The Boundless Backstory by Steve Watters on 08/30/2006 at 3:55 PM

It was around this time of year back in 1998 — an eon ago in Internet time — that we were desperately trying to come up with a name for a new Webzine. Focus on the Family had approved a new publication for a college and young adult audience and made the decision to publish it online. The mission and editorial concepts were coming together, but our name brainstorms hadn’t given us anything we liked. Veritas and The Edge were leading contenders, but didn’t quite feel right. At home, Candice and I started thumbing through books on our shelf to see if anything would jump out. In one of my old college literature books, I came across the closing lines of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley called Ozymandias (entire poem and background at Wikipedia):

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The word “boundless” jumped out at me. It wasn’t so much the concept of a “boundless and bare” desert I thought of. It was the idea of the college and single years as this wide open, go anywhere, do anything season of life. And then I thought about how boundless God is — able to do exceedingly, abundantly more than we can ask or imagine. What nailed it was when Candice and I made the connection that because we were going to be publishing online our content would be unbound or "bound-less."

[For a peek at what Boundless looked like in those early days, check out the snapshots captured by Archive.org]

Backstories like this have always been a part of Boundless. The articles we post each week never quite tell the whole story. Often it’s in the email banter our articles kick off that things really get interesting. Other times it’s in our weekly team meetings that our best stuff surfaces. Some days a hot issue dominates the news and we want to hit it from a Boundless perspective, but we know we won’t be able to turn around a formal article while it’s still fresh. We’ve always wanted to share more of this backstory with our readers and it’s our hope that this can be the place for that. Look for posts here from Candice Watters, the founding editor of Boundless and Suzanne Hadley, a popular regular contributor. You can also expect posts from the Boundless leadership team, including Ted Slater (Boundless editor), Motte Brown (Family Formation manager) and myself (Young Adults Director).

Ultimately, we want this space to be more than just a hardcore fan area. We don’t want to just add more words to the blogosphere. Instead, we hope to build with you a community of believers who care passionately about how faith in a boundless God intersects with this boundless season of our lives and that as a result our lives will bring Him glory.

The Boundless Backstory by Steve Watters on 08/30/2006 at 3:55 PM

It was around this time of year back in 1998 — an eon ago in Internet time — that we were desperately trying to come up with a name for a new Webzine. Focus on the Family had approved a new publication for a college and young adult audience and made the decision to publish it online. The mission and editorial concepts were coming together, but our name brainstorms hadn’t given us anything we liked. Veritas and The Edge were leading contenders, but didn’t quite feel right. At home, Candice and I started thumbing through books on our shelf to see if anything would jump out. In one of my old college literature books, I came across the closing lines of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley called Ozymandias (entire poem and background at Wikipedia):

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The word “boundless” jumped out at me. It wasn’t so much the concept of a “boundless and bare” desert I thought of. It was the idea of the college and single years as this wide open, go anywhere, do anything season of life. And then I thought about how boundless God is — able to do exceedingly, abundantly more than we can ask or imagine. What nailed it was when Candice and I made the connection that because we were going to be publishing online our content would be unbound or "bound-less."

[For a peek at what Boundless looked like in those early days, check out the snapshots captured by Archive.org]

Backstories like this have always been a part of Boundless. The articles we post each week never quite tell the whole story. Often it’s in the email banter our articles kick off that things really get interesting. Other times it’s in our weekly team meetings that our best stuff surfaces. Some days a hot issue dominates the news and we want to hit it from a Boundless perspective, but we know we won’t be able to turn around a formal article while it’s still fresh. We’ve always wanted to share more of this backstory with our readers and it’s our hope that this can be the place for that. Look for posts here from Candice Watters, the founding editor of Boundless and Suzanne Hadley, a popular regular contributor. You can also expect posts from the Boundless leadership team, including Ted Slater (Boundless editor), Motte Brown (Family Formation manager) and myself (Young Adults Director).

Ultimately, we want this space to be more than just a hardcore fan area. We don’t want to just add more words to the blogosphere. Instead, we hope to build with you a community of believers who care passionately about how faith in a boundless God intersects with this boundless season of our lives and that as a result our lives will bring Him glory.