Kyle's Random

In my last post I mentioned a big project that I’m excited to launch.  Tonight, Pastor Chris made the announcement, and you can watch the short video below.

Right now we’re working on a big-time secret project that I couldn’t be more excited about.  I can’t say anything yet, but we will be making an announcement soon.

For those of you who are so kind to visit this blog regularly, I want to give you a few  little hints (not so that you’ll start guessing, but so that you’ll be praying with me):

1. It involves the Internet Campus.
2. As far as I know, we’re the first church to do this.
3. There’s potential to reach a lot of people for Christ.

Today I wrote a post on the new Faith Promise Blog to recap some of the cool stuff that’s been happening on the Internet Campus.  I can’t believe it’s only been 13 weeks since we started, but the stories are great.

Well, the Internet Campus has gone great these past two weekends.  Here’s a bit of recap:

• Last Sunday, over 144 people attended a web broadcast of Sacred Storm.
• People from three countries and 20 states joined us.
• Today, over 60 people joined us for our worship service at 10 am.
• People from nine states joined us.
• Several people connected with one another in the chat area.
• A couple of people requested one-on-one prayer from iCampus volunteers.

If all of that wasn’t cool enough, I heard a great story tonight from a couple that’s been attending our Knoxville campus for about a month now.  As we were talking, I mentioned the iCampus, and the wife said, “Oh, I was on there this morning.”  I was surprised to hear that, but I was even more surprised about what she said next.  She said, “When I realized what the Pastor was preaching about, I decided that my family needed to be there, so I logged off, told everybody to get ready, and we came to the 11:45 service.”

I can’t wait to hear more stories over the next months!  We are doing ministry in very exciting times!

Just in case I haven’t said it recently – I love my job.  I get to work with amazing people and work on fun projects.

One huge project that’s been slowly coming together over the past few months is Faith Promise’s Internet Campus.  Basically, it’s video of the worship service, a virtual lobby area where people can interact through chat, and a place where people can be ministered to through one-on-one prayer.  I know there will be skeptics, but I believe God will use it to spread His fame and bring people to faith in Him.

Well, after a lot of work and effort (Brad Roberts has again played a huge role in this endeavor), we’re launching the iCampus this weekend, 4/12/09, with rebroadcasts of Sacred Storm at 3 & 8 pm Eastern Time.  Beginning 4/19/09, we’ll begin broadcasting each Sunday morning at 10 am Eastern Time.

What’s really cool is that like our physical campus, this ministry is going to require the help of volunteers.  We need greeters in the chat area to welcome people and build relationships, and we need prayer operators who are ready to share the gospel, encourage people, and lift people in prayer.

Please join me in praying for people all over the world who will be exposed to God’s Truth and love through our Internet Campus.

For several weeks now, we’ve been planning towards launching our Internet Campus this Easter weekend with a rebroadcast of Sacred Storm.  There’s still a lot to do to get things ready, but tonight Josh and I decided to push the envelope a little further and do two services on Easter Sunday, 4/12/09.  We’ll broadcast at  both 3pm and 8pm EST.

Honestly, this is terrifying, and the potential for failure just got cranked up a notch, but so did the potential of making an eternal impact in people’s lives.  Now, not only will we have six amazing productions in Knoxville, we’ll also have two productions that are aired globally.  That’s amazing, and it’s worth the risk!

As you pray for these productions and invite people to attend, please also pray for my great friend Brad Roberts and I as we continue to build the Internet Campus and get it ready to roll.

According to ComScore, there are now over 1 billion people who have internet access -  that is between 15 & 22 percent of the people alive on earth.  It’s an amazing number of people, and the implications are huge, especially for the church.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working through the details of launching an Internet Campus at Faith Promise Church.  Our hope is to stream the entire service on Sunday mornings at 10 am (ET) by March 2009.  More than just sermons, this would include all the drama, video, and music of the weekend service.

This will allow two things to take place:

• People who aren’t ready to set foot on our physical campus will have the opportunity to experience Faith Promise over the internet.
• People who are physically or geographically unable to attend our church will have the ability to worship with us.

My prayer is that our Internet Campus will be a tool that is used by God to change lives all over the world as they hear God’s message of redemption and are inspired by authentic biblical leadership.  Please join with me in praying, and I’ll keep you posted as things progress.