This year, 2017, is significant in the life of the Christian Church. It marks the 500th anniversary of the launch of what we know as the Protestant Reformation. If enough of you are interested in joining me next June, I hope to lead a Reformation tour. We will stand before the doors of the Wittenberg […]
Chapel Hill in Haiti
The first Chapel Hill Go Team to Haiti leaves late Thursday evening. We are going as ambassadors from Chapel Hill and working with our partner organization, World Relief (WR). Their mission is to “empower the local church to serve the most vulnerable.” We go to make connections and friendships with the WR staff and to […]
Haiti Go Team
Our Haiti team departs this Thursday. Although every team we send out is special, the sending of this team feels particularly sweet. This team started training last fall for what we all thought would be a November 2016 departure. A year earlier, World Relief had invited us to be a part of the Church Empowerment […]
A Calm in the Storm
I’m sure that I am no different than most of you when I say that I find my life increasingly tumultuous. I was going to say “busy” but, really, that doesn’t do it justice. Perhaps it’s the advent of new electronic media tools in the last decade, but even if you want to, it is […]
Welcome to Chapel Hill Connect
Did you know that, in the month of March, Chapel Hill’s website was visited a little over 7,000 times? On average, those visits lasted two-and-a-half minutes long. That means people spent 292 hours on our website in March alone! Also in March, sermons were streamed 796 times from the website or our app, and every […]
Healing Prayer
Even after 10 trips to Israel, there are some sites that still capture my imagination. One of them is the Pool of Bethesda (picture left.). John 5 describes this pool as the setting of one of Jesus’ most spectacular healings. A man paralyzed for 38 years laid by the pool, along with hundreds of other […]
I’m Amazed
Okay, I knew that our Spiritual Warfare sermon series would be provocative, perhaps controversial, certainly unsettling. But I had no idea the buzz it would unleash. The reports and comments I’m receiving indicate that you are engaging in deep, spirited conversations about a topic that we Presbyterians too often avoid. Even more interestingly, there […]
Stay & Pray
Last year, I met Maggie at the women’s retreat. She had met Bridget when she registered for MOPS and then made another connection with Bridget’s sister-in-law the next day. Maggie and her husband just moved here, and she was about to have a baby. Bridget went out on a limb: “Do you want to come […]
World-changing Prayer
After six months of studying prayer and hearing testimonies of the way the Lord is moving in our community, I think it’s safe to say that God answers prayer. But what about when we are praying for big things? Like really big things? Like World Peace big? Does God answer those prayers? 20 years ago, […]
Horns and a Pitchfork
Those of you old enough to remember the Flip Wilson Show will recall the character, “Geraldine,” whose favorite excuse for her naughty behavior was, “The Devil made me do it!” It was always a big laugh line. And frankly, that’s the way most in our culture think of the Devil—a nasty red cartoon character with […]