RobCast - The Podcast by Rob Bell

Rob Bell has created a podcast entitled "Robcast". It is not bad if you like Rob Bell but if you don't then you might not. I happen to like him and so I am enjoying the "Robcast". 

"Salmon River" by Fredlyfish4 at the English language Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salmon_River.JPG#/media/File:Salmon_River.JPG

In the second episode Bell spoke of the saying: first a mountain is a mountain and a river is a river, then a mountain is not a mountain and a river is not a river, and then a mountain is a mountain and a river is a river again.

Bell goes through and talks about how when we are young we believe things are what others tell us they are. A river is a river and a mountain is a mountain. God is in heaven, Jesus died for you, etc.

At some point in our lives we begin to question everything. This is natural and only the most insecure of adults fear this when they see younger generations go through this process of deconstructing. A river is no longer a river and a mountain is no longer a mountain. God is not in heaven, Jesus did not die for you specifically, etc.

This is where the challenge is. Once we deconstruct the things in our lives, the next part of life is to reconstruct something out of those pieces. Over time many of the things that we learned when we were small and then broke apart begin to make sense in a different way than they did before. We may not believe that God is an actual man in the clouds, but we are comfortable talking about the hands and feet of God once again. We understand things in a different way even though we may use language we previously dismissed. The river is a river again, and the mountain is a mountain again. God is in heaven, Jesus died for you, etc. 

Not everything will return. That is true. After Seminary I cannot go back to seeing God exclusively as a male. After my sons were born I cannot go back to seeing God as demanding the death of Jesus. After seeing where the logic takes me, I can no longer affirm that everything happens for a reason. There are somethings that may be discarded for a long time.

First a mountain is a mountain and a river is a river, then a mountain is not a mountain and a river is not a river, and then a mountain is a mountain and a river is a river again.

Spiritual Virtuoso

A couple of months ago I read James K. Wellman's book entitled Rob Bell and the New American Christianity. It is interesting to use Rob Bell as a case study for speculating the future of American Christianity because Bell's theological understandings have been over simplified from the back lash of Love Wins*. 

Bell's theology not only is influenced by Process Theology and Rene Girard but also things like spiral dynamics integral and Radical Theology and Evangelicalism. Bell, like each one of us, is much more complex than we like to believe. 

Anyway, one of the things that Wellman talks about are people who are "Spiritual Virtuosos". I cannot recall if he coined this term or is citing some research on this sort of topic, but nonetheless the phrase "Spiritual Virtuoso" captured my imagination. 

Here are a list of embodied qualities of a "Spiritual Virtuoso":

• inner personal authority
• confidence mixed with vulnerability
• willingness to break with religious customs for the sake of spiritual and moral principles
• detachment from, though not a rejection of, social structures
• ascetic—practicing self-denial relative to physical and sexual needs
• little interest in gaining followers, or creating a social movement
• focused on personal salvation and more other-worldly
• willingness to embrace martyrdom
• followers are attached to principles over person (less forgiving of a leader’s faults)
• authentic humility and openness

I don't know what to do with this at this point, but I wonder if one is born or one becomes a virtuoso. Do the Spiritual Disciplines help create virtuosity? 

There are a number of great insights in this book and I encourage anyone interested in the future of American Christianity to consider reading this. 

One of my favorite lines from this book? 

Laughing as he said, ‘One of the most lethal aspects of that word—heretic—is that it ends discussions, rather than starts them.’ Turning more serious, Bell warns, ‘And that’s why I think it’s so dangerous. It ends discussion, and it’s holding hands with violence.’

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*The thing about it though is that Love Wins is really not as controversial as Jesus Wants to Save Christians, but Love Wins is a 'sexier' topic. 

2 Days Not with Rob Bell - SermonCraft

Just a side project my friend Rev. Steve Heyduck and I have been working on. I share this as an example of how I am reinventing the wheel (see last post). As they say, you cannot preach what you do not practice. (well I guess you can but that is the mark of a jerk.)

In case you are wondering, yes, this is a variation of the Rob Bell "CraftLabs"  which you can find some thoughts from bloggers who attended here. However just a few distinctions between what we are doing and Rob Bell:

• We charge $30/person not $500/person
• No one will attend something just because we put something together
• Our celebrity power is 1/1,000,000,000 the size of Rob Bell
• Less lecturing from us and more collaboration
• No surfing but there is art
• Less fish tacos and more nachos and beer

We have 20 slots and as of today, 15 are spoken for. So that is cool.