Posts Tagged ‘Rob Bell’

For a number of years many people have liked Rob Bell because he is different. He is passionate, engaging, energetic, insightful, and creative with refreshing language and perspective.

For a number of years many people have not liked Rob Bell because he is too different. He has been accused of embracing humanism and pluralism and paganism and many other -isms.

Just when people have (for better or worse) been getting used to Bell , his speaking tours, podcasts, NOOMA videos, and books named with stars, sex, and velvet, he produces something else that is, well… different. If you haven’t watched the Resurrection video you can view it below.

You may be distracted by the visual elements included in the production. However, that which the effects represent is something that we too often don’t even see. As products of modernism, we insist on a logical reasoning and scientific proofing while we close our eyes to the supernatural things all around us. We insist that the only things that are real are the things that our sensory perceptive capacity enables us to see or taste or touch or smell or hear. Like the biblical character Thomas who had to see the holes that wounded Jesus on the cross, we ignore the possibility that things are happening all around us that exceed our quite limited human comprehension. Hence, resurrection:

Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.

I am not at Poets, Prophets, and Preachers (PPP) so I thought I would have a lot to say about it. My friend Matt Rawlings actually offered me a free ticket to the “conference”^ but I was unable to attend for several reasons (in no certain order):

>> I am on an interview committee here at MVNU that is meeting with a Resident Director candidate on Monday morning. >> I have a very busy academic year with more time off in the summer and wanted to set aside more time with my family. >> We are hoping to adopt and possibly purchase a home so I’m crunching down on the spending. Gas, hotel, and food would have been a few dollars.

From the middle of Ohio I have been keeping up with PPP. I’ve been reading all the tweets tagged with the #ppp09 hashtag and checking out a few blogs. I’ve noticed so far that at the first gathering, those commenting publicly all support that which is being discussed at PPP. Nothing that I have read has challenged the intitial teaching by Rob Bell entitled, The Original Guerilla Theatre. The positive perspectives may be fueled by the expectation of those attending. Many hours before the first session many were tweeting about anticipating their arrival in Grand Rapids. Others noted their excitement as they sat in the theater waiting to hear from Rob, who has obviously created a dedicated community of people who value his teaching.

In the Original Guerilla Theatre, Rob discussed the lost primal art form of the religious discourse. Those in attendance all tweeted the same few lines that apparently remained lodged in numerous cerebral cortexes. None of those lines seemed to be earth-shattering to me but centered on the theme that those giving sermons need to be more daring. It is not necessary for a spoken message to be safe and even resolved. Rather, those with ears to hear should be asking questions and talking more with each other in order to continue wrestling with the content. I would suggest additionally that those attending church gatherings seeking answers should alter their perspective. Knowing that the journey of following Jesus is a process of wonder and discovery, couldn’t it be more valuable to expect to leave with more questions? It is only our systems of modernization that make us think otherwise.

^I’m not sure that PPP is actually a conference. Well… I guess technically it is but probably not the typical churchy conference where the Youth Specialties tent is giving away free workbooks entitled something like, “How To Keep Teens Hooked: Staying Relevant for GenY.” JUST FOR THE RECORD: I just made up that title it may be the worst title for a book ever. I’m not sure which word is the worst, “How to,” “Teens,” “Hooked,” “Relevant,” or “GenY.”

When I opened up christianitytoday.com to read today’s interview formatted article with Rob Bell talking about his most recent book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians , I laughed out loud. Sitting right in the midst of the text was an dynamic (technical term, not descriptive of the ad content) ad "From the Creators of Facing the Giants: Fireproof on DVD, Never Leave Your Partner Behind." "Christian"^ marketing kills me. Of course and unfortunately, the marketers for "Facing the Giants" had to play off the "Left Behind"^^ language. The Christian life is about so much more than getting "left behind." As Bell eloquently presents in his book, salvation is not confined to the afterlife or to individual reconciliation with God. There is salvation in this life from systems of tyranny and injustice. Here is a bit from the article in CT that I particularly liked:

Question to Bell :
Are you a pacifist, or do you think that a truly Christian church has to be a pacifist church?

Rob’s Response :
My dad is a U.S. Federal District Judge and gets lots of death threats. On Father’s Day a couple of years ago, there were bodyguards in the driveway at our house. And I am okay with that.

