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.

I am always impressed with churches that are creative in their attempts to worship. I think our emerging generations are more easily connected when we communicate to them using a multi-sensory approach. I also think that God is an incredibly creative God who loves the incredible diversity in His creation.

One of the Worship leaders at Fellowship Church with Ed Young Jr. recently posted a video highlighting a song they used in their Easter service. I thought you might enjoy seeing what they did in their service. I know it was encouraging to me.

Well, I was excited today to see that Wordpress 2.5 is now released for general public consumption! 2.5 is a pretty extensive overhaul of the Wordpress framework. The aesthetics of the overhaul will be the first thing you notice but the changes are legion. To take a look at a more comprehensive list of the changes, click here.

For those of you who read this and you are a Wordpress beginner, you may not understand or even be scared of a Wordpress upgrade. If that is true for you, I have good news! Wordpress has a new plugin available that, once it is installed, will automatically install Wordpress for you so that you don’t have to go through the difficult process of manually updating your software. For the plugin, you need to click here.

I have not used 2.5 enough yet to make a decision about whether I like it or not. I am interested to play with it, however, and see how it works out. I’m interested to hear from you as well!

What do you think?

HT: Cory Miller

…You need to watch this video, it truly is unbelievable.

Everyone is offering their best of 2007 and I honestly don’t have the heart to add to it much, I do have to mention, however, what may be the most incredible concept to come down the pike in a while. It’s no secret that I’m not the biggest Microsoft fan out there, however, their new Surface concept is truly incredible. Watch the video below and be amazed….

HT::Ricky Gipson

After a few months of hard work I am excited to announce the unveiling of the brand new FrederickBoulevard.com! My new friends over at Element Fusion did a fantastic job of creating a site that we envision to eventually become a significant hub of information for Frederick Boulevard. Run over, kick the tires and take it for a test drive. I hope you enjoy!

Most of you know that I am fairly passionate about using technology to reach younger generations with the message of Jesus Christ. I have been trying, for years now, to utilize the newest forms of media in a manner which will enhance our ability to communicate God’s message. In fact, I will be speaking at IMPACT 2008 in March on the topic, “from hiTech to iTech :: Ministry Technology in 2008“.

In keeping with that theme of helping churches enhance their technology/media ministries, I like to regularly post helpful sites and/or tools that I’ve found for churches. I try to look with smaller churches in mind, knowing that they often don’t have the personnel and budget to do so themselves.

Tonight I want to pass on a very helpful site. At digital.leadnet.org Dean Peters does a good job of listing the “7 Deadly Sins of Church Web Site Design”. If you are a church and you are maintaining your own site, you really need to read and adhere to the lessons in this article. You can access the article by clicking here.

Well, I’ve added a new feature to the site. I want to occasionally offer a poll to help survey the readers of this site. Your responses are anonymous, so please jump in an respond.

My current question is one I’m very interested in. I would like to know where the readers of this site stand, in relationship to Christianity. I will leave this poll up for about 1 week.

Thanks for participating. I’ll let everyone know what the results are once the poll is completed.