175 How to Practice and Understand Faith and Spirituality with Rob Bell

"Spirituality is awareness that life is a gift and how you respond matters." - Rob Bell If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video interview, and more at lewishowes.com/175. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 175 with Rob Bell.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast, and thank you so much for joining me today. If this is your first time ever at the School of Greatness Podcast, then welcome and thank you so much. My name is Lewis Howes, and if a friend recommended you to listen to this podcast and it's your first time, then please do me a favor and give your friend a hug because I really appreciate them letting you know about this show. And that's the way we've been growing so fast over the last couple of years. And it allows me to bring on guests like my man, Rob Bellon, who Time Magazine named Rob on the list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Now, Rob has got an incredible story that he's going to be sharing here in a moment.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  But he is an author, a New York Times bestselling author, and a pastor. And he was the founder of one of the fastest growing churches in America, which was called Mars Hill Bible Church. And he talks about what it was like building a church from scratch, why he left the church, what he's doing now, and what he believes that faith and spirituality and religion actually is. So we're going to be covering a lot of those topics today. I had an incredible conversation in my studio here in Los Angeles. And I'm very excited to introduce you to the one, the only, Mr. Rob Bell.

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast and video if you're watching live. We've got Rob Bell on. How's it going, Rob?

• 2:01Rob Bell?

  It's going great.

• 2:02Lewis Howes?

  I'm very excited about this because I, I actually didn't know about you until someone reached out to me and said, "You've gotta have Rob Bell on."

• 2:08Rob Bell?

  Excellent. I love those stories.

• 2:09Lewis Howes?

  And then I looked on Wikipedia and it's like, he started the fastest growing church in the world and it was Time Magazine named him one of the top 100 most influential people. And I was like, "What? Who is this guy and how have I never heard of him?" So I'm glad you're finally here in the studio and I'm excited to dive into everything that you've ever done in your whole life.

• 2:28Rob Bell?

  Let's do this. In under an hour.

• 2:30Lewis Howes?

  In under an hour, yes.

• 2:31Rob Bell?

  It's great to be here. It's really great to be here.

• 2:33Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited, man. So tell me, now, you started a church, right? Called Mars Hill.

• 2:39Rob Bell?

  Yes, yeah.

• 2:39Lewis Howes?

  And why did you start this? When did you start this?

• 2:42Rob Bell?

  Man, that's a, that's a long story. Here are the highlights.

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 2:45Rob Bell?

  You know, I grew up going to church and I remember, you know, it's often how you find out what you're supposed to do and you look back on your life and you see the seeds really early on. But my parents would take us to church and I remember sitting there and I would think, "Wait, this is about like what you're gonna do with your life. This is about making the world a better place. This is about love and grace and forgiveness and suffering and what do you do when you're betrayed?" And this is supposed to be about the big stuff that we all want to talk about and figure out. And yet, why is it so boring?

• 3:16Lewis Howes?

  It is boring, right?

• 3:17Rob Bell?

  How did they take something that should be, that we naturally, like with, when you're with your friends at the pub or you're with somebody at a beach chatting, you naturally gravitate towards things that matter. What you're wrestling with, unresolved questions of abuse or suffering or victory or failure, whatever it is. Like, we love to talk about the big stuff.

• 3:37Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 3:37Rob Bell?

  But so I would sit there and I have memories of like 10, 12, 14 and think, "This should be riveting."

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  Not boring, not putting you to sleep.

• 3:46Rob Bell?

  It almost takes more energy to make it boring than just to let the thing do its thing, like work on you. And I come out of the Christian tradition, which has a roots in turning things upside down. I mean, it's a, it's an insurgent countercultural message that... It's about living from your heart, not just accumulating stuff. Yeah. It's about forgiving and giving love to people, not just revenge and keeping violence in circulation. I mean, this is like, good stuff. How did you? It should be better. So I was in a band in college and What was it called? Ton Bundle. Cause we had seen in a grocery store, we've been listening to a lot of early talking heads and violent femmes. And in a grocery store, we had seen like a sign that said 20 pound meat bundle or something.

