Over the last few weeks, at the encouragement of many, many of you, we have tried to share more candidly about our current financial situation. As with so many of our families, your Chapel Hill Church family has faced some economic challenges this year. So we took some positive steps. We shared with you our […]
Insufferable grandparents
We grandparents can be insufferable, I know. Just give us an opening…just push the door open a crack…and we will dash through it with stories of how brilliant, how beautiful, how extraordinary our grandchildren are…replete with a terabyte worth of cell phone photos and videos to make our case. I might be the worst, I […]
Come, thou long-expected Jesus
We have a firm “No-Christmas-before-Thanksgiving” rule in the Hawkins home. For those of you who are reading this with the twinkling lights of a well-established Christmas tree in the background, that’s fine. I get it. I don’t have anything against early decoration. But we are a turkey-before-tree, yams-before-yule, and carols-after-cranberry family. Part of that is […]
Our Vision
We believe God has called the people of Chapel Hill Church to achieve great things for the sake of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. CareWe will care for our local community with mercy and compassion, without expectation of anything in return, because we are obedient to what Jesus told us to do. We see our […]
I’m so blessed!
The other day I was driving home, pondering… if I am honest…worrying some… about several challenges facing our church. As I drove along in a funk, a song came on the radio. I’d never heard it before…but it captivated me like no song has in a long time. The song was called “I’m So […]
Legacy Sunday
Twelve years ago, I shared with our elders what I believed to be the three priorities for our coming decade. Not that we didn’t have other things to attend to, but these three would be our particular focus. I called them the “3 Ds”: denomination, debt, and discipleship. First, denomination. We were increasingly aware that […]
Advent Serving Opportunities 2023
The Season of Advent is about two things: looking back (to Jesus’ birth) and looking forward (to Jesus’ return when he makes all things new). The first-century Jews who eagerly awaited the coming of the Messiah and those of us who await the return of King Jesus both share a deep longing for God to […]
Fret not
I “rediscovered” a psalm recently: Psalm 37. Of course, I’ve read it countless times over the years, but somehow, it jumped out at me. I’m calling it the “Don’t fret” psalm. Pull it out and read it. David encourages the reader three times in the first eight verses, “Fret not yourself.” “Fret not yourself because […]
Three things to do during our mid-term
Recently, someone introduced my kids to an updated version of “slug bug,” replacing VW Bugs with Teslas. Unfortunately, our community is significantly affluent that this results in one of them hitting the other every 30 seconds. So, I decided to change the game. Instead of hitting each other when they see a Tesla, I invited […]
Why dwell upon death?
One of the biggest differences between my homeland, the UK, and the US is where people are buried. In the UK, graves are primarily located around the exterior of churches, rather than exclusively in designated cemeteries, like in the US. On our recent trip, our kids were fascinated with these church graveyards. They loved to […]