In an interview with Rob Bell earlier this year, CT senior managing editor Mark Galli asked the Mars Hill Bible Church pastor how he would present the gospel on Twitter. Bell replied:
I would say that history is headed somewhere. The thousands of little ways in which you are tempted to believe that hope might actually be a legitimate response to the insanity of the world actually can be trusted. And the Christian story is that a tomb is empty, and a movement has actually begun that has been present in a sense all along in creation. And all those times when your cynicism was at odds with an impulse within you that said that this little thing might be about something bigger—those tiny little slivers may in fact be connected to something really, really big.
In his response, Bell provoked a fair bit of criticism in the blogosphere (as he did again last week when he told The Boston Globe, “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.”)
But Galli pointed out that he was cheating anyway. His answer was a lot more than 140 characters. “You can’t really tweet the gospel,” Bell replied.
Well, last night, Bell gave it a second shot on his Twitter feed: “The gospel is the counterintuitive, joyous, exuberant news that Jesus has brought the unending, limitless, stunning love of God to even us.”
At 117 characters, he even left enough to retweet.
