The Advocate campus is 15 acres at the northeast corner of Homestead and Merin Road, in the heart of north Chapel Hill. Our neighborhood includes the historic Rogers Road as well as several new developments and neighborhoods. It also includes several non-profit services, such as transitional housing for women and for men, a high school, a senior center, the human services center for the southern part of the County, as well as the highly anticipated Carolina North campus for the University of North Carolina. The Advocate is called, therefore, to provide a place of radical welcome, and a resource for worship, contemplation, and collaborative ministry and social action — a resource in and for north Chapel Hill and beyond. Our vision for the 15-acre campus is to maintain a creative tension between providing a place where people can come away from the busy-ness of their lives to be restored, and a place where people can come in order to engage more fully in the community and world in which we live.
When we closed on the land in February 2010, we realized that the existing house could reasonably serve for our future meeting, library and office needs. But first we needed a place to worship. In 2012 we moved the historic St. Philip’s Church building from Germanton, North Carolina to our site in north Chapel Hill. After 18 months of reconstruction, renovation and adaptation to meet 21st century code, the Advocate Chapel opened for worship on Easter weekend, 2014.
We are a congregation committed to social justice, environmental sustainability, and good neighborliness. In addition to our house and Chapel, the long term vision for the Advocate campus includes space for several other possible resources — a retreat center, a non-profit center, a residence for a small intentional community, a library with a focus on justice and the spiritual life, and a place for collaboration among the university community, business, non-profits and faith organizations working to address injustices in our region and state.
Plans for all of these things are still evolving. We invite others — from within the Episcopal Church, from the non-profit sector, from the social entrepreneur movement and beyond — to join with us in dreaming the dream. For further information, or to get involved, contact: TheAdvocateChurch@gmail.com.
Here is the story of how this came to be.