But I sit right in that tension. Sometimes people say no police, no armed forces, no anything. And the truth is, whether I am falling short of Jesus’ teaching or not, there are situations where I am really glad that there is a policeman standing right there and that he has a gun. So I don’t know how exactly you work that out in detail.

But my hope would be that as a Christian, you would have a larger imagination. Take Saddam Hussein. Your first impulse would be, "Man, if he wasn’t in power, it would be great—and the only way is to bring in a hundred thousand troops." To me, the third way of Jesus is always asking if there is an imaginative, subversive, brilliant, creative path.

^ Christian is used in quotation marks to designate "Christian" in its use as a quasi-psuedo-popular subculture rather than a term that describes a person reflecting the image of Jesus.

^^ I do not recommend the "Left Behind" series – just so we’re clear about that.

I welcome and appreciate comments that question the intent or perspective of my posts. One particular comment, which may seem adversarial but I would suggest is written for constructive or at least clarifying purposes (tone and intent are largely lost in the blogosphere), reads as follows:

"im a little confused on your opinion of journey. i have been there a few times but not much scripture was used so i haven’t been back. may come again sometime though.

speaking of scripture…. i appreciate your writing but would like to see more scripture references.

i’m also curious to why you chose the name “subversive reformation”. a lot of post-modern movements (like rob bell, donald miller, shane claiborne kind of thing) make me wonder if we are too cynical and proud of our big words and creative artwork that we miss the point: LOVE."

Please note that I am not degrading this comment but rather continuing with the invitation for discussion. There are many directions in which to go but I want to begin by addressing only one small element of the comment. I may return to the ideas of postmodernism, movements, naming, and cynicism but first want to conisder "scripture references."

We have been conditioned to expect Scripture to be used in a certain way. Don’t get me wrong, I highly value the recitation of Scripture during church gatherings. I sometimes need to go to a Catholic or Episcopal gathering just to hear the public reading of God’s written communication with humanity. It is good for the soul of my recovering popular-evangelical self.  However, to quote Scripture doesn’t mean that one has to "quote" (pun intended) Scripture. Modernism has conditioned us to want references, bullet points, quotations, citations, enumerations and many other "ations." Our western, post-enlightenment minds that place an overly-high value on reason and logical processing have difficulty recognizing that Scripture is interlaced within our stories.

Here, I will draw a parallel using a specific reference from Scripture . The book of Esther found in the Hebrew Scriptures (TNK ) never uses the actual word "God" in any of its forms (YHWH, Elohim, etc.) Esther is the only book of the Bible that does not use the word "God." Does that mean that God is not present throughout the story? Should the book of Esther not have been included in the Bible? Should it be discluded from that which is considered in the Judeo-Christian tradtion to be "holy writing" simply because the word "God" isn’t quoted? Equally, should any writing that does not "quote" scripture be tossed out as though it is irrelevant and removed from the narrative of God with his people?

I had held off on reading Rob Bell ‘s "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" because I was figuring that it may be too much like the podcast series from Mars Hill Bible Church . I did go ahead and begin reading and the book is significantly different with a continuous narrative theme. Below is a webcam interview with Rob Bell from Zach Lind .

Rob Bell Interview, Part 1 from Zach Lind on Vimeo .

A theme throughout the comments on my last post centered around the concept of action being of greater importance than dialogue. I think that most of us could say that Shane Claiborne of the Simple Way (link in right column) is quite socially active and intent on being the person of Jesus for those who are otherwise overlooked by many supposed of followers of Jesus. I was sitting with Shane at the Envision Conference at Princeton just before he gave a portion of his presentation on Jesus and the Church. Here is a clip:

While at the conference I met one of Shane’s friends, Jamie Moffett . Jaime was in the process of producing a documentary called "The Ordinary Radicals. " The documentary was finalized earlier in September. Shane contributed to the video along with Jim Wallis , Brian McLaren , Tony Campolo, Rob Bell , and John Perkins (I also hung out a little with Jim, Brian, and John at the conference). Here is a portion of what Shane said for "The Ordinary Radicals "which pertains the the previous topics of engagement with the empire.

The Ordinary Radicals – Trailer from Jamie Moffett on Vimeo.

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