Church Basement Roadshow

I kind of wish I was going to be in town for this:

Though I will be happy to be in Panama City Beach, FL……

Enlightment and Understanding

I once heard someone criticize Rob Bell.

That’s an understatement if I’ve ever made one. In fact, I’ve heard more people criticize Rob Bell than praise him, even in the midst of a “post-modern” generation that seems to venerate him. But I do like him, mostly for his ability to cast a vision for a church that understands the Gospel as a message about Hope for the world and not just an individualized advertisement of personal fulfillment. I can find plenty to criticize about his theology and views. Truth be told, I can find much to criticize about anyone. You can find much that maligns me without effort. I don’t pretend to be a man without faults; you shouldn’t expect others to be faultless.

The particular instance I want to throw out has to do with the Bible. I thought about this a few minutes ago as I walked across the OSU campus and got offered a Gideon New Testament. A speaker at a conference I attended over a year ago got on one of the now normative rants on the emerging church. Either in Velvet Elvis or one of his sermons, Rob once made a comment about how dangerous it can be to read the Gospels without a proper understanding of first-century Jewish culture (I’m sure he put it much better). The speaker’s retort was “if what Mr. Bell says is true, then how could the Gospel have any effect on an uneducated tribal member who gets a copy of the Gospel of John in his language for the very first time?” He assumed his question had a rhetorical reflection in it–of course the Gospel is powerful for that man.

What if we gave this same man a copy of Huckleberry Finn in his native language?

Would it be effective? Would it be transformational? I don’t mean to compare the Bible to Huckleberry Finn. What I mean to do is show you that this man wouldn’t have the proper cultural insights to understand many of the things in the Gospel of John; however, he also wouldn’t have the education or the background to understand much of what goes on in Huckleberry Finn. Here’s what he would have:

Relationships. Passion. Struggle. Reality. Love. Hate. Triumph. Energy. Relationships.

And, my friends, those things are effective. They are transformational. This tribal man wouldn’t be swept away by some zingy one-liner, as we in Western cultures often emphasize. He would be struck by people. By their love, their devotion, their faith–their relationships.

Stories connect with people. Passionate lives incite change. Relationships are everything, relationships are everywhere. When is the last time you approached scripture as a relational book, not as a book of facts or inspiring one-liners?