At Frederick Boulevard we like to say that, “We exist to Reach, Teach and Unleash committed followers of Jesus Christ.” This passion drives everything that we do. When we look at our metro area we know that we have approximately 105,000 people within 15 miles of our facility. Of those 105,000 approximately 80,000 are disconnected from any church. Our goal, then, is to connect those 80,000 disconnected people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we think about new ways to effectively reach those 80,000 we are constantly challenging ourselves to do whatever it takes to reach them.

Our newest effort to reach the 80,000 disconnected people was announced this past Sunday in worship and I am so excited about it! One of the most significant populations in our community that are dramatically unreached is the Hispanic population. We also know, however, that they are probably not going to come to our facility. We have tried over the years to use ESL, as well as other ministries, and have not successfully brought them to our facility. So, in order to reach them with the gospel we are going to go to them rather than ask them to come to us. As Elders, we recently agreed to move towards the planting an additional campus of Frederick Boulevard that will be on the south side of St. Joseph and will be a Hispanic campus. We are moving towards becoming more of a multiplying church than ever before. This should be one of the most significant efforts we’ve ever been involved in as we try to take the gospel to those who do not have it.

So, please be praying for us as we move through this process. Our hope is to begin small in-home Bible studies over the next few months until our campus pastor is here and on staff with us. We then hope to move towards actual services beginning after the 1st of the year. It should be a lot of fun to be a part of.

If you are a part of Frederick Boulevard and you feel like God is moving you towards missions involvement, I would highly encourage you to consider volunteering to be a part of this new campus. We need families who are willing to engage in this new ministry. By the way, Spanish proficiency is not necessary. We have found that we are in need of bi-lingual ministry. Many of the parents speak Spanish as a first language and many of the kids are speaking English as a first language and so we need people who speak either English or Spanish (or both) to be a part of the ministry!

This is an exciting time to be a part of what God is doing in St. Joseph through Frederick Boulevard.

In a recent post I pointed you each to the writings of an IMB missionary to Ecuador, Guy Muse. Guy and his wife, Linda have been featured in a Baptist Press article today. BP particularly looks at some exciting church planting efforts that they are leading. I would encourage you each to run over and take a look at what God is doing through their efforts. It’s encouraging! 

Click here to read the article.

I love missionaries! To most of you this is no secret. One of the reasons that I appreciate them so much is that I have rarely run into any group of people more involved in persistently thinking through biblical theology and its application in the local context. Guy Muse is a missionary in Guyaquil, Ecuador. He and his wife have served with the IMB in Ecuador since 1987. Guy has written a series of posts that deal with the topic of whether or not a woman is biblically qualified to baptize. I would highly encourage you to read the post and interact with his thoughts. You can access the article by clicking here.

I know it’s not the holiday Good Friday, but I think it’s good nonetheless. A wonderful man at our church called me a few minutes ago and told me to take a look at our local newspaper. We have a section entitled “It’s Your Call”. This is a place where people can call an answering service and leave anonymous comments which are in turn posted in the paper. Often these comments border on the ridiculous but occasionally there is a gem in the middle of the other comments. Today is one of those days with a good comment. It’s encouraging words like this that help make my day. It’s incredibly exciting to hear how God is at work at Frederick Boulevard. The article is reprinted below or you can check it out in its original form by clicking here.

Those who are part of the Frederick family, thanks so much for continuing to be faithful! I’ll see you Sunday!

 

A wake up call

I always thought Christians were a bunch of judgmental goodie-goodies. God just gave me a wake up call a few months ago, just like many other calls I fail to hear. Why is it when everything seems to go wrong I turn to anything else to make myself happy — shopping, eating, TV, computer, drinking and even drugs? Why did I try all these exhausting and complicated things and avoid just saying a prayer or cracking open a Bible? If you’re like me and you’ve tried all of these quick fixes maybe you could just say a prayer. It’s really worth a shot. Real peace is something I can’t describe, I’ve never had and now I can’t live without. Also, a big thank you to Frederick Boulevard Baptist Church for all their unjudging love.

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle gives some very good advice for preachers as they think about planning their messages. I’ve reproduced the article below. I am working towards annual preparation, but still have a bit of a way to go. I hope this is encouraging to you.

If you want to view the article in its original form, you can do so by clicking here.

In light of the New Year I wanted to share some advice with fellow preachers. One of the best things a preacher can do to improve their preaching ministry is to plan out what they are going to preach at least a year in advance. This allows the preacher to begin their research and study well in advance so that when the week of a sermon arrives, they will be well on their way to speaking as God intends.

In the early years of my preaching I was not prepared far enough in advance. As a result, many weeks I was scrambling for study time amongst emergencies and disruptions of various sorts and kinds. Additionally, without knowing when I would be out of the pulpit, I ended up trying to squeeze vacations in, did not get enough time off (which started to take a toll), and did not have alternate preachers lined up far enough in advance to have adequate time to prepare well.

