bags are packed and final preparations are made, we go with a shared theme that has been […]
Dying with Dignity?
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Note: Pastor Ellis wrote this blog just before his grandmother passed away. Thank you for your continued prayers for him and his family. As I write this blog I’m in Ireland, sitting at the bedside of my 97-year-old grandmother. My late father was her only child, and so my sister […]
Rejoicing Is Not Denial—It’s Resistance
By Judson Taylor, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications Recently I had lunch with a mentor of mine—someone God used to give me direction when I was in my 20s. It was one of those quietly significant moments, not because anything dramatic happened, but because time itself becomes a teacher. Sitting with someone who knew […]
Walking Together Through Transition
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor The life of a church is shaped not only by sermons and programs, but by people who faithfully serve, often behind the scenes, in the lives of others. From time to time, those people step into new seasons, and it’s important that we walk through those transitions together with clarity, […]
An Invitation “to Winter”
By Katie Nelson, Director of Care Ministries In my attempt to “practice what I preach” as the Director of Care Ministries here at Chapel Hill—that flourishing comes when we heal and tend to our whole self, God, and others—I take a jog in the woods about twice a week on a regular basis. There is […]
Trusting God in the Long Work
By Rachel White, Pastor of Next Steps It was so inspiring to see answers to prayers from 15 years ago when we visited Oxford last Fall. Walking around the city reminded me of countless prayer meetings and the hopeful anticipation during the season we lived there that God would answer those prayers with large numbers […]
When Christmas is Over but the Stress Isn’t
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor The Christmas decorations are still up, the tree needles are still in the carpet, and the credit card statement has already arrived…uninvited. December may be over, but the financial decisions we made during it are very much still with us. Somewhere between “It’s Christmas! It only happens once a year” […]
Reading the Bible Together in 2026
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor In the UK, Boxing Day, December 26, is a public holiday that follows Christmas Day. Traditionally, it’s a slower day: a pause after the celebration, marked by rest, long walks, and time with family. For me, it has always felt like a hinge moment—Christmas behind us, a new year quietly […]
Go, Tell It on the Mountain
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor There’s a reason we keep coming back to the story behind the songs at Christmas. These carols aren’t sentimental leftovers from another era. They are testimonies. They were written because something happened. Something that could not stay quiet. One of the clearest examples is “Go, Tell It on the Mountain”. […]
Looking at Jesus, Looking at Each Other
By Cara Taylor, Director of Outreach Last Sunday I was surprised by grief mixed with joy. Many of you stepped up to my husband and me to receive communion. Person after person, I looked into your faces and gave you a piece of bread and said, “The body of Christ, broken for you.” Waves of […]
Let the Carols Lead Us to Christ
By Jesse Yi-Gray, Director of Music Going into my first Christmas season as a married man, I knew there was one conversation my wife and I needed to have that wasn’t covered in our pre-marital counseling. Whispers of Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé, advertisements for Starbucks seasonal drinks, December worship planning meetings getting added to my calendar all […]
What Are You Waiting For?
By Julie Hawkins, Pastor of Ministry The day after Thanksgiving always feels like a crossroads. Half of us are still in a turkey haze, grazing through Tupperware full of leftovers. The other half are already hauling boxes of Christmas decor out of the garage, decking halls like it’s our job. Half of us are hesitant […]
A Whisper of Revival in the UK
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor I wish you could have heard the way her college pastor told the story—slowly, gently, still moved by what God had done. A young female student in Oxford had grown up in the occult. Her health was unraveling. Her life felt fragmented and empty. She was searching for meaning anywhere […]
Feeling Lonely at Church?
By Jenna Arnold, Director of Digital Outreach I’ve attended church my whole life, and there have been seasons of belonging—and seasons of deep loneliness. One of the biggest differences between those seasons, I eventually realized, was me. I remember one Sunday sitting in church feeling transparent, like no one would have noticed if I’d disappeared. […]
Where is God When I’m Hurting?
By Cara Taylor, Director of Outreach Dark mornings, soggy skies, holidays approaching. This time of year can bring up the blues and also call us to cozy togetherness. The celebrations and the shopping are supposed to spread the love. But sometimes they just make the loneliness and anxiety ache more. Even when we put our […]
Loving Across the Spiritual Aisle
By Carie GordyCommunications Coordinator Being married to someone who believes differently can feel both beautiful and challenging. On one hand, you get to see the world through someone else’s eyes. On the other, it takes intention and patience to make sure your differences don’t turn into distance. One of the biggest lessons is learning to listen […]
Why We Sing to God, Not Just About God
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor If you’ve been around church for a while, you’ve probably noticed that the songs our younger generation sing today sound a bit different from the ones we grew up with. Some are louder. Some repeat more. Some feel more like personal prayers than corporate declarations. And maybe, if you’re honest, […]
Everyone Matters in Worship
By Jesse Yi-Gray, Director of Music So often in scripture we see references and images and declarations of worshipping God. From the Psalms where “…all the earth worships you and sings praises to you” (66:4) or Isaiah where “…the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of […]
Why 100% of Us Should Be on a Serve Team
By Julie Hawkins, Associate Pastor of Ministry When I was a kid, church was never just a place we went on Sundays. It was a place where my parents showed me what it meant to live a life of service. My mom was part of a prayer team, taught Sunday School, and led Bible studies. […]
Does God Care About Your Job?
