A church that sounds like a Nintendo character can’t be all bad
I just stumbled upon a great interview with Rob Bell over at the Wittenburg Door’s website. I first saw the magazine in a book store a couple years ago and picked it up based on the tagline alone: “The world’s pretty much only religious satire magazine.” Then I bookmarked its site and forgot about it until tonight, browsing around for things I meant to write about when I finally started up a blog about religious stuff.
And actually, it was in that same bookstore that I stumbled upon the book that introduced me to Rob Bell and his writing, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. It caught my eye because it was an attractive, matte white hardcover with orange highlights. When I got a closer look and realized it was a book about Christianity featuring unusually good design sense (aside from the typesetting on the interior), I started wondering if I had to buy it. When I flipped through and read a few paragraphs, I started believing that Rob wanted to “repaint” things in a shade I’ve long thought the hardware store didn’t carry. So I bought his book and read it a couple times, and I have recommended it to many people since.
I’m not sure which was the part of Velvet Elvis that caught my eye in the bookstore and convinced me it was something I wanted to read. Maybe it was the part about how disproving the literal facticity of something from the Bible doesn’t mean our whole theology is wrong, and therefore we shouldn’t angrily maintain that the world is 6,000 years old (or whatever). Maybe it was the part about how he had a spiritual experience at a U2 concert. Maybe it was some fascinating nugget of Biblical insight. (He’s got a lot of those.) Whatever the case, what I took away from it was the idea that I’m not the only one who feels this way — like Christianity can be more about being good to one another than about chastising ourselves and others for breaking vague rules.
Many people I recommend this book to, however, hit a stumbling block when they find out what Rob Bell is more widely known for. He runs this church, see, called Mars Hill. Runs it out of a converted mall. Or he preaches at it, anyway. It’s kind of a megachurch, I guess.
Megachurches must be bad, though, right? Sounds right up there with televangelist faith healers — just one more way to separate naive marks from their money. Except that Rob Bell is saying stuff that you really wouldn’t expect to hear from the guy holding his hand over some ailing housewife’s forehead and exclaiming, “Out, demon!” in a cliche southern accent. Let me give a couple examples from the interview linked above.
Our assumption is that Church is where you say the things that have to be said. So people will speak but say, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that in church.” Well then, where would you say it? To me, it’s the place where you would push it the furthest. A faith community should be the place with the most honesty and vulnerability and prophetic culture—calling things what they are. So when I hear people say, “That’s nice but you really couldn’t do that in church,” I can’t even fathom that….I don’t believe in Christian art or music. The word Christian was originally a noun. A person, not an adjective. I believe in great art. If you are an artist, your job is to do great art and you don’t need to tack on the word Christian….
We met a woman who started a business, built a house, fed her family and her business was now self-sustaining and growing—on a $40 dollar loan…. American churches have more concentration of wealth than any time in history in a world with massive poverty. But some are exploring with micro financing, working with ground churches and trying things that could help save our world….
I think it is sometimes hard for the American church to understand the Bible because we are the Empire. We are the ones in power, the ones with wealth. I think in some settings that’s why the Bible has such little power—because it’s an oppressive narrative…. We are the upper, upper, rich elite. And our way is taking over the world.
Ideologically resistant, politically progressive, contemporary in his focus — and would you believe he played in a punk band at Wheaton? Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, when people write about Rob Bell and Mars Hill, they get a lot of mileage out of describing just how hip and trendy the whole scene is. One Christianity Today article on the “emergent church” (a label Rob resists — “It’s easy for that to become ‘Are you in or out?’”) characterizes the whole movement thusly:
Neither the bumper sticker nor the tattoo-decal alone would have induced me to set aside my hastily scribbled directions and simply follow the car straight to the Mars Hill parking lot. But I knew I’d found my mark when I saw the passenger lower the sun visor, look into the makeup mirror, and meticulously adjust his hair.
That seems a little uncharitable, but probably not entirely inaccurate. Rob says himself that “At our church, people are desperate to understand this culture of excessive materialism”; it probably stands to reason that some of those who are particularly caught up in it would be among the most desperate to understand it. And, from Christianity Today’s perspective, I can see why it might make sense to be skeptical of a church which seems so “hot” with the youngsters — doesn’t that suggest that it’s entertaining them, just giving them what they want to hear, rather than challenging them, offering something of real value?
I want to believe there’s something of real value here, though — in this movement, in Rob Bell, in the Wittenburg Door. Being entertaining and interesting does not make something inherently trashy. The Daily Show actually gets young (and, yes, sometimes rich) people learning and thinking and talking about politics and current events. (Just google “Daily Show research” and see what comes up.) Maybe it’s time that Christianity were allowed to try being a little cool — and not a “replacing your regular cultural references with Jesus references” kind of cool, which really just comes off as dull, preachy, and misguidedly denouncing stuff as evil. I mean more like a “resisting authority” kind of cool. Or at least an “it’s okay to listen to good music” kind of cool. To some extent, rejecting that being Christian doesn’t mean being bored is a type of ideological resistance in itself.