At present, I am blessed to actually have my preaching schedule lined up through both 2008 and 2009 so that I can preach well, get my vacations in with my family, take the study breaks to prepare and write as I need, and also give the other preachers in our church sufficient time to prepare for the weeks I am out. One of the most helpful insights I have received on preparing a preaching schedule came backstage at Ed Young Jr.’s church in Dallas. Being the son of a great preacher, he had learned which Sundays were the best for a preacher to take a break from the pulpit without hurting momentum. According to Ed, the following Sundays tend to have a lower attendance and are good times for a preacher to consider taking a break for vacation, study, or whatever else they need to do:

1. The first Sunday of the year
2. Daylight Savings weekend in the spring
3. Memorial Day weekend
4. Fourth of July weekend
5. Labor Day weekend
6. Daylight Savings weekend in the fall
7. Thanksgiving week
8. The weekend after Christmas

For most churches the likely time to get an influx of visitors is generally from the start of school in September through November, as well as January through Easter. So, it is often wise to start a new book of the Bible or series in September and January for momentum.

I’ve got a couple of videos to throw out there, in case you might be interested. The best one is a video posted on my wife’s blog. That’s right, she’s now a blogger! I’m very excited about this turn of events. We’ve struggled with what to do with our family site for a while and she’s decided to use it to post videos and pictures for our family in particular to see. She posted her first video tonight. It’s a hilarious video of our youngest daughter Kessed singing and then trying to avoid the camera. You need to check it out. You can see it here.

The second video is a recent message from Frederick Boulevard. We’re still trying to work out the glitches with posting videos on our new website. For some reason we cannot get this video formatted to show on that site. So I’m posting it here if you are interested. It’s not the highest quality yet, we’re working on that too, but it’s here if you are interested. This message has been one of the more popular ones that I’ve delivered at Frederick. The monkey story at the beginning seems to have been a big hit with a lot of folks.

Click To Play

I apologize that I haven’t blogged as much lately. I simply have not had time. I’ve got a number of serious issues I’d like to write about but I’ll need a bit more time to compose articles. Having said that…

…we’ve got a few exciting things that are coming up in the life of our church that I wanted to share about, especially for those who are part of the Frederick Family. This coming Sunday is our big move to two morning services. This is a move that has been a long time coming but with the Worship Center sitting at about 90% occupancy each Sunday, it is sorely needed. Our ushers tell me that we only had 24 open spaces in our parking lot this past Sunday. As such we’ll begin the new schedule this week. This is a great time for you to begin thinking about inviting unchurches friends to join us for worship. Whether it is the 8:30 service or the 10:15 service, it should be an incredible time of worship. We need to pray that we will continue to see growth however. The hope is that 2 services will only be sufficient for a short time. Let’s pray together that we can see a third service beginning in the near future as well! Wouldn’t that be exciting?!!

This Sunday, along with our two services, we have two baptisms. Both of the candidates are fantastic young ladies that have come to faith recently. One of them is the granddaughter of a lady who was a matriarch for many, many years in our church, Ona Lea Dewey. During these baptisms we’ll be showing video taped testimonies of the ladies, which is an exciting new addition to our services. I know, though, that you’ll be excited to hear how One Lea helped lead her granddaughter to Christ even after she went home to be with the Lord.

Also, we have one more month in the Bible and the Bush series. It has been exciting to see people respond to God’s word. I trust that the next month will be even more amazing. As soon as this series is finished, however, we have another exciting series beginning. We’ll be teaching for a series of weeks on the topic of living in community. The series is entitled “life” and will begin the first of March. It should be a fantastic opportunity for us to consider how we are to live together as the Body of Christ.

As I was studying tonight, I was reading a journal that Tracy kept while we were in Africa. I came across a quote that I had to share. It was from an entry on August 3rd, 2002. We were working in the village of Habre. We were scheduled to have baptism there but due to a funeral (the largest event in their culture) almost everyone was gone. There were a few people there, however, and we went ahead and held a Bible study with about 15 people. We told the story of Stephen and stressed the need to stand for God, even if others want to kill you. One of the men in Habre who felt called to be a pastor really seemed to grasp the concept. He said, “If you want to eat the honey then don’t fear the bees.”

I was thinking about that statement, particularly in light of the persecution that the Dagara believers faced and I thought again about how his statement was not an empty one. Then I thought about our own lives and our own approach to the gospel and I wonder how many of us “fear the bees”? Beyond that, what are the “bees” that we fear? Finally, don’t you think if we truly understood just how good the “honey” of walking in intimacy with God is, we wouldn’t fear them nearly as much?

Makes you think, doesn’t it?