Tucked along Mt. Olive Church Road a few miles outside the town of Pittsboro, Mt Olive Baptist Church has long gathered as a multi-generational congregation in the rolling farmland of Chatham County, North Carolina. The address itself - 5043 Mt. Olive Church Road - hints at the parish's deep roots, since a road named for a church is usually a road that grew up around it. Members and visitors today describe the church as Christ-centered, devotional, and committed to the careful, verse-by-verse teaching of Scripture. It identifies itself in its own materials as a Reformed Baptist congregation, and its ministry is shaped by expository preaching, traditional-and-modern congregational worship, and an unusually thorough lineup of weekly Bible studies for every age.
A Sunday Morning Built Around the Word
Sunday at Mt Olive begins at 9:30 a.m. with Sunday School. Classes are organized by age group - toddlers, children, youth, adults, and senior adults - so that every member of a visiting family can step into a room of their own. The teaching throughout the morning is Bible-based, and the Sunday School hour is treated as a real first service of the day rather than a prelude.
At 10:30 a.m., the congregation gathers for the Sunday morning worship service. The order of worship is built around congregational singing and expository preaching - that is, sermons that walk through a book of the Bible passage by passage rather than hopping among topics. Music is described as a blend: traditional hymns sit alongside more modern arrangements, so the room carries both the gravity of older worship and the lift of newer songs. Prayer and preaching round out the service, with every element meant to glorify Christ and encourage His people.
Visitors are welcome to come as they are. The church describes its dress as "casual to business casual," inviting newcomers to come comfortably while honoring God. Children are not an afterthought: during the worship service, kids from age three through third grade are invited to Children's Church, so younger families can worship without strain.
Preaching That Walks Through Books of the Bible
One of the clearest marks of Mt Olive's pulpit is its commitment to expository, book-by-book preaching. Pastor Travis Bodine has worked steadily through Ephesians and Ecclesiastes in recent months, and the archived sermons show other extended series as well - including a run through Philippians by visiting preacher Pastor Brian Miller, and a long arc on the Old Testament "Heroes of the Faith" (Samuel, David, Samson, Gideon) preached primarily by Dr. Josh Peeler. Series such as Encounters with Jesus, The Parables, The Psalms, Spiritual Warfare, and Resurgence fill out the broader preaching calendar.
Guest preachers are a regular feature. The rotation of voices that have filled the pulpit reads like a tour of conservative Baptist pulpits in the Carolinas and beyond: Dr. Danny Akin, Dr. Andreas Kostenberger, Dr. Chuck Quarles, Dr. Scott Kellum, Dr. John Ewart, Rev. Milton A. Hollifield Jr., Rev. Dr. Charles Fleshman, Rev. E. Paul West Jr., Rev. Perry Hardison, Rev. Will Hatten, Pastor Patrick Neal, Pastor Brian Miller, Pastor Dusty Black, and many others. The result is a congregation accustomed to hearing the same books opened carefully by a range of faithful expositors.
Sermons are recorded each week and posted online, so anyone unable to be present on a Sunday can still follow the series. Recent titles from the current Ecclesiastes run include All is Vanity, Nothing New, A Funeral for Idols, God Over Time, and A Quiet Life in a Restless World, each tagged with the Scripture passage that was preached.
Wednesdays: Bible Study, Children, Youth, and a Monthly Meal
Wednesday evenings are the second pillar of the church's week. Three things happen at 7:00 p.m. in parallel:
- GA's and RA's - Girls in Action for girls and Royal Ambassadors for boys in grades 1-6, two of the long-running missions-discipleship programs for children.
- Youth Meeting - for young ladies and men in grades 6-12, meeting in the youth room in the basement of the fellowship hall. The youth group at Mt Olive describes itself as a place where young people learn what it means to be disciples of Christ and "fishers of men," equipped to face the questions of an unbelieving culture. The calendar includes outings like Winter Jam and summer camp.
- Bible Study & Prayer Meeting - the adult Bible study and prayer gathering, which serves as the midweek equivalent of Sunday School.
Once a month, the whole church gathers at 6:30 p.m. for the Family Night Meal before the studies begin, turning Wednesday into a true community supper as well as a study night. Deacons' meetings are held on the fourth Sunday of each month at 4:30 p.m., followed by Praise Team Practice at 5:30 p.m.
Home Fellowships: Marshall and Yarnoff
Beyond the building, two long-running home fellowships extend the church's life into the surrounding neighborhoods. The Marshall Home Fellowship meets on Monday evenings at 6:30 p.m., and the Yarnoff Home Fellowship meets on Tuesday evenings at the same hour. Both run through the spring and summer months, giving members a smaller, more intimate setting for prayer, study, and fellowship than the Sunday service can offer. These groups are the church's primary small-group rhythm and serve as a bridge into the wider congregation for newer attendees.
