I mailed the following to Pastor Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church, just down the road in Grandville, Michigan several days ago. Haven't heard back from him yet. With 10,000 in attendance each Sunday, I'm sure he's a busy man.
Pastor Bell,
I am writing to you having just recently read two newspaper articles about your church and upcoming book. I would like to address several comments made about you and by you in these articles. I also downloaded and listened to two of your sermons from the Mars Hill web page and after working through the articles, I would like to address those as well.
Getting to the Root of Religion - Detroit Free Press
The first column by David Crumm of The Detroit Free Press opens by labeling you, "The hottest preacher in Michigan..." Rock bands can be hot, celebrities can be hot, supermodels can be hot, but I never really thought of preachers being hot. It seems from my reading of the Bible that they are called primarily to be faithful. I cannot imagine Jesus introducing Paul in the following manner. "Ladies and gentlemen, you may have known him as Saul of Tarsus, but I present to you one of the hottest preachers in the Kingdom of God - I give you The Apostle Paul!"
Further on in the article, Crumm states the following:
"He's built a huge congregation dominated by 20-somethings, a group virtually missing in most churches."
The worst thing about the worship wars tearing apart so many churches today, and I believe it's a cleverly planned strategy of the enemy, is to separate older, seasoned saints with a breadth of knowledge in life and Christianity from younger, inexperienced people who have not yet found their way in this world or in the Kingdom of God. The way most cultures transmit their beliefs is from the older to the younger. Instead, what we have in so many churches today and most distinctly at Mars Hill and other hip gathering places are legions of young people who seem to feel they need to completely reinvent the wheel that is Christianity, and this is not surprising. If we turned the elementary schools over to the students and let them re-invent or re-paint the portrait which is basic education, confusion would undoubtedly reign. Children are rebellious from their infancy and without guidance from mature adults, all manner of evil enters into that child's life, not the least being massive confusion and misdirection. The postmodern church movement seems to be allowing the lunatics to first reinvent and ultimately run the asylum. What will happen when the thousands of young Mars Hill attendees grow up and have children of their own? Will these kids rebel against their parents' old-school ways and invent completely new ways of "doing church"? This doesn't sound like the faith once for all entrusted to the saints.
Later in the Free Press column, the following:
"Homosexuality? Bell tells gay people the same thing he tells everyone who walks through the door. It's a powerfully affirming line that he repeated in his sermon on Sunday: 'God loves you exactly as you are. Period."
This is simply not true. If it is then how can we possibly explain a bloodied and broken Jesus nailed to a cross? The Bible tells us that man in his sin is an enemy of God. Unregenerate man living a sinful life can never be an object of God's affection, only His wrath. We're told that God is angry with sinners every day. He'll never win any awards for his political correctness, for God is quite intolerant of sin. He never winks at it. It is so awful and grotesque that we can only begin to grasp the enormity of its evil when we see Christ hanging on the tree.
One last quote from David Crumm's piece:
"The church draws a square box around itself and divides the world between people who are 'in' and 'out'. I don't think that's what Jesus intended."
That's exactly what Jesus intended! Surely you have read the verses referring to the wheat and the tares and the sheep and the goats. The church is precisely that place in the world where God plainly makes a distinction between those who are His and those who are Satan's. It is a most clear illustration of what is also going on in the spiritual realm - a distinct separation between those saved by faith in Christ and those who have either not yet heard the Gospel or who have rejected it.
Because Law and Gospel are not being clearly preached in today's postmodern and so-called "emergent" churches, various venues are packing thousands of lost souls in and giving them typical self-help stories that might assuage their guilt and make them feel as if they've done their duty and gone to church, but these hollow messages and ego boosts will leave them sorely lacking on the Day of Jesus Christ, when the sheep are called to His right and the goats, very well-intentioned goats - goats who found more satisfaction in questioning the precepts Christ laid down in Scripture - are commanded to move to His left. Being in your position with the influence you have today would literally scare the Hell out of me.
Repainting Faith: Dynamic Pastor Publishes Book - The Grand Rapids Press
In Charles Honey's piece in The Grand Rapids Press we have the following:
"Faith in Jesus, Bell argues, must be repainted for each generation if it is to avoid the fate of his velvet Elvis."
Did Christ commission you to repaint the message of Christianity? This goes back to what I said earlier about the lunatics running the asylum or maybe even employees giving direction to the Board of Directors. Christianity is a finished system. All that is necessary for our salvation has been clearly portrayed by a relatively small group of men that the Holy Spirit worked through to bring it to us. True and authentic Christianity may never appeal to the multitudes or have a kickin' band, but it is effective and has worked for centuries.