• 4:30Rob Bell?

  And like, when you're with your mates in college, you think stuff is really funny and later you're like, we thought that was funny. So we started this band and we were writing songs and we had like a fans, like we would go play these clubs and people would sing along. I was the lead singer. I'd never sung, but it was this thing where I would create, like I'd write a song that mattered to me. Hmm. And then I would share the song and then a few gigs later, people would be singing the lyrics back. No way. And it was like, oh, this is really, I like this. And where was this? Chicago area. And we were underage. So we would literally, we would sneak into a club, give the manager our demo, get a cassette demo. Wow.

• 5:12Rob Bell?

  And then get out of there and then get a call and we'd take the gig and then we'd set up and go out and then we wait for time on that. We'd run on stage, play and then get out of there before they realized we were underage. No way. And it was joy and especially this feeling like gathering people together. Mm hmm. And then let's celebrate. We're here. We're breathing. We're alive. We're in this together. Um, so I was sort of the ringleader and then the band broke up the senior year of college, cause everybody has to get jobs. Sure. And um, something happened in me, I should go to seminary, which my friends were like, are you kidding me? Hmm. Cause like something that growing up, like there's gotta be some way to talk about these things that matter. Yeah. Got connected with.

• 5:57Rob Bell?

  Creating things and sharing them with people that mattered to me and watching other people connect and this connection thing. And so I went to seminary and

• 6:07Lewis Howes?

  And that's a school for

• 6:08Rob Bell?

  It's a school where you're trained to be a pastor.

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Rob Bell?

  Like you study the Bible and you study theology and philosophy, still playing in a band. We actually, the band I was in in seminary played the Roxy. I just drove by.

• 6:18Lewis Howes?

  Right up the street.

• 6:19Rob Bell?

  Yeah, I sold out the Roxy one night.

• 6:22Lewis Howes?

  In college you did.

• 6:23Rob Bell?

  Yeah, in seminary, actually, we were seminary students studying theology and we had this band. And these guys were like really good players.

• 6:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 6:30Rob Bell?

  And we opened for a band called Kara's Flowers, which right after that changed their name to Maroon Five.

• 6:36Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 6:38Rob Bell?

  And then the third band on the bill that night were the members of Oingo Boingo that were playing under a different name. So it was a, it was a good night.

• 6:47Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool.

• 6:47Rob Bell?

  So that's what I was doing and I was working with high school students. And the interesting thing about high school students is if they aren't engaged, they just walk out.

• 6:56Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:57Rob Bell?

  They, they're, they're not like adults where they have like a polite.

• 7:00Lewis Howes?

  They feel like they have to stay.

• 7:01Rob Bell?

  You're boring me out of my mind, but I guess I'll stay here because that's the cultural sort of appropriate thing to do.

• 7:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 7:07Rob Bell?

  And with high school students, I started working with high school students and it was like the format then was you'd give a sermon. But for me, it was more like, I want to create an experience where they think about, what does it mean to live with passion? What does it mean to not engage in all the mudslinging that everybody does every day with their words?

• 7:28Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 7:29Rob Bell?

  So I, it was somewhere between, so I was studying in seminary, how to give a sermon. But then I was somewhere between guerrilla theater and, and performance art, like

• 7:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 7:39Rob Bell?

  So with kids, like I'd set stuff on fire and I was always, what's the metaphor? What's the image? Can I hand something out? And they're sitting there the whole time going, why do I have an egg? And then at the end, they find out that it's a, it's an image of this, or it's a metaphor for this, or it's a way of thinking. So it was like endlessly, how can I engage them? I remember handing out chunks of clay. And talking about how the softer the clay is, the more it can be molded. Easier it is to mold it into something and that when you're proud and arrogant, it's harder for something beautiful to be shaped out of your life. But when you're soft, when you're flexible, when you're a bit broken in the good ways, now something interesting can come through you. So. So you learned how to be a great storyteller.

• 8:23Rob Bell?

