Rob Bell: A Very Poor Christian “Communicator”

By Ken Silva

Apprising Ministries

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. [1]

Negative Discernment

When this kind of a pitiful example for a Christian pastor, aka as a “communicator” in Emergentese, by Rob Bell which will follow is actually being held up to the Church as a role model, then the level of discernment within the Body of Christ has now officially sunk so low that it is perhaps even into the negative. I must tell you that in “Christian” circles Bell’s stature is already such than for one to write critically of him is seen as having the audacity to actually speak out against “King” Joel Osteen in the amount of hate mail that immediately results. But after careful consideration and prayer I can truthfully say that I really couldn’t care less.

As a matter of fact, I personally don’t find Rob Bell all that interesting. You may know that he is a former punk rocker and this is actually the way he comes across to me. I also work in a local secular high school and I see them every day, a rebellious sort of “young” man whose maturity is such that he is simply bent on doing things his way, and particularly when someone tells him not to do it. And if his followers had just let this piece drop, I would have as well. For the interested reader I discuss this type of issue a bit further in A Different Perspective For Your Consideration.

And so after calling in prayer support from my Reformed brethren here we go with more on the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, MI Rob Bell. In an article entitled A Very Different Type of Communicator from Willow Creek Association’s website this Christian “communicator” tells us:

I just finished reading Marilyn Manson’s autobiography,” he says. “I will read books on design and art, how things are arranged. I'll go to Barnes & Noble and get a stack of 25 magazines–some that have nothing to do with what I care about…just inhale them. I’ll read books on stuff I don’t know anything about…

I’ll read a Yoga book, and realize, ‘Hey they are searching for something here! They are trying to get this experience. Why? Well, because God wired them that way…to seek Him.’ Try reading a book on Buddhism, and see if it doesn’t bring Scriptures to life. What are Buddhists looking for? Enlightenment. Ahh, Ephesians 1–enlightenment! [2]

So God Created Pagan Religions?

Is he serious? If we’re reading this right, and I suspect we are, Bell has now just made the Lord responsible for atheistic heathen striving to unleash their Kundalini serpent power and pagans seeking to go deep within themselves in an attempt to find their divine True Self. Oh, and wouldn’t the fact that what Rob Bell has just said is so open to misinterpretation refute the Emergent notion that he’s some great communicator of the Christian faith? I say Bell should rather have inhaled the Bible and a few books on how to preach the inerrant and infallible Word of the one true and living God contained within because next he tells us something that really wouldn’t be hard too imagine:

“I didn’t get very good grades in preaching class,” Rob Bell admits, “because most understandings of preaching/teaching have a whole bunch of fundamental assumptions about how it's done. You are fitting truth into a prescribed format… And so the deepest truths of the universe then are going to need to get run through a very narrow funnel. For me, the issue is how do I most clearly communicate the truth of this text?” [3]

But what Bell and other deceivers like Brian McLaren and Tony Jones are not telling you is that it’s “the truth of this text” through their own “very narrow” postmodern “funnel.” Rob, let me communicate something to you. These “fundamental assumptions” are cardinal doctrines of the Christian Church e.g. the Bible as the Word of God and the Deity of Christ. Oh, and one you deny, His vicarious penal substitutionary atonement on the Cross. As a pastor you should know that the “prescribed format” is your command to preach the word. [4] And that “very narrow funnel” is what Jesus, Whom you claim to follow, referred to as the way that is narrow in Matthew 7:14, peace. 

No, this is most certainly not the kind of “communicator” we need in the Church of Jesus Christ warping the minds of our young, and yet the highly influential Rob Bell is the exactly the type of “pastor” who has now been given such a huge forum through the schismatic and highly divisive neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church.

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. [5]

see also:

ROB BELL: SALVATION FANTASIES (PART 2)

ROB BELL: SALVATION FANTASIES

ROB BELL AND THE EMERGENT MYTH

THE WORLDLY WISDOM OF ROB BELL

ROB BELL FAILS THE TEST

By Ken Silva Click here for bio and archived articles