More BibleZines (note corrected spelling)

I needed to arrange a place for a craigslist exchange. Starbucks seemed as good a place as any. Since I "was there anyway" I might as well get some coffee. And if I was going to be there, I might as well do something productive. So I took my copies of the aforeranted BibleZines to work on a review for a magazine. (Sorry I already spilled the beans on how I feel about them in the last post.)

I'm sitting there trying to get my mind around whether there is anything redeemable in them. I look up, and there's a girl sitting next to me reading her Bible. Bingo! I decided to ask her what she thought, at least to get an opinion outside my own rancorous head. Standard pickup-type line: "Hey, I see you're reading your Bible. Can I ask your opinion on something?"

"This isn't a Bible."

"Well, what is it?"

"A government procurement law textbook."

"Huh. Well, I thought the Bible was the only book shaped like that with two columns."

"Well, this stuff is pretty dense, so it needs to be in two columns like the Bible."

A great line about two-column Bibles.

Turns out she is an agnostic, and her opinion about BibleZines is that they are full of non sequiturs and stuff that is pretty much unrelated to the Bible. She said her mind was made up about the Bible anyway, but this stuff was silly, and it was really bizarre that someone decided to put the two together. So maybe BibleZines aren't outreach tools. Any thoughts on whether they can be used to any good effect by Christian teens? I'm taking this very seriously since I want to be able to talk intelligently about them. I don't want to be accused of denigrating the "competition" (since I work as an editor at a Bible publisher). I want my opinions, particularly on this piece, to be exceedingly well thought out.

Oh yeah. They have "Redefine" now, a BibleZine for baby boomers. Yikes! It makes a little sense to do a fashion mag style Bible for teen girls, but baby boomers? And that was another comment from the woman at Starbucks: the teen boy edition, Refuel 2008, looked exactly like Revolve 2008, except they changed some colors and fonts. Do boys look at fashion type magazines? Maybe if it were more like Sports Illustrated? I dunno.