The Heart of Our Faith

We Welcome. We Wonder. We Walk.

At University Baptist Church, we believe God’s love has no exceptions. Every person—of every race, gender, sexuality, identity, and story—is beloved, created in God’s image with purpose, and fully WELCOME here. We affirm the full dignity and belonging of all, including those historically marginalized by faith communities, such as our LGBTQ+ siblings and women who are called to ministry. 

We believe this spirit of unconditional welcome is essential to becoming the community of faith God created us to be. Yet churches are imperfect, and we confess that ours is no exception. We acknowledge that, at points in our long and storied history as a Baptist congregation in the American South, we’ve failed to live fully into Jesus’ Great Command to love God and others, contributing to the harm of our neighbors through unjust action and inaction. We cannot ignore or run from that truth. Instead, we find it most faithful to face it with humility, to turn from it in repentance, and to move forward in the conviction that only through owning all elements of our past can we pursue God’s bright future.

Here, we embrace such authenticity, and therefore we seek to model honesty as we deal with the messiness of faith in life. For this reason, we WONDER together, both in worship of the God we know, and in seeking the God we’re still discovering. In communion with the Holy Spirit, we ask sacred questions and engage in courageous conversations, knowing that faith is not the absence of doubt, but the presence of grace in our searching. 

And, in step with our welcoming and wondering, we WALK forward together. Ministry at University Baptist Church is unique and exciting–like serving at the crossroads of the world. Situated on a prominent corner next door to one of our nation’s leading public universities, opportunities to share the Gospel in word and deed pass by our doors everyday. We embrace these chances to serve by putting feet on our faith and walking forward—with our welcoming spirit and authentic wondering in hand—into the places and spaces the Holy Spirit leads, that we might demonstrate our heart for every corner of Chapel Hill and beyond.