Bono, Radiohead & 24-7 Prayer

Published: January 15th, 2009

Question: “What do Bono, Thom York and our very own Pete Greig have in common?”

The surprising answer (aside from the thorny issue of terrible haircuts), is that they’ve all been featured on the cover of Relevant magazine! Yup, the latest edition of the achingly-cool American journal of all-things hip-and-Godly, carries a major cover feature about 24-7 Prayer and our Campus America vision to spark Prayer Rooms on every single University campus in the USA next year. 

Culturally Relevant

While Bono and Radiohead may be used to this sort of attention, lesser mortals like us are freaking out. We are excited because a whopping 75,000 young adults will hear the call to prayer from the print version of the magazine alone, while its online alter-ego gets a whopping 4 million page visits a month. Not bad.
 
24-7 and Relevant magazine actually go back a long way. You almost certainly DON’T know that 24-7 was the cover story of Relevant magazine once before: its very first ever edition, “Mind you, back then Relevant had a circulation of about 25 people, most of whom were either related to, or dating, the founding staff” laughs Pete Greig. “I remember sitting in the Relevant office just after they’d launched, and Cameron Strang (the founder) had pretty much been forced into selling his car just to afford to put out the first couple of titles. I was looking for a publisher for a book I was writing called ‘Red Moon Rising’. There were a couple of ‘proper’ American publishers keen to have it, but I took one look at Cameron and realized that these guys were like us: passionate, inexperienced, and having the time of their lives. Cameron asked if he could publish Red Moon Rising in America and I figured we might as well go down together!"
 
Of course, instead of ‘going down’ Relevant has taken-off. In fact, last year Cameron sparked controversy when word got out that he had been invited by Barack Obama to open the Democratic Party Conference in prayer. (He declined).

Celebrating God, Life and Culture

Another thing 24-7 and Relevant have in common is our commitment to combine faith, life and culture. For us this has meant praying in Baghdad, making unembarrassing T-shirts, supporting the ‘Stop the Traffik’ campaign, and jumping around worshipping Jesus with techno and Red Bull in 24-7 Prayer Rooms. Meanwhile, Relevant magazine frequently, unashamedly and without apology juxtaposes glossy fashion and gritty religion – often on a single page. Instead of merely attempting to bridge the secular-sacred divide, Cameron and his friends sometimes seem to have filled it in with concrete and thrown a party in the new space.
 
It’s nice to be featured in a magazine alongside movie stars like Ben Affleck, but the really exciting thing about this latest exposure is nothing to do with looking cool. The important thing is that thousands of people will hear the call to prayer as never before. And we know that when God’s people really pray, lives are changed and the culture is impacted.
 
Ultimately, this is the secret: it’s God alone who makes 24-7 Prayer relevant.
  
Order copies of Relevant for yourself, your friends, or prayer room here
Watch the Campus America video and find out how to get involved here

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