I’ve posted on Rob Bell several times on this blog. I find him to be a gifted communicator and storyteller. I think what impacts me the most is his ability to tell a story and set it into a context that is informative, entertaining and very often convicting - all at the same time. Every time I listen to a sermon from Mars Hill I find myself either wanting to change something about myself of wanting to do something more for someone else. The two kind of go hand-in-hand I guess.

I just saw that Rob has his next book coming out through Zondervan in October 2008. It’s called Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile.

Looking forward to reading it.

You can listen to an audio podcast of Rob talking about the book here.

I love the synopsis Zondervan has for the book on their site… it’s a stinging glimpse at a reality I too am struggling with and looking at through the lens of my own life.

There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building.

Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty.

This is a book about those two numbers.

It’s a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity. It’s about empty empires and the truth that everybody’s a priest, it’s about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from.

It’s about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.