The Subversive Art
Drawing from the prophets, the rabbis, and Jesus to confront the culture.
Interview with Rob Bell
April 1, 2004
Rob Bell will tell you his style is unorthodox. He planted a church by preaching through Leviticus. His teaching is a mix of images and personal stories and exegesis and some perspectives you probably haven't heard in church before. The message, however, is orthodox, biblical, and well informed by history. The whole package, Bell says, is subversive. Like Jesus.
Whatever it is, it works. It connects with crowds totaling 10,000 most weekends at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, the church 33-year-old Bell founded five years ago. It connects, we've seen, with students at his alma mater, Wheaton College, and emerging church leaders at national conferences, where Bell is likely to teach using a big chair, Jewish prayer shawl, or a live goat. "Animals, whatever. Whatever it takes," he says. "No rules." These days he's talking a lot about the rabbis.
Ed Dobson says of Bell, "Rob is driven by a passion to teach the Bible, shaped by understanding the Bible in its context, then applying the Bible to where people live. At the core, he's about the Bible." It was with Dobson, at Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, that Bell served as associate pastor for three years before Calvary supported the launch of Bell's postmodern congregation. Today Bell is also heading Nooma (think pneuma), a ministry producing short dramatic videos of Bell's talks, shot MTV-style amid city streets, airports, and forests (www.nooma.com).
Our conversation with him darts from topic to topic ("My friends tell me that I'm, like, classic ADD. That, of course, was already obvious," he says), but in the seemingly random thoughts and rabbi-chases, Bell is making a point. He is as intentional in our exploration of preaching as he is in alerting his generation ...
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