Velvet Elvis

Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell is my June book for the Non-Fiction Five Challenge. I loved it! I agreed with so much of, if not everything, he wrote. I like his philosophy on what a Christian is and does and what the church is. A Christian follows the teachings of Jesus! Duh, sounds obvious, but I don't think that is emphasized enough. I really want to do an in-depth study of the Gospels and apply more of what Jesus taught to my life. I am still studying misc. verses/chapters using the methods in Rick Warren's Bible Study Methods book. I'm only on the third method and using the "assignments" he gives for what to study. I think I'm going to change that to just studying the Gospels using the different methods.

I am not a great book reviewer but I will share some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Somebody recently told me, "As long as you teach the Bible, I have no problem with you." Think about that for a moment. What that person was really saying is, "As long as you teach my version of the Bible, I'll have no problem with you." And the more people insist that they are just taking the Bible for what it says, the more skeptical I get."

"I have heard people say their church is growing because they "just teach the Bible". As if other churches don't."

"We have to embrace the Bible as the wild, uncensored, passionate account of people experiencing the living God."

"Jesus is the arrangement. Jesus is the design. Jesus is the intelligence. For a Christian, Jesus' teachings aren't to be followed because they are a nice way to live a moral life. They are to be followed because they are the best possible insight into how the world really works. They teach us how things are."

"Oftentimes the Christian community has sent the message that we love people and build relationships in order to convert them to the Christian faith. So there is an agenda. And when there is an agenda, it isn't really love, is it? It's something else. We have to rediscover love, period. Love that loves because it is what Jesus teaches us to do. We have to surrender our agendas."

Those are just a few of my favorite quotes, there were many more. Rob Bell also has a series of short videos where he talks about many of the things he wrote about in this book. We are watching them at our small group Bible study. They are excellent. They are called Nooma videos.

Note to the 2 or 3 people who read this blog: My mom was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and we don't have much time left with her. So I probably won't be posting much this summer. Please check in once in awhile anyway! I will check in with your blogs when I can.