  Yeah. And a lot of it was story, a lot of it was storytelling, a lot of it was, there are these universal truths about passion and endurance and courage. And then there are the particulars of your life. Sure. Where you're born, who your siblings are, what your mom does for a job, whatever it is. Yeah. So part of it was helping kids like that. And then, got a job in a church and then at like 28 was like, I gotta, I gotta start something. Wow. And I talked to a dude, a dude offered me a building for a dollar a year, like a big warehouse building that he had built. So we just did it. You started right there. 28, a building. It was just in Michigan, right?

• 9:05Rob Bell?

  This was in Michigan, West Michigan, Grand Rapids, Michigan. And then somebody rented a sign to put out front and I was like, no. And I made them take the sign away because I was like, you gotta want to find us. Cause I was like, and there can't be any advertising and there can't be any. Word of mouth. Like it has to be like an underground, you're here because you found us and you want to be here. Wow. And so at 28, you started it. How many people were there the first Sunday? Um, a lot of people think there were somewhere between one and 2,000 people. First day. Yeah. I had been, you'll notice the theme, playing in a band around that area. Okay. And my wife always says you were planting a church the whole time you were playing that band.

• 9:50Rob Bell?

  So I was playing in clubs and stuff. And then during the day I was a pastor. I'd wear a suit sometimes and then take it off and go get my guitar and amp and go do like a show with this sort of punk band I was playing in. So there were all these people. I always say who would love to be in the conversation, but if they went to a regular church, they'd be like, I don't know what you guys are talking about.

• 10:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:11Rob Bell?

  So all those people sort of showed up.

• 10:14Lewis Howes?

  That's incredible.

• 10:15Rob Bell?

  And there was literally, well, then a year and a half in, we'd outgrown it, the building.

• 10:19Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 10:20Rob Bell?

  And the fire marshal starts coming to the services and posting people at the doors. So I know a dude who the first three times he came couldn't get in.

• 10:29Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh. You gotta get there early.

• 10:31Rob Bell?

  Right, right. So it had that sort of beautiful.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 10:34Rob Bell?

  We're a part of something here. And it would literally be like a single mom would come up after a service and say, I got three kids, one of them's Down syndrome, my husband's long gone, I can't pay rent. And two people standing over here would say, why don't you come with us afterwards? We'll get you some groceries. And then these people over here would say, we'll pitch in. Well, how about we take care of your rent? Like that kind of stuff.

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  Community right there.

• 10:56Rob Bell?

  Was happening. So actually, part of the challenge was to not let the institution thing get in the way of the connections that were just.

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  Organically happening.

• 11:08Rob Bell?

  Yeah. And so then we outgrew, so then we were doing three services just to keep up with all the people coming, which was exhausting.

• 11:16Lewis Howes?

  Three services a week?

• 11:17Rob Bell?

  And one Sunday.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  One day.

• 11:18Rob Bell?

  Yeah, I do the same.

• 11:19Lewis Howes?

  Like a ten, twelve, two.

• 11:20Rob Bell?

  Yeah, I do like, I do the same sermon three times.

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh, that's hard.

• 11:24Rob Bell?

  Yeah, yeah, it's physically like, it's like, like a sport.

• 11:28Lewis Howes?

  I can understand. I mean, just giving one speech is a lot of work.

• 11:30Rob Bell?

  Right, right. And this thing was give this, give a sermon service ends and then people would come down front afterwards because they'd want to talk. And then you'd have like.

• 11:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 11:40Rob Bell?

  And the line might be, I'm thinking about killing myself. Could you help me? Second line, I'm interested in superlapsarianism and how you seem to have referenced 15th century European philosophy, continental philosophy, but I have an issue with your third question might be, this is my kid. I just found out my kid's on heroin. Can you help us? Like, that's the sort of stuff. That's how I sort of cut my teeth.

• 12:00Lewis Howes?

  So what are you doing all week in between with all these, you know, questions that people had or all these, you know, issues that they were dealing with?

• 12:06Rob Bell?

  Sometimes.

• 12:08Lewis Howes?

  Did you just meet with people constantly or what were you doing?

