Thursday 3 March 2011

Inspiring preaching

Over the last six months I have been listening to and incredibly blessed by the teaching of Mars Hill and their main teachers Rob Bell and Shane Hipps. You may have heard of Rob Bell from his Nooma films.

These two preachers take you on a journey, they tell you the story, the setting and share insight and observations. They build a cathedral of words which they invite you to come in and stand and enjoy the wonder of the the word and the world of God.

The last two series that I listened to were on the Jesus' parables and currently Ecclesiastes.

Jesus' parables are often 'simple' stories but digging deeper we see the profound riches within. Take the story of the man who finds treasure in a field, buys the field with all he has and puts the treasure back in the field. This treasure is not so much hidden as in plain sight to those who have their eyes opened to discover it and what is the field that the treasure is in and then re-buried into if not our lives?

The latest series on Ecclesiastes is so encouraging! Meaningless? A better word to read instead would be temporary (the Hebrew word is Havel) - "everything is temporary". So the teacher exhorts us to live a life of joy and peace with God, others and ourselves because everything is temporary.

So if you want to try something a bit different go check them out at itunes or you watch an excellent video clip of Rob Bell talking about resurrection (below). You could even see him for real this year at Greenbelt.

Resurrection: Rob Bell from Rob Bell on Vimeo.

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