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Monday morning is when reality hits. The alarm goes off, the emails pile up, and the week begins whether you’re ready or not. For a lot of us, faith feels like something we left in the car after church on Sunday. We believe in Jesus—but when the boss is breathing […]
Why James Matters in This Cultural Moment
By Rachel White, Pastor of Next Steps If you’ve ever found yourself thinking “faith in Jesus should change the way we live and the world around us” James is the book for you and I’m excited that tomorrow we start our sermon series in James: Faith That Works. I grew up in a Christian home, […]
A Call to Mourn, Unite, and Pray
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Hey church, it’s Pastor Ellis. I’ve been hearing from many of you over the last several days about how you have been impacted by the assassination of Charlie Kirk. So, I wanted to put some thoughts out there, about how we, as followers of Jesus, should respond to this tragedy, […]
The Church’s One Foundation in a Shaken World
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor This past week has been heavy. The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a tragic and senseless act of violence. Like many of you, I’ve grieved the loss of his life and prayed for his family and loved ones. Added to that, our own community has been shaken by a heartbreaking […]
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Chosen, Returning, and Ready to Share What We’ve Seen
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor As you read these words, I’m soaring home from Tanzania—alongside pastors from churches across the U.S. and our own Pastor Julie —where we met the very children whose hearts and hands chose families and individuals from Chapel Hill. What an extraordinary gift this journey has been. Tomorrow, Reveal Sunday, marks […]
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Something Bigger Than Us Is Coming
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Tomorrow is not a Sunday you’ll want to miss. For the last few weeks we’ve been asking you to circle September 7 on your calendar—without saying exactly why. That wasn’t an accident. Because what God is about to do among us is bigger than anything we could manufacture on our […]
You Were Made For Monday, Too
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor Labor Day weekend. That rare and beautiful moment when we all collectively agree: Let’s not work today. And thank God for it. Because whether you’re grinding out reports, wrangling toddlers, managing a team, or trying to remember the password for your HR software so you can submit your time off […]
How God Works Through the Unexpected
By Jenna Arnold, Director of Digital Outreachand Carie Gordy, Communication Coordinator When my daughter Josie and I arrived at Camp Levi, we didn’t know what to expect. It was our first mission trip, and after a full day of training on Sunday and part of Monday, we finally found out who our camper would be. […]
How We Motivate Each Other
By Cara Taylor, Director of Outreach Love is like a magic penny. Hold it tight and you won’t have any. Lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many, they’ll be rolling all over the floor! This song from my childhood captures the way Chapel Hill experienced deeper relationships and blessing even as we gave […]
Why We Should Read the Creeds
By Judson TaylorSenior Director of Marketing and Communications This year marks the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed—a moment worth celebrating. In 325 A.D., Christian leaders from across Europe, Africa, and Asia—representing places like Spain, Egypt, and Persia—gathered at the Council of Nicaea to affirm what the Bible teaches about Jesus: that he is fully […]
Together As One
By Ellis WhiteSenior Pastor For the past two months, we’ve been trying something new: gathering as one church family at 10:00 am every Sunday. When we first announced this summer trial, we weren’t sure what to expect. Would the room feel full? Would people come? Would it work? Over time, we’ve listened, reflected, and reviewed […]
Start with Jesus
By Jenna ArnoldDirector of Digital Outreach A couple of years ago during our For the One series, we asked our church family what keeps them from sharing their faith. By far, the most common answer was this: “I don’t know what to say.” I completely get that. I’ve been there too—moments when someone asked a […]
Sunday: VBS Celebration + Cereal Drive
By Paul HargreavesSenior Director of Family Ministries We just wrapped up an incredible week of Summer Blast Vacation Bible School! Our theme was True North: Trusting Jesus in a Wild World, and what a wild and wonderful adventure it was! All week long, we pretended we were exploring Alaska with our kids—surrounded by shimmering glaciers, […]
They’re More Open Than You Think
By Pastor Ellis WhiteSenior Pastor What if the people most ready to hear about Jesus aren’t far away… but already in your life? Every Sunday this summer, something beautiful is happening as we gather as one church family—young and old, new and long-time, all in one room. There’s something powerful about it. You can feel […]
The Most Important Room in the Building
By Julie Hawkins, Associate Pastor of Ministry I grew up in the church, this church. Chapel Hill was the place where my faith came alive. It was in Sunday school classrooms and Wednesday night programs, in the care of adults who showed up week after week to teach, to pray, to notice me. Somewhere in […]
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 […]