I’ve just received my third installment of resources from Relevant Network. I reviewed my first box, meant to review my second but got a little bit busy, and now want to tell you what came in my third (and also allude to the second when appropriate).
In both the second and third boxes I received 5 copies of the most recent issue of Relevant Magazine. Nice for handouts to students–I gave away the last ones and I’ll give these away as well.
In both of the last two boxes I received the little magazinelet Relevant Leader, which seems to be developing into something a little more than the annotated resource review it was in the first box.
As in the previous two boxes I received a good mix of books and CDs.
The CDs include:
- Jami Smith — Home
- Hymns Ancient & Modern by Passion Ministries.
- Desperation: From The Rooftops
- Israel & New Breed: Live From Another Level
- Everything Counts: Worship Songs for Radical Living
The books are:
- The Word on the Street by Rob Lacey (the box had the UK edition–the US edition won’t be out until September). There was also an enhanced CD based on the book.
- Summoned To Lead by Leonard Sweet
- Miles to Cross by Mike Howerton
- Making Sense of Church by Spencer Burke (nice website, worth checking out)
- Rock Stars on God by Doug Van Pelt
- Here I Am To Worship by Tim Hughes
My criticism of the first box (that it contained almost no ministry resources) has been tended to, incidentally. The last box, for instance, contained a Highway Video DVD and a Blueprints CD from Crave Resources. I wasn’t as impressed with the Blueprints CD as I wanted to be, by the way.
This box carries on the resource trend with a DVD called That’s My King from Vertical Sky Productions. There is also a journaly kind of Bible-study thing to accompany the Miles to Cross book.
All in all, I still think Relevant Network is the best bang for buck any ministry to collegians or twentysomethings is likely to run across.
Hi there,
Just saw your comment about the Blueprints CD from Crave Resources. Well, we are now called Illuminate
Resources and, as we are always trying to make our resources more useful to those in the trenches of
ministry, was wondering what it was that didn’t impress you about the resource.…We would really appreciate
your honest feedback…
Blessings,
jodie howerton
Jodie: I’m touched that you took time to ask.
I’m very impressed with Crave overall. I’ve actually visited the ministry before and I’ve also used Sarti Designs to create some promotional materials based simply on the fact that Leigh has an association with you. And although I wasn’t thrilled with the Blueprints CD, I do regularly recommend it to churches that are trying to start a college ministry.
Having said that, I was just underwhelmed with the CD. It was adequate but not excellent, and given that there are equivalent-quality resources available for free I was disappointed.
What resources? Here are a few:
http://www.upc.org/download/1010.pdf
http://www.ncncollege.com/
http://www.reachtheu.com/
http://regions.ivcf.org/
What would have made it better? The talks were nice, but shouldn’t have been the focal point of the CD. A few more documents like the Blueprints 1.0 essay would have been great.
Some other essays that would have been wonderful:
* The differences between youth ministry and college ministry.
* Helping high school students from your church plug into your church’s college ministry.
* Ministering to the collegians who study away from home.
* How to relate to campus-based ministries like InterVarsity or Campus Crusade.
* The challenges of working on a pastoral staff when no one else seems to understand your passion.
* How to launch a college ministry out of a local church that already draws many collegians.
* How to launch a college ministry out of a church that doesn’t draw a lot of collegians yet has a large youth group.
And I could go on. Even if you don’t have the expertise to produce all that yourself you can partner with people like Mike Gaffney at UPC or Tim Elmore at growingleaders.com (John Maxwell’s former college pastor).
Stuff like that would have really added some serious value. If all you’re going to put on the CD is one essay and a couple of messages, then I’d recommend that you put the essay online for free in PDF format along with your catalog of resources as a free promotion. People will email it to each other and see your catalog of resources constantly.
Just my two cents,
Glen