Rob Bell
201 pages
Rob Bell’s second book seemed to be an extremely ambitious undertaking at first glance and seemed to be moving in a direction that you wouldn’t expect, however after reading this book it doesn’t seem so ambitious any longer, it doesn’t seem so “out there” and rather it just makes sense. I will admit that I was a little skeptical of this book when I first heard about it, and I did think it a bizarre move, but I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. This isn’t as controversial a book as the title suggests.
I was very pleased with this book and will probably use it as a book for pre-marital counseling—but don’t get me wrong, it can certainly be used in a far broader context.
This is a hard book to review, not because it wasn’t any good, but because there is so much in it that could be talked about. It reads very much like Velvet Elvis did and is just as interesting and well written. If you listen to a lot of Rob Bell’s sermons online, there might be some overlap and some concepts that you’ve heard him talk about before, but there is plenty of new material to chew on and wrestle with that makes it worth a read.
Related posts:
- Faith of My Fathers (a review)
- the art of mentoring: letters to a young evangelical (a review)
- Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelicals Lament (a review)
- evil and the justice of God (a review)
- the myth of a christian nation (a review)
So, did you like Velve Elvis. I’ve thought about buying it, but paging through it at the bookstore on several occasions I’ve gotten the impression that it lacks substance. The font and margins are also set in a way that makes me want to count the words just to see if he wrote what could be called a full book. I’ve half joking on that last point.
Bring it with to the conversation Tuesday night, so I can borrow it!
good question adam… is velvet elvis worth the buy? i would say yes—however, it’s not that long of a book, so if you can find it on amazon for a cheaper price (in the used section) or at half.com i’d recommend going that route.
jason, i’ll bring it… but i’ll need it back fairly quickly as some of that book will be making it’s way into my thesis…
scot mcknight has posted a good critique of bell’s book that gives some good scholarly information about this book… you can find the post here. i would highly recommend taking a look at this post!
also, i’ve had some really good conversations with people about this book—and the general consensus seems to be, a lot of hype for not a lot… i’ll disagree with that a bit, because if the title of the book weren’t so “controversial” as well as the chapter titles, i think it’d actually make the book a lot better—as it stands now, it makes you think it’s controversial when in fact it’s really not.