We’d been to Mars Hill (Grand Rapids) once before, but Rob Bell was away as was his worship team. The guest speaker was from an African-American congregation on the east side of town, and he brought his worship team with him. “This is the first time I’ve ever experienced two different churches in one service;” my wife quipped at the time.
I wrote about the church on the old blog, but I’ll begin by repeating a few things.
The church is located in a former shopping mall. There’s no sign outside the building to tell you that you’re in the right place. If you want to pick up the latest NOOMA video, or Rob’s new book Drops Like Stars (just released by Zondervan), there’s a sign suggesting you do so at the local Christian bookstore. Nothing is for sale here.
Between services, the coffee and donuts tables are buzzing. To compliment the “Joy Boxes” for offering — Mars Hill takes no collection during the service — there are “Joe Boxes” to pay for coffee if you wish. Kids come and go from various age appropriate rooms, which are actually the former stores of this former mall.
The main auditorium, pictured here is called “The Shed,” and belonged to whoever was the former anchor tenant. The picture doesn’t adequately attest to the large seating capacity.
Very little has been done to spruce up the room. As someone observed recently, “When you visit Mars Hill, you get a sense right away that much of what this church is doing is taking place somewhere else.”
The worship team performs facing each other; essentially facing the same direction as the rest of the congregation. There’s no performance/audience thing going on here.
So catching up to this week: Having missed Rob previously, this Sunday we returned for the full Rob Bell experience. We were not disappointed. The sermon, appropriate to it being a communion service Sunday, was about confession. I could go into detail about the sermon itself, but hey, you can just download it. (Always linked on this blog under “sermons.”)
Bell preaches “in the round” as they called it years ago at Melodyland in California. “In the cube,” might be more appropriate here. He walks around constantly, but he does favor some sides of the audience slightly more than others, and on this score, we luck out and get more visual benefit. Plus we’re sitting just four rows back. He’s a bundle of energy throughout. He’s taller and skinnier than he looks on video.
Rob in person is better than Rob on podcast. The sermon begins after two short worship songs. No waiting. He launches right in, with the first of four story illustrations that will carry this message. There isn’t going to be three points and a poem at the end; really Rob has one main point which he will weave in and out of; but then again, there are a number of sub-points that are going to hit a lot of people where they live. He works largely without notes and there are only three or four Powerpoint-style ‘slides.’
He talks about a neighbor who does standup comedy, including a routine as Father Tim, an Irish priest. It’s a funny story, but then, who shows up walking down a main aisle, but Father Tim himself. Rob”s description of him makes it hard for ‘the real thing’ to live up to the reputation. The woman in front of Mrs. W. is clearly uncomfortable with this, as might be any ex- or current-Catholic.
Rob moves on quickly to talk about an art class he and his sons took this week with one of the country’s top animators. He seizes on a unique moment in the class that ties in directly with where he’s headed.
Then he pulls a baloon from his pocket and shows how deception grows bigger with each lie that has to be told to cover an earlier lie. It seems like a slightly different topic at first, but he’s trying to illustrate how the confession of a lie is a daunting prospect if the lie has gotten large enough; but the release of the balloon’s pressure also illustrates the pressure that is lifted when we come clean. (Some of their kids program is canceled for the summer, so I’m sure the kids were watching closely during this part of the message.)
His final illustration is about how God responds when we confess, it involves a kid at a MacDonald’s restaurant who is — well… you’re gonna have to download the MP3 file for the rest of that story.
Communion is an absolutely beautiful experience. Twelve tables, three on each side; and Mrs. W. remarks later there is no one ‘presiding over’ them. You just walk up and take a wafer and dip in the cup. But returning to our seats, I notice there was also the option of walking to a 13th station on the stage itself, at the foot of the cross there. I watch as people do this. One of the worship band members tells me later that they get a close-up view of a lot of special moments taking place in peoples’ lives.
Most of the worship is stacked at the end of the service while communion is taking place. Five more songs, coming from a real variety of worship sources, with a variety of instrumentation and vocals.
At the end of Rob’s sermon, I remember that there’s a clock at the back that I haven’t consulted since we started. It says 11:39. What? Did we start at 10 AM or 11 AM? No, we started at 11. Has all that I’ve experienced happened in only 39 minutes? Apparently so; it’s a commendable economy of time. With communion and worship, the service continues on to about 12:10.
Eavesdropping on conversations in the lobby, it turns out there are a lot of visitors like us. Some are doing a post-game analysis of the worship, trying to remember ideas they can take back home with them. Others are visiting relatives in Michigan. Not surprising, since Rob began the service by welcoming “all of you who woke up in a different state, and drove for hours to get here.”
It’s that acknowledgment that the church is a bit of a tourist attraction that makes me decide to skip the handshake. After driving eight hours, I think I deserve one, but that would be entirely the wrong reason. Besides, I enjoy my brief contact with the guy in the worship team.
And what would I have said to Rob Bell? Probably just, “Thanks, I really enjoyed finally getting to hear you in person.”
Next: Further thoughts from our visit to Mars Hill, under the title, “The Hundred Mile Church Diet.”
Here’s the link for Rob’s “Drops Like Stars” tour. Click on “tour dates” near the bottom.
Had we come a week later, we would have caught the next sermon in the Spiritual Practices series, “Why We Sing.” I’m looking forward to that download on or after July 26th. Be sure to bookmark the link. (See “sermons” in our linklist at right.)