Catalyst 09 :: Rob Bell

Rob Bell lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he’s the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church. Rob teaches in a short-film format called NOOMA, and his written four books: Velvet Elvis; Repainting the Christian Faith, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality, Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile, and Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering. His tours, Everything is Spiritual and The Gods Aren’t Angry, are available in DVD format.

• IS BIGGER BETTER?
• There are lots of questions and truths that we would cognitive ascent to that we would intellectually affirm and yet the truth is that we think and feel and a driven by deep subterranean forces way down in our bones that actually drive us and make us think and feel in particular ways.
• These things drive and shape us and create the filter by which we engage the world around us.
• John 6
• Many of Jesus disciples no longer followed Him after He preached this message.
• Jesus has to confront misconceptions about the Messiah, about power, the wilderness, and what the truth of God looked like in changing times.
• Sometimes the crowd thins and people leave.
• There’s things we talk about: women in church, war, doubt, faith,  etc. that sometimes thins our crowd.
• When you talk about the flag and cross – our primary allegiance is to the cross.
• Faith and doubt dance together.
• What would Jesus say to modern church growth experts?
• He would say, “I love your passion… and yes, you can do this… and yes, sometimes there are large crowds… parking problems… but sometimes the crowd thins, not everyone will go with you. Sometimes people leave you.”
• Sometimes large groups of people say, “enough.”
• Luke 21 – the widow’s offering.
• The widow put in more when really she put in less; the people had more who put in more actually put in less.
• Inverse fidelity – less is more.
• Her less is more.
• Why do we have Christian organizations ranking local bodies and leaders who all say they are following a man who said, “the last shall be first.”
• Put your crack pipe down! If you’re on the list, get off!
• Standard fidelity gets implanted in my mind.
• What actually shapes how we think, feel, and behave is impacted by that.
• We are a Eucharist .
• How does the good gift work?
• Jesus body was broken and His blood was poured out.
• The body of Christ is a living and breathing Eucharist.
• We pour ourselves out so that others can receive life.
• If someone else takes, someone has given.
• If someone learns, someone taught.
• There’s a cost. That’s how the Eucharist works.
• We break  ourselves open and pour ourselves out for the healing and saving of the world.
• A church is a Eucharist for its city.
• How can we break ourselves open and pour ourselves out so tha t this context we are in might experience the healing, saving grace of the God who loves us.
• Eucharist is a sacred, holy thing.
• Your own Eucharist, your own gift to the people you give to, the gift of your community, is a holy, sacred thing.
• The gift comes from a deep place of humility.
• You surrender yourself when you give yourself away in humility.
• When you exploit that and break it down and rank it and analyze it, it violates the sacred, holy nature of the Eucharist.
• Don’t demean what God has given you.
• Jesus sees the world in a whole new way.
• John 5, Jesus speaks of the place where He comes from.
• “The Son can do nothing by Himself, He can only do what He sees His father doing…”
• Whatever the Father does, the Son does also.
• We don’t have to do anything we don’t see the Father doing.
• His work comes from a grounded, centered, calm place where He only has a few things to do and sets about doing them.
• He’s not distracted or stressed.
• His work comes from a particular plac.e
• Whatever God has for you to do may be costly.
• There’s a difference between hard, difficult and costly and a burden.
• He won’t give you something you can’t handle.
• Exodus 20 is the 10 commandments
• The first of the nine commands are externally mesurable/observable.
• Obeying the 10th is a reward for obeying the first 9.
• When you obey God you won’t want what someone else has.
• You won’t want anybody else’s life because yours will be just fine.
• Jesus says to us exactly where you are, “Blessed are you…”
• God wants to set you free from the anxiety and burden you carry about feeling like you have to measure up to others.
• God wants to set you free from the stress of size.
• Enjoy the place where you’re at and the work that is in front of you.
• The Gospel is counterintuitive.
• Love your neighbor of yourself.
• Is there any way you’ve neglected to take care of yourself because of the allusion that you have to keep going all the time.
• You need to be fulfilled with energy and vitality so you can love what you do more than you did before.
• Have you been observing a Sabbath?
• Which day of the week can we NOT get ahold of you because your cell phone is turned off?
• Which day of the week do you not respond to emails?
• Which day of the week are your busy doing NOTHING?
• Which day of the week are you feeding your own soul so you can then turn and feed others.
• Until we take care of ourselves, we can’t properly care for others.
• Oftentimes our drive to work and to produce is driven by an unhealthy motive.
• REPENT. Change your thinking.
• Start with yourselves.
• Does your spouse get your very best or does your spouse get what’s left over after you’ve given your best to your church, to what you are building?
• Hopefully your spouse will be there for the whole journey.
• Jesus wants to make sure that the people who are proclaiming peace and life are feeling and experiencing it in the deepest, most intimate levels of our lives.
• Do your kids get your very best?
• How often to do they see you say, “No!” to the demands that would try to take you away from them?
• We feed the machine and in the process the things and people around us aren’t thriving.
• God has given us just a few things to do… just do them.
• Your work and your family are inextricably linked.
• If it’s not going well with your family, it’s not going well with your ministry.
• We ignore one at the peril of the other.
• We need to live a centered, whole, peaceful life in the center of God’s love.
• Bigger brings more. More brings more with it. Let other people have more.
• You have your simple, beautiful work ahead of you.
• That’s good news.

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