Pastor who questioned hell discusses his departure

Posted: Monday, September 26, 2011 8:03 pm

GRANDVILLE, Mich. (AP) — The pastor of a West Michigan megachurch, who raised a storm of controversy within evangelical Christianity this year with his book questioning traditional beliefs about hell, told his congregants Sunday that they’ll do fine without him.
“You’re going to be great,” Rob Bell said repeatedly during services at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, The Grand Rapids Press reported. Bell announced Thursday that he planned to step down.
Mars Hill, near Grand Rapids, has grown in 12 years under his leadership and now can draw 10,000 on a Sunday. Bell has made online videos and written other books that have been popular among younger evangelicals.
Bell said he would address the “giant, glowing, loud” elephant in the sanctuary.
“We’ve had this beautiful thing, you and me,” he told congregants. “And now, we let go of how it was and open ourselves up to how it is and will be.”
Bell’s book, “Love Wins,” questions the traditional Christian belief that a select number of believers will spend eternity in heaven while everyone else is tormented in hell. He has said he wrote the book because the Christian message that God is love seems to have gotten lost.
Bell will remain in the area for teaching work until December. He said he will be relocating to Los Angeles, a move he’s been considering for “a couple months.”
“It’s come time for my family and I to take another leap into the unknown,” Bell said.
He said he is not starting another church but will continue to write, adding that he has “at least three more” books in his head.
In April, Bell said he not only didn’t set out to be controversial, but that he had no idea his best-seller, “Love Wins,” would bring condemnation from people like Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler, who said Bell was leading people astray.
“The last couple of weeks have been most painful in my life,” the Michigan pastor told about 1,600 people back then at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. “It has taken me to a place of profound brokenness.”
He criticized what he called “evacuation theology,” or the idea that “Jesus is your ticket to somewhere else.”  Published in The Messenger 9.26.11