Rob Bell, 'Love Wins' author, to leave Mars Hill church

[Bozita]

Rob Bell, 'Love Wins' author, to leave Mars Hill church in Grandville in effort to reach broader audience
Published: Thursday, September 22, 2011, 5:20 PM Updated: Thursday, September 22, 2011, 7:25 PM
By Meegan Holland | The Grand Rapids Press


Rob Bell, the controversial author of "Love Wins," has announced that he's leaving Mars Hill church in Grandville, according to the chuch's web site.

The web site says:
"Feeling the call from God to pursue a growing number of strategic opportunities, our founding pastor Rob Bell, has decided to leave Mars Hill in order to devote his full energy to sharing the message of God’s love with a broader audience."

-snip-

"Love Wins," released earlier this year, started a storm of criticism from conservative Christians who felt the book strayed too far from the Bible's teachings. Bell promotes an expansive view of heaven, saying that it’s not just for select Christians while all others burn forever in hell.

It prompted a flurry of television appearances for Bell on such shows as “Good Morning America,” “Morning Joe,” an hour-long webcast with Newsweek’s Lisa Miller and a “60 Minutes”-style grilling from MSNBC’s Martin Bashir.

The book skeptically asks whether Gandhi is in hell because he wasn’t Christian, or whether only those who accept Jesus go to heaven. It's made him a lightning rod, with fervent believers in his message and critics who decry him for denying the traditional concepts of heaven and hell.

-snip-

more...
http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/09/rob_bell_love_wins_author_to_l.html

[DURHAM D]

1. So what faith is he?

The solution is easy enough - he can choose between becoming Methodist or Episcopalian.

[Missy Vixen]

2. Is this church affiliated with the one in Seattle?

If so, I'm sure he was asked to leave. After all, Seattle's Mars Hill is proud of the anti-women, anti-gay stance they've taken over the years.

Just sayin'.

[FedUpWithIt All]

4. Mark Driscoll of the seattle chuch does not agree with Rob Bell on most points.

They are both associated with something called the emergent church movement but their churches are otherwise related in name only.

Rob Bell is commonly dismissed by Christians as a humanist or a universalist.

[FedUpWithIt All]

3. I really love most of the things Rob Bell does. I really like the Nooma videos.

Rich and Rhythm are very good.


From Rob Bell's FB

Picture Galileo, standing there on top
of the Tower of Pisa, about to drop two
weights off the top. The weights are the
same shape, but one is heavier than
the other. Which will land first?

Obviously the heavier one, because
that’s what people had been taught
for 2000 years. How could it be any
other way?

And so Galileo drops them, and they
land at the same time, because that’s
how the world actually works. This kind
of thinking was, of course, radical and
revolutionary and it got Galileo into
all sorts of trouble.

The mind blowing part? No one before
Galileo had bothered to actually
do the experiment. They just believed
what they’d been taught…

[roguevalley]

5. if my near death esperience is any gauge, we all go and its wonderful.

[FedUpWithIt All]

6. If you talk about it, i'd love to hear of your experience.

I had a type of spiritual experience when i was young very similar to, but also very outside, a near death experience.

[roguevalley]

7. I would be delighted. Some don't talk about them but I think if we

have one we should. My dad had two and went from petrified of death to serenity.

I was working at my sister's business and felt really really ill. I thought it was low blood sugar or something so I went upstairs to her apartment somehow, practically on my hands and knees and got a cookie. I sat down in the easy chair across from her (she was at lunch) and I guess I looked dead to her. I remember her saying, "What's wrong?" and sticking the cookie in my mouth and then I was gone.

I heard a sort of popping sound, a snap, then all the room went from color to black and white. It was the strangest thing that the colors immediately went away. Then I was in the most beautiful incredible place. It was a street in my old hometown, it was sunny and the most beautiful summer, the sky was so blue its hard to describe. It was warm on my face, the grass so green you can't find it in real life. I was on a sidewalk near an old hotel I remember from childhood. It was incredibly peaceful, hard to emphasize how much.

Then my mother was there standing in front of me in a summer dress, light creamy white with tiny yellow flowers all over it. She had white sandals. I remember it. She stood like she always did in her pictures when she was twenty and she was young, slim and beautiful.

She didn't say a word to me. I remember incredible joy to see her. She and my dad had passed away ten months apart. I remember smiling and feeling so happy and then I knew without her saying a word that I couldn't stay. There was a popping or snapping sound, the color faded to black and white and then I was back in my body.

My sister was screaming in my face slapping and shaking me. I looked at her and was sad. Later she told me that I had just died. I was gray and my pupils fixed. She couldn't awaken me. Then I was back.

SIGH.

I think it wasn't long or too filled with frills because if I had stayed too long I would have chosen to not come back. My mother had just died and I wasn't clear on staying around myself. It was just too much sadness all at once. I realize now that it wasn't my time and that my purpose, to know myself better and other things as well is what I have to learn here. We come here to learn something and then we go when 'school' is out. I am so delighted to have seen her. It was as if she picked the best presentation for me to see to show that she was well, robust and happy. It wa truly clear that she is around me, that she is aware of me and is in my day. I know this to be true.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those that have these and those that don't. Every nurse I have ever asked say you don't dream or hallucinate when you are unconscious like I was. Nothing was home. I was where we all go and I will tell you from the bottom of my heart, we all go home and death is so darned easy I don't fear any of it. Ever again.

Huggles,

RV

[FedUpWithIt All]

8. Thank you so much for sharing this.

What a wonderful thing, your experience with your mother.

My own experience was unusual but is still classified as a type of out of body experience. I was a toddler and was spoken to by a "light" told i was allowed to leave my bed and was guided to a place when my father was "inside" the "light". The light was having a type of conversation with him which was sort of felt rather than heard. I had mentioned it to my parents after the fact, was told it was a dream but i insisted at the time that it was no dream. I realized that my parents would not be able to understand and stopped talking of the experience until the past few years when i realized that the experience, although often from the perspective on "inside" the "light" was quite a common theme of NDEs.

My father passed away a couple of years later when i was 11.

[Bucky]

9. So who should I send most of my retirement check over to now in order to get into heaven?

[FedUpWithIt All]

10. At Rob Bell's church they have occasionally have White Bucket offerings.

The offering is collected and the buckets containing the money are left at the front of the church so those who have need, can go and take what they need out directly.

Although i am not a Christian, this does have the appearance of a different type of Christian model, i find it easy to support the efforts of this type of church.. I think this is a change in a positive direction...so far.