Rob Bell is a founding pastor of Mars Hills Bible Church, one of the largest religious gatherings in the United States. Bell started the group when he was 28 with only a few followers and without a regular place to meet.
According to Christianity Today, Bell founded Mars Hill Bible Church in 1999, spending 18 months gathering in a school gym before expanding to a former mall in Grandville, Mich.
Initially a traditionalist, Bell caused controversy when he embraced a more modern approach to his spirituality. “Many dismissed him as a modern-day heretic, unwilling to embrace traditional evangelical beliefs about the hereafter,”
reports The Huffington Post.
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Throughout his ordeals, Bell has provided hope to many, as evidenced by these eight quotes from his writings:
1. “To say it again, eternal life is less about a kind of time that starts when we die, and more about a quality and vitality of life now in connection to God.”
2. “What we do comes out of who we believe we are.”
3. “Opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, dreams… that is being naked.”
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4. “Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.”
5. “When you’re a pastor, your heart and soul and paycheck and doubts and faith and hopes and struggles and intellect and responsibility are all wrapped up together in a life/job that is very public.”
6. “What we see in these passages is God meeting people, tribes, and cultures right where they are and drawing and inviting and calling them forward, into greater and greater shalom and respect and rights and peace and dignity and equality. It's as if human history were progressing along a trajectory, an arc, a continuum; and sacred history is the capturing and recording of those moments when people became aware that they were being called and drawn and pulled forward by the divine force and power and energy that gives life to everything.”
7. “An evangelical is someone who, when they leave the room, you have more hope than when they entered.”
8. “I embrace the term 'evangelical,' if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That's a beautiful sort of thing.”
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