About Rick...
Rick Hubbell was born in 1967. He was the son of John and Elizabeth Hubbell, and his brother Drew was older than him by three years. Rick grew up in the idyllic New Hampshire village of Francestown. They spent childhood in a house built in the 1800s heated by 7 fireplaces! Life was full of shoveling snow, weeding the giant garden, and being involved in the town’s annual parades and church pageants. In middle school, Rick was an avid athlete and skier and on the ski team at Crotched Mountain and spent many days there after school. He also was a focused and competitive chess player who won the state Championship and went on to place in Nationals. Rick attended Eaglebrook Boarding School in middle school and then in high school, was a formidable lacrosse player and musician at St. Marks School in Massachussetts. In the summers, he found his love for music at New England Music Camp amidst writing songs and playing the saxophone. Rick remembered first encountering God in this time through C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a child, and also while writing a song after the death of a friend.
Rick then attended Oberlin College, and then took several gap years in Los Angeles. In California, he wrote music, partnered in a music engineering studio, and traveled in his conversion van. He had a near-death, life-altering experience where he was rescued from the hell he didn’t even believe existed. Years later he wrote and recorded this testimony.
Rick moved to the Carolinas to finish his Bachelor’s degree in Music and Applied Voice at UNCA. He began working at The Rock of Asheville while also working in natural healthcare education. Rick loved playing on the worship team with the Harwood Family and met his future wife Jen through an extraordinary story of divine revelation and confirmation. They were engaged without ever having gone on an official date in May 1995, and married August 1995. Rick and Jen bought their first home, and shortly after Rick was ordained. He worked full-time as a pastor on staff at The Rock of Asheville, where he wrote music, and led the worship and arts ministries.
Vacations became seed times for new business endeavors. Rick and Jen partnered with dear friends to start a motivational print and product company called Catalyst Resources, opened a Planet Smoothie Franchise in the Asheville Mall, and partnered in restoring and reselling The Hop Ice Cream in Asheville. Rick truly was a Renaissance man. Somehow, he was both a David (a master on the instruments and creative endeavors) and a Joseph (skilled and strategic in business). Near the end of their time in Asheville, they had their first child, Rebekah Elizabeth.
Through Kingdom business connections, God opened the door for Rick to administrate over a golf course development on the panhandle of Florida. What was once a struggling red-headed step child of a project became a shining star and was the central site for the greater Pensacola Parade of Homes a few years later.
This began Rick’s journey in the real estate development and consulting space, all the while continuing to teach in the local church and write music. Soon after, their son Palmer Jordan came along on July 13th, 2001, and their daughter Carleigh Jane was born on October 15th, 2003.
One God story after another took the Hubbells (now a family of 5!) to Colorado, North Carolina, California, and Idaho with dear friends all along the way. There were so many adventures and years of promotion and growth in business. Rick was always spending intentional time with the Lord, always writing and singing worship songs, and always mentoring someone along the way. At any time in Rick’s life you could’ve found some type of schematic or brain mapping exercise about what he was learning. He never stopped studying, whatever it was. He knew how to put his hand to any project.
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With the terrible loss of their fourth child, Nathan, and the market crash in 2008, Rick led his family victoriously into the next season. He always trusted God, and forged forward. In 2009, the family spent 5 months in a sabbatical villa in the mountains of western Virginia. During this time, Rick wrote and recorded his testimony and got certified in SEO.
One road trip to Simpsonville, SC and a five-fold prayer answered in one day brought the Hubbells to SC a few weeks before their 5th child, Clara Esther was born. While in Simpsonville, Rick wrote his book, “Giants in the Marketplace, David’s in the Pew” as well as taught “Coming Alive with the Purpose of God.” This was a curriculum he had developed over the years for helping others engage with their God-given calling. This season also included staying up late with Bekah helping her to produce some of her first film projects and practice lines for community theater, taking Palmer to the ballpark almost daily to practice pitching or hitting, bringing Carleigh along on his book publishing trips, and potty-training Clara (of course, with a song he wrote).
God-opportunity and direction led the Hubbells back to Pensacola, FL where Rick was on the teaching team at Generation Church. He continued to write music, composed multiple instrumentals and videos, and was a Productivity Coach and life mentor. In 2017, the Hubbells moved back to the greater Greenville area, where even in failing health, served on the worship team playing keyboard at Hope Church Simpsonville.
Most recently Rick coached chess at Hampton Park Christian School, recorded audiobooks, and invested in multiple rental properties, including a historic commercial building with lifelong friends, the Cables. His greatest joy however, was seeing Bekah become an incredible screenwriter and producer, most recently working on “The Jesus Revolution”, watching Palmer become a prolific songwriter and artist in Nashville, seeing Carleigh’s amazing singing and songwriting talent emerge, and being Clara’s best buddy as a stay home-dad, watching her enjoy friends, volleyball, chess, and middle school. He loved his wife, Jen, to the end and even started writing a book about her God-given business prowess, which made her chuckle, because, really, she learned so much from him.
For the last seven years, Rick has continued to produce creative content himself, including spending thousands of hours making drawings and diagrams of what God has shown him in his spiritual journey. A collaboration of these drawings will be a gift for those who attend his funeral. They are a gift for life.
When people pass, families are left with an impossible question: How do you sum someone’s life? Sum feels like the end. The final answer. The eternal “amount” of memories and moments and flashes of fabric that makes up a human. As we pondered how to do this, Pastor Rich Butler gave us this piece of wisdom: “Inheritance is what is left to you, legacy is what is left in you.” And while we are going to do our best to tell his story, that struck a chord. Rick’s multi-faceted, creative, strategic ways will continue to live on through his children.