Relevant Media Group

If you have not yet discovered Relevant Media Group, please visit their website. These guys are very creative and are doing some wonderful things to reach the twentysomething crowd. They offer quite a few different outlets.

One is their print magazine. I have been a subscriber for around three years and they interact with many of the top leaders and issues of the day. In their Jan-Feb issue, they posed seven church ministry questions to some of the top leaders in the country, including Mark Driscoll, Efrem Smith, Rick Warren, Erwin McManus & Lauren Winner. Articles are written by Mark Batterson, Dan Haseltine, Mark Steele, Rick Warren and Ed Young, among many others. Relevant also deals heavily with the music scene, pop culture and social issues as well.

All the other outlets I will mention are free. They have a weekly e-newsletter called the 850 (because that's how many words are in it) which "features leading authors, speakers and some of this generation's most recognized voices sounding off on current events, cultural happenings and our personal spiritual journeys".

Their website is a site I have up all day and visit multiple times a day, as it is frequently updated. On this site, they publish articles in three areas - God, Life & Progressive Culture. They give news headlines and offer "slices" - basically cultural headlines & news of the weird. for a taste of a slice, here is one from March 21st - A recent survey conducted by The Barna Group, an organization that tracks religious behavior in America, has found that one in every three American adults technically classifies as being "unchurched." Results of the study revealed that 33 percent of adults (a number close to 100 million) have not attended any kind of religious service in the last six months. This is a great site & I highly recommend you visit it.

One of the greatest inventions (in my estimation) is the podcast. I listen to many different ones each week and Relevant has a great one. It is usually about an hour long and they are fun & very funny, but also offer some very good insight sometimes and interview some great authors and thinkers. Over the last month alone, they have conducted interviews with Dan Kimball & Don Miller (spread over two podcasts). I found both to be very well done and interesting. I urge you to give one a try. Sometimes, they are just fun to listen to, and sometimes they offer keen insight. But I find them always well worth the listen. If you do not wish to sit and listen, I would suggest what I do - I listen when I work out in the morning or when I walk my puppy after work. It makes working out much more fun.