Category: YMX

At least at YMX is does. When we decided that we were going to go to a "monthly theme" format to the new e-zine, we decided right away that some months would be "hot" and some would be "mild." Since March is the first month for the new format we figured, "Why not start off with a bang."

So, next month we’ve got a great amount of articles for youth workers lined up on very sensitive subjects. We’ve got interviews with a guy from xxxchurch.com, spotlighting how they help students deal with porn addictions. Rob Bell on his new book Sex God. Jonathon Herron has a piece called Solo Sex which is self-explanatory I suppose. Plus, reviews of books for talking to students about sex, dealing with sexual issues among staff, a discussion of sex in the Bible, and a lot more.

It should be a month that stirs up a lot of discussion for our little site. When you put those articles with a large amount of music/movie reviews coming up… we’re definitely looking forward to a very strong March.

Things over at YMX are getting more and more fun. It’s not even the official launch of the new e-zine until March 1st and we’ve already gotten so much great content that we can’t possible feature it in on the main section of the site properly.

So, we launched all access last night. The idea is that each day we get fresh news from all sorts of musicians, authors, and press people of kinds. We’d like to have a way to get that information out to our users because we think there is an underutilized connection between artists who are producing great content and youth workers who have limited time but still need to know what’s new. So, starting today… when we get all that stuff, we’re going to clean it up and pass it on to our friends!

I’m in the process of really getting the word out about our Gospelcom Alliance membership. Here’s the official press release on our press site.

I’ve never met Jeremy Del Rio in person, but I greatly respect him as one of the great practitioners of urban youth ministry in America today. Even without the "urban" label he’d have to be in my top 20 list of great practitioners of youth ministry. He’s very involved with social justice and street level ministry in New York City. While he has gained notoriety for his very public debate with then Mayor of New York Rudy Guiliani in 1998, he is more than just a figure head… he’s the real deal.

Today he published a video blog post of Pastor Harley. You may recognize his involvement in ministering to families, police officers, and firemen at Ground Zero shortly after September 11, 2001.

Over the last few months we’ve been in the process of converting YMX to more of an e-zine format. Basically what that means is that is going to be a little more intentional about driving the content in the forums towards what the community is writing about and visa versa .

Starting in March 2007, the primary articles on the site will be thematically the same. Of course, there will always be the odd ball because sometimes stuff "off-topic" is fantastic and timely. But Amy is working really hard to add lots more content to the site on a more regular basis and even up the ante a bit on the quality of what we’ve published to date. Get a sneak peak of what we’re up to by checking out the YMX storyboard.

More work for Adam? Actually… the current set-up is a lot less work than it was before. I think it’s been a huge win-win for the site. Too hard to explain, but it just is less work and more gain to do it this way.

p.s. This isn’t the big announcement. More on that Thursday morning.

Yesterday I posted this on YMX.

Big Announcement: Coming February 1st, 2007.  Then, in a board I labeled "Big Announcement Speculation" I posted, "As we’ve announced in the News area… we’ll be announcing something
big and fun on 2/1/07. Other than saying that it’s "big" and "you’ll
like it" and "it’s important" we can’t really say much more. But, we’d love to hear your speculation!"

Of course, I’m not going to say anything about what the announcement in here. But as I added later in the thread (95 replies so far!) "It’s free." I think it’s something that will help take the site to the next level. Yeah, I’m excited about it and I’m not good with secrets.

(more…)

The internet is a funny medium. A long time ago in internet time, 7 months, I wrote an article called "I Kissed Retreats Goodbye." It wasn’t really controversial at all and it was not warmly received. In fact… for all the work I put into my end of the debate we got squat out of it.

Then around Christmas I started getting random email messages about the article. Rarely on my blog do I get comments from posts more than a few days old. To get email from something 7 months old is unheard of.

The first several responses were hate-filled. Scathing reviews quoting Scripture out of context. Then I found out that the Christian Camping Association was responsible for sending my article to hundreds of people with the title "Anti-camping opinions emerging." Ahhh! Anti-camping? Man… all the article was about was my own personal story as well as asking youth pastors to do retreats because they work and not simply because they like them. It’s not like I think all camps should be turned into golf courses or anything. OK, that’s a pretty good idea… but I’m a golfer.

Long story short. I reopened the debate on YMX and invited any camp directors to respond to the article in a form I can publish on the site. We’ll see what happens.