WILLOW Magazine, Issue 1, 2003
A Very Different Kind of Communicator
Rob Bell's unlikely journey to becoming one of today's most innovative communicators.
When most pastors think of ways to bring new people into their churches, they typically don’t preach sermons from the Book of Leviticus. When Rob Bell wanted to bring new people into his church, he preached for a year exclusively from the Book of Leviticus.
When most churches program their services, they make sure that every minute of the service is filled with some element or another to ensure that there are no lapses or awkward moments of silence. Rob Bell “preached” an entire sermon without speaking a single word.
When most pastors want to demonstrate the radical nature of the Old Testament Nazarite vow, they may use a flipchart or a videotape. Rob Bell shaved a man bald while preaching on the subject without missing a single beat.
Bell is the senior pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, a church that grew amazingly to 6,000 in just 14 months! (For more on the history of Mars Hill, see the May/June 2000 issue of WCA News online.)
The success of Mars Hill can, in many ways, be attributed to Bell’s unorthodox, and yet amazingly engaging communication style — a style that comes from his unique personality and not from a seminary textbook.
“I didn’t get very good grades in preaching class,” Bell admits, “because most understandings of preaching/teaching have a whole bunch of fundamental assumptions about how it’s done. You are fitting truth into a prescribed format — generally, a person standing behind a podium, reading the Bible, and talking. And so the deepest truths of the universe then are going to need to get run through a very narrow funnel. For me, the issue is how do I most clearly communicate the truth of this text?”
It’s precisely this “how” that has earned Bell the reputation as one of the most creative communicators in the church today. He will use literally anything at his disposal to bring a passage to life and communicate its deeper meaning. The world is his canvas.
The Medium Matters! |
| Some of the communication methods Rob Bell has employed to communicate Scripture |
| When preaching a sermon on mankind being God’s workmanship, Bell had artists stationed at all the entrances and scattered throughout the church either painting, playing music, or sculpting. Everyone who attended the service was given a chunk of clay and instructed to create something with their fingers as Bell talked to them about how God formed them. |
| To illustrate the need to silence our souls before God, Bell stood perfectly still without saying a word for 45 minutes. The teaching was text on the side screens. One of the slides said, “For some of you right now, the silence is killing you. You would do anything for me to say something.” The next slide said, “Bummer for you.” |
| To illustrate God’s provision and protection, he strapped his newborn son to his back and did an entire sermon walking through the aisles of the church, simulating a walk through the woods. Throughout the sermon, he had to stop and occasionally feed his son to keep him quiet. This became the first of his DVDs, “Rain.” (See “Expanding the Boundaries,” below.) |
| Bell handed out apple slices to the congregation at the beginning of a service. Throughout his message, he kept referring to the apples and how pure and white they were when they were first cut and how brown they were turning as decay was setting in. |
| To illustrate the instilling of love for God’s Word employed by rabbis in the Old Testament, bottles of honey were handed out to the congregation and everyone was asked to put a drop of honey on their fingers. More than 30 minutes passed before Bell got to the passage in Scripture about God’s Word being honey on the lips of the reader. The congregation then licked the honey off their fingers, providing them with a greater understanding of this old, yet effective, communication technique. |
“If I were an oil painter, I’d use oil, charcoal, crayon … if it helps, I’ll shoot with a paint ball gun from 100 feet away. I will use ANYTHING. To me it’s wide open. Anything!”
He’s not kidding. No prop is too big, no idea is too outlandish. If it helps people connect with the main message of the text, it’s fair game (for a list of some of the more creative elements Bell has used, see the sidebar).
Most recently, even the physical limitations of Mars Hill’s facilities didn’t stop Bell from communicating what’s on his heart. He has created a highly innovative series of DVDs that take his teaching to a whole new level and gives him the “anything” he seeks in teaching Scriptural truths. (For more information on the DVDs, see below.)
Needless to say, a preacher who once conducted an entire service in complete darkness with only the light of a single lantern on the stage, will elicit a raised eyebrow from preaching purists. And that’s OK with Bell. He shows reverence to those with styles different than his own but realizes that, in the final analysis, he will be held accountable only for the style God has given him. And it’s a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly.
“The first time I preached,” he recalls, “I got up and immediately took off my sandals, because I knew I was on holy ground and that my life would never be the same. I was 21, and I knew that my life had changed forever. God said to me, ‘If you teach this book, I will take care of everything else.’ And He has.”
Has He ever. Mars Hill now has an attendance of more than 6,000, and wherever Bell speaks, repeated invitations follow. To watch his delivery is to realize that this is no ordinary preacher. From the minute he walks onto the stage, he is in perpetual motion. Though he uses them occasionally, he rarely needs props. In many ways, he is the prop. It’s not unusual in the first 10-15 minutes of one of his messages to wonder where it’s all leading. Unlike many pastors, Bell provides no roadmaps. But follow along with him and the Bible amazingly comes to life.
Conspicuously absent when Bell speaks are notes or any kind of outline. The reason? By the time he preaches the message, he’s lived with it for months. He’s gone over it dozens of times. It has become second nature.
"I don't communicate something that hasn't been knocking around in my bones for a long time," Bell says. "I've been giving life to this idea for months and months and months. I've been knocking it around. I've been bringing it up with people.
I’ve been running it by my wife. I’ve been saying it and thinking about it and trying to live it.
“I often challenge other teachers by asking them, ‘What if your teaching could get to the point where it was no different than telling us about your wedding? What if that teaching was so much a part of you?’”
And for the message to be a “part of you,” it may mean looking in places or teaching it in a way that doesn’t fit into the typical mold that many teachers have learned and come to rely upon so heavily.
