texas - Stone The Preacher

7 Years in Texas

Oct 4, 2020Steve SanchezABOUT ME, MY BLOG, MY CHURCH, Community Church of the Hills, Texas Tales!community church of the hills, texas

I arrived in Texas 7 years ago. It has been said that it takes 7 seven years for any great work of God to take effect….

Hunting in the Hill Country

Oct 8, 2016Steve Sanchez3 CommentsCommunity Church of the Hills, Culture, Texas Tales!bow hunting, deer hunting, donald trump. national rifle association, dripping springs texas, guns, hunters, hunting, johnson city texas, liberals, nra, texas

AT THE RISK OF BEING OFFENSIVE I want to report on the biggest pastime here in the Hill Country of Texas, even bigger than football: It’s deer hunting. The majority of our congregation at Community Church of the Hills (CCH) in Johnson City owns a guns and uses them.

One of my friends, Aaron Wardlow, gave me permission to post his trophies from the first two opening weekends of 2016 (he’s allowed five white tail). The interesting thing is his philosophy about why he hunts deer. (These have all been shot with a bow and arrow, by the way). Here is his defense:

“That is all the meat that our family eats for the year, so this time of year I am stocking up until next season. We usually only eat all natural non-processed meats that I harvest. So it’s not taken lightly and done for the thrill, I give thanks to the animal and God every time for the food to nourish our bodies.

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No Longer a Stranger in a Strange Land

Jul 17, 2016Steve SanchezABOUT ME, MY BLOG, MY CHURCH, Community Church of the Hillschurch plant, community church of the hills, johnson city texas, pastor, preaching, texas

I preached my first sermon at Community Church of the Hills one year ago last Sunday, July 10, 2015.

Never, in a million years did I ever expect to be pastoring a church in the middle of Texas, especially since I’m a native born—ahem—guy from the west coast, from the second largest city in America. (Is that vague enough?)

Oh, but what a wonderful change!

I didn’t move to Texas like other Californians because of huge profits from the sale of their homes and getting double—triple—the value in the Lone Star State. I didn’t move as some sort of left-wing conspiracy to change the political climate of this Red State (I’m a conservative). I didn’t even move here as a protest against the Golden State and its strange brew of crazy, nonsensical, burdensome, ridiculous tax and social laws.

No, I came for one reason and one reason only: God called me.

I didn’t hear any voices, no angel trumpeted from Heaven nor did a lightning bolt strike a special place in my Bible. A series of circumstances aligned themselves together to cause me to pray about uprooting my family, leaving a church where I had been an associate pastor for fifteen years, abandoning a pension that I would receive in just five years, and, of course, saying goodbye to everything familiar, including family and friends.

5 Reasons People Don’t Go to Church Vs. Our Church

Jun 10, 2015Steve Sanchez4 CommentsCommunity Church of the Hillsaustin, christian, church, fellowship, hope chapel hermosa beach, Hope Chapel Hill Country, texas

I adapted this article into a flyer to hand out to visitors to our church and to those in our community. The flyer’s title is “5 Reasons for NOT Going To Church.” A new survey lists five reasons why people don’t go to church anymore; perhaps these are your reasons, too. Let me convince you