Core magazine

“Ultimately the purpose of the church is to serve it’s city, and that’s the point.”

Rob Bell is author of controversial books such as ‘Velvet Elvis’ and ‘Sexgod’, founder of the Nooma DVD series and pastor of Mars Hill Church, Grand Rapids. Core met with Rob Bell on a recent UK tour.

Core: In the western world, if the church has to become something, what do you see that it’s going to become?
Rob: Well, I think the church needs to get saved. You have a larger collection of resources, talent and money than ever in the history of the world. You have a billion people in the world who don’t have drinking water. 2.6 billion people don’t have adequate sanitation. 800 million people will go to bed tonight hungry. So you have greater needs than the world has ever seen and a greater gathering of resources than ever.

Jesus said if somebody’s thirsty give them water, if somebody’s hungry… it’s not very hard. So if the church does not convert that blessing to the blessing of others, you end up in a sort of exile. That’s the Hebrew story, you end up in exile. You have not done what God blessed you to do, which is to maintain justice and righteousness.
We mustn’t find ourselves irrelevant to the purposes of God, because somebody else will do it. Somebody organised Live 8, somebody organised the One Campaign, Make Poverty History, Oxfam. I mean, somebody else will do it.

…For more from the interview, see issue 2 of Core