"For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 3:11 ESV
It's hard for Americans to grasp this, but God's kingdom is not a democracy. In this country, we are totally unfamiliar with kings and how they work. God is much more like an absolute dictator who has made clear demands on those who will be His subjects. God has been extremely gracious towards us in His provision for our redemption, but you either accept the program as He has defined it, or move on. Even young people, as sincere as they may be, must at some point be willing to have answers given to them from authorities that exist outside themselves.
I believe the biggest fault with Mars Hill and other postmodern gatherings is that they have accepted a form of moral relativism or cafeteria-style religion that lets seekers pick and choose what doctrines they can live with and those they can't - much like a young child will pick apart those things served to him at the dinner table. Christianity means eating your broccoli. It's not gonna all be dessert on this journey. It wasn't for Christ, it wasn't for many of the apostles, and as He's told us, it won't be easy for us either. True believers are gonna have a tough row to hoe in this life. Sermons on breathing in and out might work well for those practicing Yoga or Zen Buddhism, but it ain't gonna cut it on Judgment Day. A whole lot of people who learned how to reduce stress at work or how to get along better with others are going to be screaming as they are cast like kindling into eternal fire. It's that simple, it's that profound and it's that scary.
I've rambled on a bit so I won't go into any detailed analysis of the two sermons I listened to. The first was the one on breathing and the second was a long, drawn-out dramatization about laying down our spears. Neither of these messages were Christian in their nature. I believe in both sermons combined I heard the word Jesus four times. They would work great for Oprah or Zig Ziglar or Robert Schuller, but no clear presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was made in either of them. 10,000 people got ripped off on two separate Sundays. They thought they were going to church. Instead, they went to Mars Hill. I believe there is a huge difference.
Both newspaper articles referred to you has being honest, but from what I've read and heard, you are not being honest with the young people who attend your services. They may leave Mars Hill with a better understanding of relationships or stress or finances or vocation, but they will be badly lacking when it comes to understanding two very simple and timeless things; their fallen nature and separation from God through the Fall and the amazing gift of mercy that Christ has shown to all who are willing to take up their cross and follow Him.
I'm not that much older than you. I am 39 years old and became a Christian in college back in 1984. I've read the entire New Testament and most of the O.T. God has blessed me with a good understanding of Scripture and I can only hope that you will not waste the precious opportunity you have with so many malleable minds to guide them and instruct them in the way of salvation that has been so clearly prescribed by the Great Physician. We're all sick and diseased - sin has left us all with festering wounds and all the happy-clappy worship music and all the self-help sermons in the world won't provide the antibiotic we need - our healing can only come through the wonder-working power of the shed blood of Jesus. Strong medicine for a very sick people. We need it badly.
Thank you for your time, Pastor Bell. I hope what I've laid out in these pages will in some way help you bypass felt needs and address the real needs that all sinners, including young people, have today.
Sincerely,
R.J. Stevens
U P D A T E ! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
My weblog stats show that more people hit my site looking for information on Rob Bell than any other subject. I want to challenge you to take the 10 or 15 minutes necessary to read Mike Horton's excellent piece titled Gnostic Worship, which is linked below. Here are a few excerpts from that article:
"Essential to this Gnostic orientation is the immediacy of the divine-human relationship. At the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther contrasted
"the theology of glory" (held by Roman Catholics and Anabaptists) with
"the theology of the cross" (held by the apostles and the reformers).
Every person, Luther said, is a mystic deep-down. We all want to climb
a ladder into God's presence - whether it's a ladder of experience and
emotion, or a ladder of merit (If you do this, I'll do that, steps to
victory, etc.), or a ladder of speculation (I'm going to figure God out
apart from his public self-disclosure in Scripture). Luther called
this the human longing to see "the naked God."
"We automatically assume that having a personal relationship with God is a good thing. We invite people not so much to confess that they are helpless sinners, spiritually dead and enemies of God, who need to turn from self to rely on Christ alone for salvation, but instead we push them more to enter into a personal relationship with God by experiencing a direct encounter of rebirth. In Scripture, it is not always a good thing to be close to God."
"Throughout the Scriptures, God is only approachable through a human mediator, and he only saves in human history, using human words, and physical earthly elements. Those who attempt to worship God in their own way, find him as much a consuming fire in the New Testament as in the Old (Heb. 12:29). "But that's the Old Testament!", Gnostics will say. Yes, but while much changes in the administration of the covenant between the two testaments, one thing remains the same: The covenant of grace still requires a mediator. We cannot approach God directly. Just as God struck down Nadab and Abihu, so he killed Ananias and Saphira in his presence (Acts 5:1-11)."
Gnostic Worship - by Dr. Michael Horton
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