• 12:10Rob Bell?

  Always, yeah. And the problem is you burn out really fast. So I had to go on a long journey of realizing what does it mean to live sustainably.

• 12:19Lewis Howes?

  Because you can't do that every week.

• 12:20Rob Bell?

  Right. And even physiologically, because your adrenaline's firing through the roof. But at some point, if you don't learn some rhythms, like, there's got to be some space where you turn off your cellphone, or you're going to be cooked. So we started out growing this space, and we started looking for a bigger space. And true story, dude comes to us who hears and says, can I give you my mall?

• 12:44Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 12:46Rob Bell?

  So this is 2001. There was this mall, 10 minutes from where we've been meeting, that had, you know, that loser mall that gets more people for a baseball card show or an RV display than actually come to the stores. And dude says, my mall is, it's, you know, it's down on all fours. It's in bad shape. How about I give you the mall?

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  On Sundays?

• 13:07Rob Bell?

  And then you, no, I give it to you, and I get it right off. And then I'll sell you the parking lot. And then those stores will just sort of phase them out. So we went, so some of the leaders in our church went and looked at this mall. And at one end was like the anchor stores. And their question was, we need a big room to meet in. And a guy had some construction background, walked in, and he just said, which of these walls are load bearing? And the guy says, none of them. And that's when we knew you could actually take out the walls and just make a giant room.

• 13:43Lewis Howes?

  In the middle?

• 13:44Rob Bell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we literally took out the walls and made an acre room.

• 13:52Lewis Howes?

  Of a mall. Were there any stores left?

• 13:55Rob Bell?

  They eventually left, and then we turned the stores into like, offices, kids, classroom, meeting room for AA, that kind of thing.

• 14:04Lewis Howes?

  You just paid them for the parking lot?

• 14:05Rob Bell?

  And then I think the parking lot was like a million dollars or something. And then, and then the building we just took over.

• 14:10Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 14:11Rob Bell?

  And then we did the room in the round. So we put the stage in the middle of the room. And then it was like a series of concentric circles. It was 3,500 people would sit in.

• 14:24Lewis Howes?

  In a circle?

• 14:26Rob Bell?

  Yeah, yeah. And then when they'd sing, everybody's, you're facing each other.

• 14:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's powerful.

• 14:31Rob Bell?

  So the energy.

• 14:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my goodness. And you were in the middle. What was that like, just feeling it from all?

• 14:37Rob Bell?

  Overwhelming. I still, my years there, I have memories of people. And sometimes they'd be singing some old hymn that had some like to it, you know, and some sort of gravitas and you'd be like.

• 14:51Lewis Howes?

  Almost fall on your knees almost.

• 14:53Rob Bell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, really powerful stuff. Yeah, really, really powerful stuff.

• 14:58Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I need like four hours of questions here.

• 15:01Rob Bell?

  So fire away.

• 15:01Lewis Howes?

  But uh, let's, let's go into some of these that I have. Can you define for me, uh, spirituality?

• 15:08Rob Bell?

  Yeah. I define spirituality is your awareness that your life is a gift, that you have received breath. That you, for some reason, God, higher consciousness, being, reality itself, the universe, whatever language you want to use for that. You have received this extraordinary gift and what you do with it, how you respond to it matters. And that your spirituality is your awareness that there's more to reality than just driving your car, paying the bills, meeting with your insurance agent, checking your inbox, that your life is actually animated by these unseen realities. Hope, joy, peace, longing, desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

• 15:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:53Rob Bell?

  And that when we talk about life, we're often talking about these unseen realities. And you can't access them, you, you can't carry love in your pocket. Your sense of motivation isn't something that you can like put in a bucket. And yet it's the thing that actually drives everything else.

• 16:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:12Rob Bell?

  And the problem is for many people in our culture, the moment you talk about spirituality, that immediately takes them into crazy religion. So now I gotta go to war, now I gotta condemn these people, now I gotta judge it. No, no, no, no, no.

• 16:23Lewis Howes?

  It's right and wrong, it's.

• 16:24Rob Bell?

