Yesterday was a huge day.
We woke up very early to go to the Mars Hill Covenant Members meeting. They are in process of rewriting their constitution and explaining the vision of where the church is going down the road. I had a hope of what I thought they would say during the meeting, and Rob said it.
I will take another post to explain it (it will take a little while), but in the end there was a line drawn, and Rob mentioned that the American population is 6% of the world's population, and then rattled off some statistics:
-Over 2100 verses in the Scripture are on the poor and oppressed.
-8% of the world population has a car.
-1.2 billion have no clean water
-800 million are living in extreme poverty (*thanks John for the correction).
-America consumes 40-50% of the world's resources.
After this, he mentioned how much of the American church serves this little part of the line (the American population), but what about the rest of the line? Rob then said that they believe Mars Hill is in the midst of writing sacred history as they are going to do something about the rest of the line. This is who they are, this is what they will do.
Don Golden, the lead pastor, then gets up and asks a pretty good question, "Who are the oppressed?" They didn't explain too long because they are doing a teaching series on this, but eventually said everyone is oppressed. He then put a phrase Word and Deed, and said, "Which one of these three words is the most important?" I heard people crying out "deed" with a few "word." Don then says, it's the word and.
I was in tears. This is exactly what we have been searching for for 8 years. I am getting a sense of something that I didn't think was going to happen, but it's very exciting. We had a chance to meet Don afterwards, and talked to Rob some more (who remembered our names oddly, although I guess when you come from 12 hours away to vacation at the church word gets around).
We then traveled to the Emergent West Michigan Cohort, and met some more great people and talked about "What is church?" Many great conversations. We met Randy Buist and Steve Argue, whose blogs I have read before. Randy took us out to lunch afterwards at "Bite," which is a fabulous restaurant in downtown Grand Rapids (and where the Cohort met, we just stayed there). Awesome organic foods and very affordable, with a very trendy and inviting atmosphere (lots of nice couches and colors). We realized Randy was yet another close friend of Lilly Lewin's, which was refreshing. Obviously Lilly is connected pretty heavily up here. I feel kinda bad name dropping Lilly. I mean I guess she would say I'm a friend, although we really don't know each other too well, other than me spending time with them at their house a couple of months ago till 1am talking life and such. Randy is planting a church called Waters' Edge, and doing some great things. We also met Elizabeth Potter, whose blog I've run across from time to time. I was mostly glad to see my wife get to go to a cohort meeting, and she participated fully in the conversation!
Lastly, we went to one of the house churches that night for dinner (we were invited by the greeters we met at the 9am service), and was just a beautiful time getting to know some more stories from Mars and what they were doing in living life together. It was refreshing to see.
It was just a fun-filled day of great conversation, as well as clarity on some huge issues Julia and I have been facing. Tomorrow will be a very huge day as we meet with Denise Van Eck and some Community Life staff at Mars Hill, and with Steve Carter, the Jr. High pastor, then off to the book signing for Craig Gross of xxxchurch.com, where we will go for breakfast on Friday morning. He has invited us to eat at his place before we head back to Ohio to get our daughter.
It has been a very slow, relaxing, refreshing time so far, everything we hoped our vacation would be. Praise God!
Tags: Mars Hill, Rob Bell, Emerging Church, Emergent, Emergent West Michigan, personal
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"Okay, I just watched the clips of Rob at the Seeds of Compassion event. As a follower of Jesus and a member of Mars Hill I must say I am very proud of how Rob spoke beautiful truths in response to those questions. I am blessed to have the privilege to be engaged in those truths each and every time I hear him teach. I am blessed that he has spoken such truth into my life personally and directly. To say that he did not share Christ is absurd! As Christians, aren't we supposed to share Christ with our lives? If all truth is God's truth, then when we speak truth are we not sharing Christ?
As for not sharing the power of the cross, I am in complete disagreement. I have no idea whether he gave a "gospel presentation" off camera, but the words he spoke were indeed the power of the cross! Redemption and forgiveness and resurrection were the issues he spoke on - if that's not the power of the cross, I don't know what is! He did not need to use the specific phrases we are so used to hearing in our churches to share the power of the cross. There are those people who somehow seem to think that the depth of our faith can only be felt and heard with those certain words. How that shortchanges the ability of God to penetrate into the hearts and minds of all people! Rob may have gained more respect from his honest, thoughtful, and poignant responses than if he had done nothing but preach a mini-sermon. He may have lost respect. What if his answers encourage people who wouldn't normally take interest in what Christians had to say to listen to him and be curious about his writings and teachings? From my own personal experience, people who are dis-interested in or turned off by Christians are more than likely to take an interest in Christ from the Christ they see demonstrated in my life, not the the "Christian" words I speak to them."
Some think that because some of these words were not mentioned, the message of the gospel (which could be one of the issues, as that word in itself needs defined) has been "watered-down." If I speak on the power of forgiveness, of death, and resurrection, do you think it would have any possibility of speaking of Christ, and especially the cross?!
I think people come to listen to Rob, or Doug Pagitt, or whoever else you want to label as a heretic, evil, or bad (or you fill in the blank), already come with an agenda to nitpick anything they can find (and will take things out of context quickly) without considering that they can speak some truth. I am always trying to be aware when I take that posture with those whose views I don't totally adhere to (a certain seminary prof comes to mind), but at the same time, I am asking God for the humility to be open to truths that emerge.
If your mind is too shallow to not even consider the person speaking truth, then you are shutting off the Holy Spirit. What are you so afraid of?
I think people like Rob are showing those who don't profess in Jesus that there are Christians who do want to make the world a better place, who in my mind actually put love on display. What powerful words Rob spoke in those few minutes regarding violence in our world. It was a tough question, and he handled it beautifully and spoke with such hope.
So please, for the love of Christ and His Kingdom, please consider this plea to be humble; to acknowledge that God can teach us from anybody, anything, or any circumstance, no matter what our feelings toward them are. We will become more like Christ because of it.