Cameron Strang is a well disguised evangelist who drives an Audi and runs a company with $1.8 million in revenue last year, according to USA Today. The national paper ran a feature on Relevant Media Group today, citing the company’s success with books, a web site, and the flagship magazine.

The piece mentions some of Relevant’s edgier run-ins with the evangelical elite, including a consumer guide to Jesus action figures in the first issue that got the magazine banned from the bookstore at Oral Roberts University (Strang’s alma mater). It also recounts Matthew Turner’s run as editor at CCM magazine before being ousted “when he mixed in secular language and subjects — even hinted that a singer was sexy.” Relevant recently published The Christian Culture Survival Guide by Turner.

The $1.8 million in revenue is mentioned, as well as a new 5,000-square-foot redesigned warehouse as office. What’s not mentioned is the shadowy connection between Relevant Media and Strang Communications, Cameron’s father’s media empire that some rumors say has been giving Relevant free rent and a free ride. Peddling to twenty-somethings may not be as easy as USA Today makes it sound.

But skeletons aside, Relevant has been doing ground-breaking work and this is one more example of the lavish attention they’re receiving from the mainstream press. What other Christian magazines are generating this kind of attention?

Gunmen ambushed and killed an editor with the Mexican weekly, Zeta, in front of his two children. Francisco Ortiz Franco died on the scene. The Zeta is well known for investigating the narcotics industry in Tijuana. This is the third attack on Zeta employees since 1988 when the paper’s cofounder was killed. In 1997 the paper’s publisher was ambushed and badly wounded.