“All I know is that when I can explain it, something’s wrong. When I can put it into three steps, something’s wrong,” he says. “By the time I would ever teach something, every person I’ve had a meal with has had it drawn on the back of a napkin. So, for me, freedom comes from the unbelievable sweat, the unbelievable hours. So if it sounds like I’m just up there talking, it actually took me six months to get to that place!”
One of the reasons Bell’s messages are so captivating is because he tends to think about things on such a deep level and to look for angles that others may have missed. When doing a sermon on the Prodigal Son, he didn’t focus on the son’s rebellion, the brother’s envy, or even the father’s grace. Instead, the whole message focused on the amount of time the father spent waiting for his son’s return.
“How long had he been standing there waiting?” Bell asks. “Did he come out everyday and wait? Years? Months? Did his neighbors see him standing there? Was this a regular pattern? Why did he see his son from a long way off? Was he out getting the paper, and happened to see him and run to him and hug him?”
To help illustrate the time element involved, Bell had someone standing on the stage throughout the entire message simply looking off in the distance, as if expecting someone or something.
“The imagery of this story is fundamentally intriguing and engaging in ways that simply stating it isn’t,” Bell says.
So, where did he develop this intriguing style of communication? Probably not where you’d expect.
“It was while I was in a punk rock band that I discovered that I’ve got to communicate,” Bell says. “I have to do this! (Writer) Anne Lamont says, ‘I write because I have to.’ Well, I communicate because I have to.
“It is interesting that with punk bands, if people don’t like you they walk out. So, in many ways, that’s still how I approach what I have to say today. I cut my teeth in an arena where if you weren’t engaging, people walked out. I have a sense that what I have to communicate, if it’s not engaging, you should walk out.”
Almost instinctively, Bell knew where a statement like that could lead, and immediately delivered an apologetic for it.
“There are lots of people who say the church is all about entertainment. But let’s remember that to entertain means to hold people’s attention. Jesus entertained, and John the Baptist entertained. To amuse means to get in the way of people. Churches that amuse, now that’s a problem. But we are called to hold people’s attention. How will they know if they haven’t heard? How will they hear if they are not paying attention?”
Holding their attention is something Bell is uniquely gifted to do. And, no surprise here, his inspiration sometimes comes from unlikely, out-of-the-box sources.
“I’m obsessed with new and strange ideas,” he admits. “And the more varied the idea, the more I find Scriptures come to life for me.”
Bell builds his teaching repertoire by exposing himself to an eclectic mix of books, periodicals, and other media avenues.
“I just finished reading Marilyn Manson’s autobiography,” he says. “I will read books on design and art, how things are arranged. I’ll go to Barnes & Noble and get a stack of 25 magazines — some that have nothing to do with what I care about. I’ll just read them through, just inhale them. I’ll read books on stuff I don’t know anything about. I just started this book on the currency of Thailand. I’ll read a Yoga book, and realize, ‘Hey they are searching for something here! They are trying to get this experience. Why? Well, because God wired them that way … to seek Him.’
“Try reading a book on Buddhism, and see if it doesn’t bring Scriptures to life. What are Buddhists looking for? Enlightenment. Ahh, Ephesians 1— enlightenment!” Books and magazines aren’t the only place Bell finds inspiration.
“I’m fascinated with David Letterman,” he says. “I think David Letterman ought to be studied by people’s post-seminary theological education. Here’s someone who’s been on television for 20 years, every single night. What’s my job again? To engage our culture! Who’s engaging our culture?”
He knows that some may disagree. But he’s OK with that. He shows amazing respect to communicators who may use different methodology than his own, but encourages a wide open mindset when it comes to communicating the most important message on Earth.
“I think a lot of Christians have a difficult time embracing something that doesn’t have the Christian ‘stamp’ on it,” he says cautiously. “And so unless it has a cross or a fish, it’s not ‘proper’ for consumption. But when God created the world, He said it was good. So there’s a goodness to creation, no matter how spoiled and tarnished it is. But sometimes our preaching often takes all of that and runs it through a very small funnel.”
Bell believes that preaching/ teaching is a vital part of the church's overall mission, but it needs to be incorporated into the larger framework of community.
“I believe that if text doesn’t go hand-in-hand with community, you have serious problems. I believe it is the speaking of the text into a community that changes the world, because people are inspired, empowered, reminded, challenged, comforted, and confronted; and they take action in the world as a community. Think about it: when ideas first come, they are birthed in a community that is then shared/spoken into a bigger community. Then, hopefully those people are learning and growing and they speak it into their community. And hopefully this is a very communal thing. Otherwise, it's just some dude talking.”
After hearing Rob Bell speak, and after seeing God’s clear anointing on this innovative communicator, no one would ever accuse him of being just some dude talking.
Expanding the Boundaries
Bell's Nooma videos may just be the next big thing in teaching
Rob Bell’s only limitation when he preaches is physical space. Till now. He has learned to transcend even that with a new line of short films being made available through Fringe, a non-profit company he helped launch in 2001.
After meeting with senior executives at MTV, Bell and his friend, Tom Rinks, discovered that MTV’s polls showed spirituality as the number one interest among the station’s audience. Based on the information, Bell and Rinks created Noomas (the English pronunciation of the Greek word, pneuma — Spirit.) Noomas are about 12 minutes long and each one is a spiritual parable that allows Rob to do things like run through the woods and ignite enormous fires to illustrate his teaching points.
Available in DVD and VHS formats, each of the Noomas can be previewed at www.nooma.com, where the Web site is nearly as slick as the packaging of the units themselves. There are currently three Noomas available, but the company is working feverishly to make additional volumes available soon. More information can also be obtained by calling (877) 776-7755.
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