Leadership Journal

(Editor's note: Rob Bell has taken his act on the road. His act is a thoroughgoing Genesis-to-Revelation presentation of the gospel. And the crowds love it. Founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Bell is known for his Nooma videos and his book Velvet Elvis. Now, he is drawing large numbers of young people, seekers, and church stalwarts to arenas and auditoriums. His views are not without controversy, even among his contemporaries. You can read more about the tour and the debate in a posting at our blog, Out of Ur. Here, our correspondent Chad Hall offers some lessons he's distilled from Bell's recent appearances.)

From what I hear, most stops along Rob Bell's month-long "The Gods Aren't Angry" tour have sold out. And if his Raleigh, North Carolina stop serves as any indication, the people buying the tickets include plenty of church leaders. While Bell's Raleigh appearance attracted plenty of "skinny white dudes" (a friend's term of endearment for the waif-like hipsters who dotted the 1,700 seat Meymandi Concert Hall), he also drew church leaders from across generational and denominational lines. I spotted friends from Presbyterian, Methodist, Evangelical Covenant, Church of God, Baptist, and non-denominational tribes. While I don't think Bell holds himself out as a spokesperson to church leaders, seeing pastors drive up with vans full of parishioners got me thinking about what church leaders can learn from Rob Bell. I believe we can draw three lessons from Bell's ministry.

First, Bell reminds us that words used well have incredible power. This guy has some serious oratory skills, as witnessed by how he held the attention of the crowd in Raleigh. From my seat in the concert hall, I noticed only three people step out during the 100-minute event: one took a phone call, another had a crying infant, and all I know about the third is that he walked in with a cupful of beer as the event started. Obviously Bell can compete with all but the strongest of urges, but how does he do it?

Part of what makes Bell such a good communicator has to do with how he develops his material. It's easy to appreciate the way Bell approaches speaking as an art and craft. Like popular writers Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink) or Stephen Levitt (Freakonomics), Bell gleans from various fields, sifts through a slew of facts, and weaves just the right ones together with golden narrative threads. I doubt Bell is a specialist in any of the fields from which he draws (Scripture, Judaic history, ancient literature, and modern anthropology, to name a few), but he knows enough to gauge what to say, what to leave out, and how to make it all interesting. Every church leader need not engage the exact topics as Bell (though the Scriptures are worth a deeper look for any of us), but we'd do well to find our own fields to explore and learn how to expertly craft sermons that incorporate insights from the corners of God's creation.

Bell's ability in developing material is matched by his ability in delivering it. What strikes me most is that he seems interested in what he's saying. His delivery reminds me of someone who's just discovered something remarkable and has decided to tool over to the next-door neighbor's house and share the finding. His delivery has that kind of freshness and intensity to it. Apparently, he's interested enough in what he's saying that he commits it to memory. ("Look, Mom, 90 minutes with no notes!")

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