c. 2008 Religion News Service
GRANDVILLE, Mich. _ The Rev. Rob Bell hops up onto the circular stage in his tennis shoes, his headset microphone in place. “Hi,” he says. “Good morning. If you’re coming in late, we still love you. Make yourself at home.”
It’s Sunday morning at Mars Hill Bible Church, and Bell is doing his thing, using “Philippians” and “awesome” in the same sentence.
Bell, 37, is the founding pastor of Mars Hill, the church that used to be a shopping mall and now attracts between 8,000 and 10,000 people each Sunday at three services they call “gatherings.”
A 2006 article in the Chicago Sun Times called him the next Billy Graham. A year later, TheChurchReport.com named him No. 10 on its list of “The 50 Most Influential Christians in America.” He made Time magazine in December.
Acclaim makes him squirm.
His speaking tours sell out, and a new speaking request comes in about every 10 minutes. But he’d rather talk about how billions of people have no safe drinking water and how you can help.
Bell is geeky-hip, with his black plastic glasses and skinny black jeans. He loves British transvestite comedian Eddie Izzard and U2 and rents vintage Rolling Stones concerts from Netflix and on his day off.
Bell embraces mystery. He asks questions. It goes back to his childhood, he says.
“My parents were intellectually rigorous,” he says. “Ask questions, explore, don’t take things at face value. Stretch. I’ve always been interested in the thing behind the thing.”
He has become the kind of famous that breeds autograph seekers and stalkers and people who flock to him figuring he must hold the meaning of life. Like the pregnant woman in Louisville _ in labor _ who wouldn’t leave until she got his autograph.
“There are dimensions to my life that have become surreal,” Bell says, sitting in an office at Mars Hill. “The Time magazine thing …”
He shakes his head.
“This is my life? I’m under no illusions this is normal. We left normal a long time ago.”
His series of short videos, NOOMA, have sold more than 1.2 million copies in 80 countries. Named after the Greek word for spirit, the video series features Bell at his most earnest, talking about love, loss and forgiveness.
He’s heard from Muslim high school girls in Morocco, villagers in India. A recovering heroin addict stopped him to say they’re using NOOMA in her recovery group. He just heard the Green Bay Packers are watching them.
He turns down most interview requests _ there are too many _ and doesn’t allow photos of his young sons. His wife, Kristen, declined to be interviewed.
“Kristen and I have worked hard to establish a normal life, under the radar,” he says. He lives in a former crack house. He and his wife share one car. He walks his kids to school in the morning.
The crowds, the autographs, the fame. As Bell might say: Dude _ why?
His friend of nine years, Tom Maas, has attended Mars Hill since week three and sums up the appeal:
“He approaches the most difficult topics of the day and dives deep into them, approaching things like theology with a childlike wonder, so a fifth-grader can understand them. Not naive, not simple, but understandable.”
Bell says he’s trying to connect.
“If people have been thinking about God and life and Jesus, and somebody comes along and puts words to some of their deepest fears, theories, intuition, a pretty nuclear reaction goes off,” he says.
“For many people, there’s a widespread, low-grade despair at the heart of everything,” Bell says. “If we can tilt things a few clicks in the hope direction, that would be beautiful.”
Hope is his bottom line, he says.
“There’s nothing to fear,” Bell says. “At the core of the Christian experience, there’s resurrection. The story ends better than anything you can make up yourself.”
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But along the way, he talks about all the crud you face first, the stuff that has the guy in the Harley T-shirt nodding over his Bible in the 14th row.
“I can be totally honest about how dreadful the world is,” Bell says. “It’s OK to acknowledge that. Half the Psalms are laments _ `Lord, why have you forsaken me?’
“Many people have been presented a message that’s candy-coated. It doesn’t ring true. It has a nice red bow on it, but there’s no blood and guts. I fully acknowledge the suffering and pain, but at the same time there’s great hope.”
He smiles. “There’s an open tomb.”
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He grew up near Lansing, Mich., with his parents, Helen and Robert Bell, sister Ruth and brother John. He always felt a little out of place he says, “
drawn to the outcasts, to the girl with the black fingernail polish.”
He went to Wheaton College in Illinois, where he studied psychology, met his wife and fronted a punk rock band that played Chicago clubs. “We thought we’d be the next R.E.M.,” he says.
The band broke up during his senior year when viral meningitis landed Bell in the hospital. He had “absolutely no idea” what to do with his life, but people kept saying he should be a pastor. He gave his first sermon at a summer camp.
“I thought, `This is what I’m supposed to do.’ But I knew it would have to work for my world. It would have to be vibrant and subversive.”
He went to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., then interned at a megachurch where he took over the hip Saturday night service and soon got thinking about starting a new church for that “whole generation of people hungry for Jesus.”
That first Sunday nine years ago, more than 1,000 people showed up. They ran out of chairs. Six months later, attendance had swelled to 4,000.
Bell was doing everything _ weddings, funerals, spiritual direction, visiting prisons and hospitals and doing all the preaching. It was, he said, “absolutely surreal.”
“I went from an intern to senior pastor in a couple of years. I was 28. It was freakish growth.”
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One Sunday morning, as thousands streamed in for the 11 a.m. service, Bell hid in the storage room behind the sound booth. He listened, holding his car keys in his hand, wondering how far away he could get by 11.
“I was burned out,” he says. “By our fifth anniversary, I was fried. As my doctor put it, `You’re going too fast, too hard for too long.’ I had to learn a new normal.”
He found a therapist and took a 10-week break. He learned he had to “die to the need to achieve and impress.” Fridays became his sabbath. No cell phone, no e-mail. He turned over pastoring duties to another lead pastor, focusing on sermons he calls “teaching,” his writing and NOOMA.
He’s home most days by 5 to hang out with his wife and sons Trace, 9, and Preston, 7. He builds ramps for skateboarding, they toss a football around in the park across the street.
“Work is what I do while I’m waiting for my kids to get home from school,” he says.
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His first two books, “Velvet Elvis” and “Sex God,” have sold more than a half-million copies. His third, “Jesus Wants to Save Christians,” written with Mars Hill lead pastor Don Golden, is due out this fall.
With success comes criticism. Bloggers question his substance, his theology, his very Christianity.
“I don’t Google my name,” Bell says. “Somebody told me there’s somebody out there doing seminars against me.” He grins. “Wow _ I’m helping somebody out there pay their bills.”
Does it bother him? He leans his head back against the wall and thinks.
“Part of it hurts,” he says. “It just hurts. It’s painful. But it’s fear and misunderstanding. These are mean and angry people.”
Then he laughs.
“You know, God could give me 50 more years,” he says. “So don’t wind me up. If you’re offended now, I’m just getting going.”
(Terri Finch Hamilton writes for The Grand Rapids Press in Grand Rapids, Mich.)
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Photos of Bell are available via https://religionnews.com.
