Spiritual Heroes: Rob Bell

Love Always Wins: Rob Bell’s gravitational pull and my journey to fullness

By: Rev. Genevieve Hosterman

A few months before we both graduated from high school, I had a heart-to-heart with a friend of mine. We were anxious and uncertain, perched on the edge of our first big leap into adult life, so we leaned into hope, sharing our wild dreams for the lives we hoped to build.

In the course of the conversation, I said to her, “Someday I hope I can be as influential and well-known as Rob Bell.”

To which my teenage friend replied, “You might want to aim higher, because I have no idea who that is.”

For the uninitiated, Rob Bell is a preacher and author who is most well-known for his incendiary book Love Wins, in which he challenges popular notions about heaven and hell and asks the question: What if, in the end, love wins, and not eternal punishment? His challenge to popular notions about hell was not well-received in more conservative corners of Christendom – I remember when all of Rob Bell’s books and DVDs were removed from my local Christian bookstore after Love Wins came out.  

Ironically, I first came to know Rob Bell a few years earlier, when a conservative Christian relative of mine shared a set of DVD devotionals with me. The series, called NOOMA, was a collection of 10-15 minute videos about theological topics like envy, forgiveness, service, and discipleship. In each video, Bell’s preaching was interwoven with compelling visual storytelling and a soundtrack that defined my musical taste for years.  

I watched those DVDs over and over again, dreaming about hearing Rob Bell speak in person, or becoming a member of his Michigan mega-church Mars Hill. So, as you can imagine, I was thrilled when he announced his new book about heaven and hell.

I was a Freshman in high school when Love Wins came out, and I asked for a copy of it for Christmas. When I opened it, my relatives were understandably confused–it was an odd thing to find on a teenager’s Christmas list. But I could not have been happier.

I grew up in an environment that didn’t quite know what to do with me. I was a young person with a deep love for the church, which was well-received by the adults in my orbit (and tolerated by my peers). But I was also relentlessly inquisitive, testing everything I was taught about God, and my questions were not always so well-received.  

I was born in South Africa as a child of missionaries (who returned home shortly afterward), and the majority of my extended family is conservative Christian. From the very beginning, the Church was a foundational part of my life; some of my sweetest childhood memories include a hymn or a bible verse shared in a tender moment of comfort.

But my mom, who is now openly gay, had a very different experience of the Church. Abused and traumatized by Christians who refused to love her as she is, she left Christianity when I was very young. And her story shaped me, too.

I struggled with the reality that something so beneficial to me could be so hurtful to someone I loved. It is one (awful) thing to be told that gay people are going to hell. It’s an entirely different thing to realize that your mom would be among them. Growing up, there was nothing I needed more than for somebody to write Love Wins.

In that book, I found a different vision of Christianity - one that made space for my questions and concerns, and empowered me to reject harmful theology and imagine new possibilities.

I owe so much of who I have become to Rob Bell, and to the ways that his creativity and enthusiasm called me into freedom and fullness in my own journey of faith. He kept me company when I felt certain I was alone, and I was drawn forward into ministry in part by his gravitational pull.

In Rob Bell’s work, I encountered compelling, progressive theology that redefined what I thought was possible. I didn’t know ministry could be that nuanced and compelling and creative—that was work I could get behind.

Inspired, I started writing sermons and working on my public speaking. I patterned my life after his – I wanted to work at a church and make videos and write books.

But I was still the only person I knew who had any idea who this hero of mine was.

My early journey of faith was marked by the distinct feeling that I was alone. I didn’t know any other teens who wanted to be pastors, and although I found strong support in my home church, the reception I got elsewhere as a young woman interested in ministry ranged from amusement to condemnation. In Rob Bell, I found a traveling companion when I most needed it. His work gave me the audacity to pursue my questions and to love my odd little call into being.

Nurtured by Rob Bell’s preaching and writing, and rooted in the certainty that God loves each and every one of us, I rejected the notion that my gay mom was going to hell.

And the freedom I found in embracing this irresistible love of God led me to embrace another truth: I was bisexual, and beloved by God, too. I did not need to ignore or change or sever a part of myself in order to be wholly embraced by my Creator.

I owe so much of who I have become to Rob Bell, and to the ways that his creativity and enthusiasm called me into freedom and fullness in my own journey of faith. He kept me company when I felt certain I was alone, and I was drawn forward into ministry in part by his gravitational pull.

Slivers of his lessons and sermons show up in my work now, and I always delight in finding them. Other voices have been added to the conversation as I have encountered teachers and preachers who challenge and mold me in new ways, but Rob Bell was the first.

I left my hometown after college to go on to divinity school.

There, to my surprise and delight, I discovered an entire community of people who shared my sense of call–and they knew exactly who Rob Bell was.

We are never nearly as alone as we fear.

As we experience this love, there is a temptation at times to become hostile to our earlier understandings, feeling embarrassed that we were so "simple" or "naive," or "brainwashed" or whatever terms arise when we haven't come to terms with our own story. These past understandings aren't to be denied or dismissed; they're to be embraced. Those experiences belong. Love demands that they belong. That's where we were at that point in our life and God met us there. Those moments were necessary for us to arrive here, at this place at this time, as we are. Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new.

(Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, 2013, pp. 194-95)

‍