Children, Youth, and Family Discipleship
Family discipleship is a stated emphasis at Mt Olive, and it is built into the weekly schedule at every age. Sunday School covers toddlers through senior adults. Children's Church runs alongside the Sunday worship service for ages three through third grade. GA's and RA's give elementary-age boys and girls their own weekly program on Wednesdays. The youth ministry for grades 6-12 meets Wednesdays in the youth room, and Pastor Jason Lewis serves as the Associate Pastor of Youth and Family Discipleship - a role that exists, in part, because the church wants the next generation to be taught deliberately and well.
The youth room sits in the basement of the fellowship hall, a reminder that the building was designed with multiple generations in mind. Members often speak of Mt Olive as a warm, multi-generational community where children, parents, and grandparents share the same Sunday morning and the same Wednesday night.
Serving Chatham County and the Wider Region
Mt Olive's commitment to its neighbors runs in two directions - immediate Chatham County and the broader Appalachian region - and three concrete ministries lead the way.
The first is the local backpack program at B. Everett Jordan Elementary School. The congregation helps provide food to food-insecure children in the community, packing backpacks with meals that go home over weekends and school breaks. Members can give food and school-supply donations through the church.
The second is the church's participation in the NC DOT Adopt-A-Highway program. Volunteers clean a stretch of Mt. Olive Church Road itself, taking responsibility for the road that takes its name from the church.
The third is the Appalachian Backpack Program. Throughout the year, the church collects canned food, small toys, hygiene items, hats and gloves, and Youth Bibles. In early November the items are packed into backpacks and distributed at Christmas to children living in that region.
The Men's Ministry rounds out the church's outreach by building ramps and helping with household repairs for people in need in the community. The WMU (Women's Missionary Union) meets periodically to support missions work alongside these local efforts. The church's stated mission is "to share the good news of the gospel locally, nationally, and internationally," and the missions-minded vocabulary of GAs, RAs, WMU, and the Appalachian backpack effort all flow from that goal.
Beliefs and Worship
Mt Olive's doctrinal summary is concise and unmistakably Trinitarian. The church believes in one God who exists eternally in three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and affirms that Jesus was crucified for our sins, buried, and physically resurrected from the dead on the third day. It looks forward to His return in victory. Membership is by believer's baptism by immersion, either by transfer of letter from another church or by statement of faith.
Worship is structured to give expression to those convictions: prayer, preaching, and congregational song carry the service, with the music drawn from both classic hymns and modern arrangements. The Reformed Baptist identity of the church shows up less in the formal liturgy than in the cadence of expository preaching, the seriousness with which the congregation approaches biblical doctrine, and the pastoral training of the leaders (Pastor Bodine is finishing a Master of Divinity at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Pastor Lewis holds seminary degrees from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary).
Pastoral Leadership
The church is served by two pastors. Travis Bodine was called as pastor of Mt Olive Baptist Church in 2024. Originally from Sacramento, California, he came to faith out of a Latter-day Saints upbringing, was converted through a small church in San Diego, and was ordained through First Baptist Church in Durham. He holds a Bachelor of Biblical Studies from Southern California Seminary and is completing a Master of Divinity at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Before Mt Olive he served as a bi-vocational pastor of Rock Spring Baptist Church and as an elder at Grace Hill Church, both in Pittsboro.
Jason Lewis serves as Associate Pastor of Youth and Family Discipleship. A native of Graham in Alamance County, he grew up in a strong Christian home, came to faith at an early age, and met his wife Joy while a Religion-track student at Campbell University. The two went on to seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest and spent fourteen years in Central Asia in evangelism and church planting among Muslim people groups. Returning to the United States in 2016, they settled in Graham, where Jason now teaches high school Bible at Burlington Christian Academy. His own great-great and great-great-great grandparents are buried in the Mt Olive Cemetery, and several of his distant relatives remain in the current congregation.
Both pastors can be reached through the church office. Christina serves as church secretary, and the building is supported by a church sexton on the facilities side.
A Congregation with a Cemetery and a Calendar
One detail tells a good deal about Mt Olive's history: the church grounds include a cemetery, with records maintained through a Memorial Association. Detailed plots are listed online, and the graves are indexed through Find A Grave - a quiet reminder that the church has been receiving and burying its people for generations. Pastor Lewis's ancestral connection to the cemetery is one small sign of how long some families have been part of this body.
That long memory is matched by an active present. A monthly newsletter keeps the congregation informed, an updated events calendar tracks weekly rhythms, sermons are posted online for ongoing study, and giving is available digitally through Mt Olive's Realm account. The result is a church that knows where it has been, takes seriously the work of preaching and discipleship in the present, and is content to let a small road in Chatham County keep bearing its name.