  It immediately takes them into a world, it's like, yeah, but I have a brain. And I have a sense of civility and decency. And so I just begin with your life as a gift. And, and you intuitively know that how you respond matters.

• 16:37Lewis Howes?

  And what's the difference between spirituality and religion then?

• 16:41Rob Bell?

  Well, often religion gets a bad rap. Religions, and a lot of people will be like, I'm spiritual, but not religious. But I would simply say religion is the glue, religion is practice, it's routine, it's ritual. Ideally, religion is simply, if you're an athlete, you have to go to practice.

• 16:56Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 16:57Rob Bell?

  You have to order your day around what you're gonna eat. Um, you gotta get some good sleep. Um, and sometimes religion is simply, uh.

• 17:06Rob Bell?

  You regularly give a chunk of money you make away because it's good for your heart.

• 17:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:12Rob Bell?

  It's practice, it's the routines, it's the rituals that remind you that life is a gift and how your soul matters. Ideally, that's the idea.

• 17:20Lewis Howes?

  Ideally, but why are so many religions have such a bad rap?

• 17:23Rob Bell?

  Yeah, well, I mean, in that, oftentimes, people will beat up on religion, which it totally deserves, but the problem is politics, education. To pick out one human manufactured institution and be like, look how screwed up religion is.

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:41Rob Bell?

  Well, millions and millions of people have been slaughtered by really mean dictators. So humans tend to create institutions that get in the way of being human. We're not now just talking about religion, we're talking about humanity.

• 17:54Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 17:55Rob Bell?

  The heart can go south in all sorts of ways.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I grew up in a religion called Christian Science. I don't know if you're familiar with Christian Science. And so I grew up with this practice and this mindset, really the philosophy that I remember a lot of is it's all about mind over matter.

• 18:12Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  And so I never took shots, I never had any medicine. When I was sick, we would have spiritual practitioners support us through a healing and go through understanding what we call the truth and knowing what's really true about ourselves and the world and our spirituality. And we would pray about that. And the religion would sometimes get a bad rap because of people want to be taking care of themselves in a, in a physical sense of the word, like they wanted, you know, treat themselves when they needed to, and then bad things would happen to them. Some, you know, some people died because they didn't go to the hospital because they were like.

• 18:44Rob Bell?

  And you saw this at a young age.

• 18:46Lewis Howes?

  I saw it. I mean, I never saw anything really bad happen to anyone. I saw a lot of miracles, actually. I saw a lot of people having incredible healings really fast without any physical, you know, doctors or medicine and things like that. And I actually really appreciate the lessons I learned in the religion early on because it taught me to be mentally tough in a certain ways, but also be vulnerable and open and willing to, to feel miracles and to experience life.

• 19:14Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Lewis Howes?

  Through spiritual, spiritually as opposed to in a material form. Now.

• 19:20Rob Bell?

  And then what happened?

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:22Rob Bell?

  Then what happened?

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  Well, then I actually went to a school for Christian Science in high school, a private boarding school. So I like deepened my practice even more.

• 19:29Rob Bell?

  What city?

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  It was in St. Louis, Missouri. It was called Principia High School, yeah.

• 19:33Rob Bell?

  Wow.

• 19:33Lewis Howes?

  And it was an incredible experience, one of the best. It saved my life, literally, because I was just going down a wrong path. And it was like the principals, the discipline, very disciplined school, great academics. But the religion, like, I just, after my twenties, in my twenties, I kind of just stopped going to church for a couple of reasons. One, I don't know if I really believe in religion myself. And maybe that's, or maybe I was just questioning it.

• 19:58Rob Bell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:58Lewis Howes?

  You know, I was like open to questioning it, like, because I feel like sometimes, like you said, that there's like a bad rep, or I feel like it's judgmental. Like, the idea of religion can sometimes come across as judgmental.

• 20:11Rob Bell?

  Right.

• 20:11Lewis Howes?

  And-

• 20:11Rob Bell?

  We've got it, and you don't.

• 20:13Lewis Howes?

  Right. And if you're not with us, you're going to hell.

