From Shane Hipp’s blog… I learned when I become a pastor that it is a unique vocation.  Becoming a leader in any profession can be a lonely experience.  This isn’t always bad, in many ways it forces you to grow up fast.  In time you learn to allow the loneliness to become a divine ingredient in cultivating depth and resilience. Over the years I learned to befriend it as a teacher.  And as I’ve said here before, there is a difference between being alone, and being lonely. When I accepted the call to become the co-teacher with a beloved friend it was a strange experience.  We were...

Rob Bell’s last Sunday at Mars Hill in Michigan at the end of last year.  According to MLive.com, the Sunday services wrapped months of transition for the church following Bell’s September resignation and subsequent move to the Los Angeles area to create an ABC television drama with ‘Lost’ producer Carlton Cuse, loosely based on Bell’s life. It was in a final sermon in December that he shared with the church what he called a confession — his last message: “I feel like I’m just getting started, like I’m a rookie, a freshman, a newb,” he told a gathering of several...

dear  mars hill, to all the brothers and  sisters of this church to those who have  been  here from  the beginning—who remember the  old building, who braved that one ten foot wide hallway, clogged shoulder to shoulder with people leaving the  hangar to pick up their children who had  spent the  previous hour packed into oxygen  deprived classrooms to those who hiked  through the snow and  slush and  mud  that first day to sit on the floor who idled  in long traffic jams to listen to sermons from the book of Leviticus on blood and  guts and fire and  then  to those of you who...

Mars Hill Bible Church pastor, Rob Bell told his congregation last month that he was leaving the ministry after 12 years of service – a move that has many questioning whether the megachurch can “thrive” without its founding pastor. “You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be great. You’re not just going to survive. You’re going to thrive,” Bell told his Grandville, Mich., 7000-member congregation, according to MLive.com “A church is bigger than one person,” he added. However, Todd Cioffi, professor of congregational and ministry studies at Calvin College disagreed, the...

Rob Bell’s editor (and Senior VP at HarperOne) Mickey Maudlin speaks out on the book he helped publish:  Love Wins: As a young evangelical, I was socialized to see the biggest threat to the church as theological liberalism. But now I think the biggest threat is Christian tribalism, where God’s interests are reduced to and measured by those sharing your history, tradition, and beliefs, and where one needs an “enemy” in order for you to feel “right with God.” Such is the challenge facing the church today and what the reaction to Love Wins reveals. So...