relevantmagazine.com - a post by Joel

The tag line used by Relevant Magazine which started some time in the last ten years, is God, Life, and Progressive Culture. They interview bands, artists, social justice organizations, churches, people in and out of ministry and miscellaneous other people, Rick Warren is one of their more reputable writers, however, I try not to hold that against them.

However, the magazine is not my main focus today. Relevant’s internet counterpart, relevantmagazine.com includes many different features, such as relevant slices. This is a section of the site where news, pop-culture stories, justice stories and many other random articles are summarized and linked to many times daily. To be completely honest this is where I get most of my news daily, that and yahoo. Relevant also has a tab on slices specifically for world news.

The other feature which I am particularly fond of is RTV which is available as a flash pop up on the site. RTV is a station devoted to music videos. Here you will find artists who are Christians, however there is no limitation to such. You will also find artists who may not be Christians but their music relates to spirituality, but in most cases music played on the station is simply what the viewers request or what the Web Content Producer Jesse Carey and other staffers chose for that week. You will find that a good amount of the time the music is what would be defined as indie.

My favorite part of the site is the Relevant Podcast which can also be found on iTunes. The podcast features four upper ups of the Magazine, the Editor and Publisher Cameron Strang, the Editorial Director Cara Davis, the Editorial Manager Adam Smith and the Web Content Producer Jesse Carey. The content includes slices much like the ones on the text of the site, CD releases, movie releases, book releases, interviews with writers, pastors, musicians, live musical performances, the editorial question of the week (which is sometimes humorous, sometimes serious), and many other fillers, such as games, and the usual comedic banter.

The last main thing found on the site is weekly updated articles written by the staff in some cases but in many cases written by readers. In the podcast it was discussed that in many cases the staff will pull their writers for the magazine from frequent writers on the website of whom they enjoy. These articles are sectioned out in three categories, which are the same as the magazine’s tag line, God, Life, Progressive Culture.

This is a site that I enjoy visiting daily; these are, however, only a few of the many features it has. It does well to keep it’s readers held over until the next bi-monthly publication of the printed magazine which can be found in the library. Try it out, it’s worth it.