Church Plant Profile

Planter: Matt LeRoy

Church: Love Chapel Hill

Location: Chapel Hill, NC

In the heart of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is a new church that is reaching a diverse group of people with the love of Jesus. While Matt Leroy was attending Asbury Seminary, God called him to return to his hometown of Chapel Hill to plant a new kind of church. Each week, the church holds two services in a local theater on Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill. The church has grown to an average of two hundred weekly; however, they have a wider community impact beyond their Sunday morning attendance. 

Matt said, “Our name is our mission. We want to love Chapel Hill with the heart of Jesus.”1 Love Chapel Hill encourages its congregation to love local, whether sharing a meal with someone in need, volunteering as a tutor, giving hot chocolate to students on exam days, or paying for parking on one of the busiest streets. To those serving at Love Chapel Hill, these actions are more than random acts of kindness. To accomplish their mission, the church also partners with various community outreaches to fulfill its mission of loving Chapel Hill. Some of these include Grace on Wheels that provides transportation to those in poverty, SECU Family Housing that uses volunteers to feed and house families with loved ones in the hospital, or TABLE that feeds children with food insecurities in the community.

Often church plants focus on families or one particular group of people, However Love Chapel Hill is unique in that it doesn’t have a target audience. Instead, it seeks to impact the entire community of Chapel Hill. Historically, those with bright futures don’t mix with those with broken pasts. Yet, in this church, those differences are pushed aside. Love Chapel Hill is an eclectic mix of college students, young families, and those experiencing homelessness. 

During the first service, Matt remembers two people on opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum sitting near the front of the church, with a few seats separating them. One was a well-dressed college girl. The other was a homeless man. As Matt asked the congregation to turn to a particular passage of Scripture, the college student moved to sit next to and share her Bible with the homeless man who didn’t have one. “This was the first service, and that’s when it clicked that that’s what we’re here for, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Matt said. “We don’t have a homeless ministry or a college ministry. We have a church family, and all of us are a part of that together.” Matt Leroy and Love Chapel Hill are a wonderful example of a new church that is focused on transforming their community with the love and message of Jesus. For more information about Matt and Love Chapel Hill, visit http://asburyseminary.edu/voices/matt-leroy.