Six of us from Prescott attended Rob Bell’s “Drops Like Stars” event last night in Tempe . The tour is basically a two-hour multimedia sermon focusing mostly on the concept of suffering.

The presentation by Bell spoke of how  suffering connects us in a way that health and wealth and money cannot.
His two-hour presentation covers four major issues:

1. The Art of Disruption, or how we are very good at making plans on how our life is supposed to go, but never does. (when insulators are removed form how we assume life should be)
2. The Art of Honesty, or how pain has a knack for bringing out our truest selves.
3. The Art of Elimination, or what can you let go of? Rob used a bar of soap to illiustrate howw an artist will eliminate to create ( very cool illustration)

4. The Art of Possession, which is not the same thing as ownership.
“You can possess something and not own it – and you can own something and not possess it.”

He says, – “We plot. We plan. We assume things are going to go a certain way. And when they don’t, we find ourselves in a new place—a place we haven’t been before, a place we never would have imagined on our own.
It is the difficult and the unexpected, and maybe even the tragic, that opens us up and frees us to see things in new ways.
Many of the most significant moments in our lives come not because it all went right but because it all fell apart.
Suffering does that. It hurts, but it also creates.”

I loved every moment and every lesson and every story of his talk. Bell’s message is on point. His delivery is conversational. He’s funny. He understands people.

One of his true gifts is his ability to teach and present. He engages the audience in so many ways, not just through his content (although that is a wonderful start), he does so through his rhythm and timing, through his body language, through the tone of his voice. He is so amazingly talented, not just in his interpretation of scripture and spirituality, but also in engaging his audience in the challenge of his words.

One of my favorite Illustrations and audience participation tools he used was wilt a 3×5 card. He ask us to right the words I know how you feel with our none writing hand. After we had the words written on the card he ask some human suffering questions like, “How many of you have been directly effected by cancer” – “how many of you have been betrayed?” – “How many of you have had a stack of bills and you did not how you were going to pay them?” – with each question he had us make eye contact with someone who had the same type of  experience we had and trade cards with them.

Also, it was really cool that our bunch got to hang and meet Rob after the event.

Side note; If you ever get an opportunity to visit an event at the Tempe Center for the Arts you will find it as an amazing creative work of architecture

What a great night.

Quotes of the night:

” What every artist must learn, is that even the  failed pieces are essential.”

“This too will shape me.”

“We are brothers from other mothers and sisters from other misters.”

Steve  (lead pastor – Discovery Church

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaED1WWPzhA