Welcome to the first of a new series where I will be blogging pen portraits of some people I find interesting in this year’s Greenbelt festival line-up. The series will be irregular, unsystematic and heavily biased. I hope, however, you might also find it relatively interesting as a way of finding people to go and see at the festival.
Who is Rob Bell?
The first pen portrait is Rob Bell. Founding Pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Rob Bell is often best known for being a speaker, writer and producer of the Nooma series of short films, used by Christian groups up and down the country.
Mars Hill church has a good name for being a mega church that as much as possible tries not to feel like a mega church – it does some good stuff and tries to focus on simplicity and honesty in relationships.
Rob Bell himself is the author of numerous books, including ‘God wants to save Christians’, ‘Velvet Elvis’, ‘The God’s aren’t angry’ and most recently released the controversial new book, ‘Love Wins’, where he questions assumptions often held in Evangelical circles about the nature of heaven, hell, judgement and God.