I fall into neither of those camps. I came across Rob Bell through my parents, who showed us one of his DVDs - not the short Nooma ones, but the longer live show ones - which The Engineer and I liked very much and subsequently purchased along with another one of his. I also hear about him, occasionally, on Brian McLaren's blog, which I follow. But I have never read anything of his, until now.
With all the uproar about the new book, I was intrigued, not sufficiently to acquire a copy, but sufficiently to get involved in several discussions on Facebook. But in the end, after getting tired of seeing article after article, on this blog and that, lambasting the poor man without actually having read what he had to say, I decided perhaps a purchase was in order. Since we like his spoken style (and have heard "interesting" things about how that looks in writing) we decided to go for the audiobook, read by himself, and so far we've not been disappointed. I also like audiobooks read by the author because you can be sure that what you "hear" in your mind is what they actually meant. Or at least, surer than if you were merely reading words on paper.
I'm not going to blog about it on here - maybe the occasional thought but not much - but if you have thoughts or would like to read more of my thoughts I'd love you to pop across to my dad's new blog where he is musing about his own responses and where I also comment, sometimes at length. (Surprise surprise!)
Here's what he has to say about his blog:
I’ve never been one for journaling and although I use Facebook I’ve not blogged either. But earlier this month I joined a discussion – a series of messages really – started by my daughter on Facebook and found I had a lot of thoughts. My brother joined in too and the discussion became rather long. So I thought: “A blog is the place for this.” And here we are!I'm sure he'd be happy to receive comments. And so would I - here or there!
