(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!")

I've heard plenty of pastors moan that they don't have time to research or rehearse their messages to the degree that someone like Bell does. But I'm not sure this excuse always holds water. Perhaps we need to reclaim the rightfully high priority of preaching and teaching amidst the myriad of other ministerial duties.

A second lesson we can learn from Bell has to do with evangelism in a postmodern era. It's no mistake that the church Bell helped start in 1999 is called Mars Hill Bible Church: I think Bell has identified the postmodern version of "the unknown god" and is attempting to proclaim Jesus in the midst of this pantheon.

Rather than engage hearers by first trying to convince them of their guilt before a righteous God, Bell starts with what the hearers already know: we are deeply ashamed of not being good enough. This approach short circuits the postmodern tendency to make everything relative and pin religious conviction as "someone else's truth." In this regard, Bell resembles others (John Stackhouse and Alan Mann, among others) in noting how the universal God-longing shows up in this particular era and how Christians can witness effectively these days. It's worth church leaders' time to notice Bell's apologetics and learn from his example the Pauline imperative to address the psyche of our host culture.

A third lesson for church leaders has to do with entrepreneurship: Bell has a knack for finding untapped spiritual markets and addressing them. For most of us, the only people who listen to our preaching tapes are shut-ins taking a break from watching The Price Is Right. And we can forget about many hipsters stepping over each other to hear us preach. But Bell can get schleps like me to pay $13 (which in Ticketmaster dollars turns out to be $20) to hear him preach and fork over $10 for one of his 12-minute Nooma teaching DVDs.

The bottom line is that this guy has figured out how to exploit markets; and I don't mean in simply consumer terms. Instead, I mean that Bell senses what people really want and need and then finds a way to get it to them. Church leaders could learn from such entrepreneurship, especially the part about "finding a way to get it to them." To get his message out that the gods aren't angry, Bell leveraged music halls and concert venues, Ticketmaster and other sales and distribution companies, credit card companies, and, of course, a website. How many of us are going through the same motions we've been going through for decades? If the message is worth getting out, it's worth finding (and, yes, exploiting) the venues and vehicles best suited for getting it out and making it happen.

I suspect that Bell frequently rouses two useless responses among church leaders. Some will sit on the sidelines, buy his stuff, marvel at his ability, and applaud his efforts. Others will sit in the peanut gallery, heckle his success, and condemn him for what they deem poor theology or inappropriate this or that. I'd encourage church leaders to find a third response: learn what we can from Rob Bell, then get off our keisters and do something. After all, perhaps the best lesson from Bell is that he's attempting something for the kingdom.

Chad Hall is an executive coach with SAS Institute Inc. in Cary, North Carolina. He's also the co-author of Coaching for Christian Leaders: A Practical Guide and Vice President of The Columbia Partnership.

To respond to this newsletter, visit our blog, Out of Ur, and read Chad Hall's second article on the traveling Bell show, "Heresy on Tour?" You can post your comments there.

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