Many of you know that I am a huge fan of Rob Bell. Correction – I am a huge fan of what God is doing through Rob Bell. God seems to speak to me in a new and creative way every single time I hear Rob speak. I was a little disappointed when I opened my Catalyst notebook to see that the title of Rob’s presentation was “The Importance of Beginning with the Beginning.” Back in August, this was the title of one of Rob’s sermons at Mars Hill, which I follow thanks to their podcasts. I was excited to hear him present it live, but was a little sad that it wouldn’t be much new material. But once again, God surprised me. As Rob Bell took the stage, he told his audience of over 12,000 that just a couple of weeks ago he decided to change the topic of his presentation and many of the things he would be saying were things he had never said in public before. I quickly rose to the edge of my seat and prepared to be challenged in a way I had not ever been challenged before.
By far, my favorite quote of the hour was when he was talking about women as pastors in the church – “You go girl. Be who God made you to be.” I think I might just have to put that on my bulletin board! But the issue of women in leadership was not the crux of his talk. There were three main points that I took away from my time with Rob Bell.
1) The Sabbath is not only important, it’s essential. I began exploring this topic when I returned from vacation, so when Rob began talking about Sabbath, my ears quickly tuned in. Our lives wear us out. For those of us in full-time ministry, we sometimes forget that we are not God. Let me clarify – we sometimes get so wrapped up in all the people that need us and all the many worthy things on our to-do lists that we forget to take a break. We think it’s selfless that we work long, hard hours when maybe, in reality, it’s selfish. We work long hard hours because we don’t think it’ll get done if we don’t do it. We ignore the people we love the most because we have to focus on “the bigger picture.” How arrogant is that?! If our personal lives aren’t going so well, our ministry lives can’t be going well – they are inextricably bound together. The reality is we need to rest. God can’t use us over and over again if we don’t take care of ourselves properly. There’s a reason why God told us to rest. We talk a lot about having faith in the full-time ministry world – so let’s act on our own faith that God will take care of things while we rest.
2) No matter what our size, we are all significant and important. Sometimes the crowd thins. Bigger is not necessarily better. Larger is not necessarily superior. Yet this is what society has tricked us into believing. If our numbers aren’t growing, then we are doing something wrong. Yet sometimes, when we begin to truly follow what God calls us to do, the crowd doesn’t grow – it instead begins to shrink. You may lose people close to you. Rob Bell used the story in Luke 21 where the widow puts all of her two coins in the offering at the temple. Jesus tells us in that story that she put in MORE than the ones who put in lots and lots of coins. In this story, less is more!! Jesus’s ranking system is totally different than our ranking system. We can’t compare numbers to numbers, but instead we must compare sacrifices. If we are truly the body of Christ, we will lift each other up, no matter what our size. Rob suggested a radical idea – if we are the body of Christ – the ONE body of Christ, then we are a living breathing Eucharist. We are called to break ourselves open and pour ourselves out for the sake of the world. We surrender our own agendas in order to serve the world around us. When we tear each other down because of disagreements, we demean the Eucharist!
3) When we die, God’s not going to ask us why we weren’t more like Moses. God will ask us why we aren’t more like the person God created us to be. If we follow the first 9 commandments, we discover that the 10th is not a law to obey but is instead a reward for following the first 9. When we obey God, we won’t want anyone else’s life. We will be perfectly content with the life that God has given us. Jesus tells us that we are blessed right where we are. He sets us free to enjoy the place where we are called to and the work that is set in front of us. We don’t have to be bigger to be better. We don’t have to do more to be more effective. All we have to do is focus on obeying God and becoming the person God created us to be. Once we do that, the rest just falls into place.
As Rob Bell left the stage, I wanted to hug him. I wanted to be his friend, to sit down and have coffee with him, and to beg him to be my mentor and partner in ministry. I am so very thankful that I had the opportunity to hear him twice last week. Once again, God spoke straight to my heart through him. So thank you Rob Bell, for your challenging words. And thank you Catalyst Team, for bringing him to Catalyst 2009. Can you bring him back next year please? And even better, could you arrange for me to meet him?
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I bet you were mid-post when I rudely interrupted you!
I was, but it was a good interruption
“living breathing Eucharist” = communion of saints?
The only difference I have with Bell here is that its not just a “living breathing Eucharist”, but also a “dead but not gone” one.
It’s also worth noting that Lutherans number the commandments differently…so for us it would be the 9th and 10th are rewards. So we get twice as much reward and a 12% or so reduction in commandments as everyone else!
One more reason I’m glad to be Lutheran
He defined “Eucharist” as “good gift” based on the original Greek word that it is derived from. I think his point was (or at least the one I took from it was) that we, as followers of Christ, should view ourselves as good gifts to those around us. That we should willingly pour ourselves out to those around us. He did not say that we were the only Eucharist or that we were even the primary one. Now that I think about it, maybe he used the word “eucharist” rather than “Eucharist.” Since it was spoken, not written, I won’t know unless I really get to meet him one day. Regardless, I get what you’re saying!
Great post here. Strangely enough, I also follow the Mars Hill podcasts and heard “The Importance of Beginning with the Beginning”. I tried to get a group together at my local church to go see him last week and was greeted with more “who’s Rob Bell?” responses than I care to share. How funny to find another Lutheran who actually knows who he is!
There are several things that I find lacking in Rob Bell’s theology (or at least his presentation of it), but he’s phenomenal at “telling the story” of our life with Christ in the context of the bigger picture. I think we so easily lose that context as we go about our little lives, attend our little churches, and read our little Bibles. God is so. much. bigger. Bell does a great job reminding us all of that.
Thanks for sharing your notes. I’ve been scouring other blogs for notes from Catalyst since I couldn’t make it. Glad I’m able to “catch up” through posts like this!
We took a group of 21 from LCR to see Rob Bell last Wednesday – 7 adults and the rest youth. It was good, but I’m still soaking it all in. We’re debriefing the high school kids tonight and I’ll post my thoughts sometime later this week. If you ever get a chance to see him live, it’s worth it. We use the NOOMA series for all sorts of things. The kids seem to really enjoy them.
We used NOOMA some at my last church (I was youth leader there as well as worship leader lol). It was useful but I kept catching myself supplementing the teachings. It’s good as long as they recognize that it’s not the whole story. I’ve not found anything he’s said to be flat-out wrong yet, but I sometimes find that it’s missing something…