• 20:16Rob Bell?

  Right, right, right.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  Or, you know, you're bad, we're good. And I don't like that feeling. Like, like you said, if it should be about-

• 20:22Rob Bell?

  All of us.

• 20:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:23Rob Bell?

  We're all in this.

• 20:24Lewis Howes?

  A community. We're all in this together. It's not like it's our way, or everyone else is going to hell, or something like that. So I think I was just like, you know what? I love the philosophy of what I learned from the practice, and I love the people, the community, but-

• 20:37Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  And it's not like the religion, I didn't feel like they were just like so judgmental or this and that. I just didn't like the concept of religion-

• 20:42Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Lewis Howes?

  -as a generality.

• 20:44Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 20:44Lewis Howes?

  And, and maybe that's an ignorant way of thinking for me, maybe not, but, um, but I remember just feeling like the principles of it were really powerful. And I still like believe in those principles and try to follow those principles of, you know, mind over matter, in general.

• 20:59Rob Bell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:00Lewis Howes?

  And, and loving everyone, and being, not being judgmental, things like that, so.

• 21:04Rob Bell?

  It's interesting, you were given a positive worldview.

• 21:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, very positive.

• 21:08Rob Bell?

  Early on.

• 21:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:09Rob Bell?

  Not like a life happens to you, and I guess you're just sort of screwed, but like you can, you can think, you can control your thoughts.

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:16Rob Bell?

  You can like act in the world, you can do stuff.

• 21:18Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Yeah, I remember actually, my father, I didn't understand this when I was a kid, is my father, I just had a birthday in March, turned 32, and my father, I never had a birthday party growing up, because my father was like a hardcore Christian scientist, and he would not allow us-

• 21:31Rob Bell?

  No birthdays.

• 21:32Lewis Howes?

  He would not, he wouldn't, he didn't want to celebrate our birthdays, because, not because he didn't want to celebrate us, he always celebrated us for being alive, but he didn't want us to be limited by time and by our age for creating what we want to do with our dreams and our life.

• 21:47Rob Bell?

  No way.

• 21:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so it was just like when I was like seven, I was like, man, I get no cake, but my dad really had a be a deeper meaning behind it. That was like, don't let your age ever limit you from achieving your dreams. And don't focus on your age of being too young to achieve something or too old to not do something.

• 22:03Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Lewis Howes?

  And so now I really appreciate that.

• 22:07Rob Bell?

  How old were you where that became no presence, but came like a good thing?

• 22:11Lewis Howes?

  Uh, I don't know, probably like, you know, my teens or something when I was like, I really understood it and I was like, okay, cool. You know, when I started to like go after my dreams as an athlete and

• 22:19Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Lewis Howes?

  Not be limited by my, my body or my experience, things like that.

• 22:24Rob Bell?

  That's fantastic.

• 22:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it was interesting. So why now did you, so you built up this big church, took over them all? Started speaking about it. You were, you know, you've been on all the talk shows and things like that about it. Why then did you leave that church? The thing that you created and when did you leave it?

• 22:41Rob Bell?

  I left it in, in, uh, two, at the end of two thousand and eleven. And it was one of those things where, um, I had a whole series of experiences that were like at some point you just go, okay, I'm being told something here, everything around me. That it was great and this season has come to an end. And it's time to go do the next thing. And that sort of thing started brewing in the heart, like it's time to take the next leap.

• 23:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So you kind of like plateaued at this certain level.

• 23:15Rob Bell?

  It was, it was that sense like this is good. This is great. Um, some of my

• 23:21Lewis Howes?

  Now what?

• 23:21Rob Bell?

  Best friends are here and yet I, I gotta go try the next thing because something within me is gonna die if I don't. Um, and Chris, my wife, Kristen and I, we started telling some friends, like we have the sense like this chapter has come to an end. And it's been beautiful. Most people honestly do a divorce instead of a graduation. They stay too long.

• 23:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Rob Bell?

  If the sitcom's funny for five seasons, they do seven.

• 23:45Lewis Howes?

  And then you're like,

• 23:46Rob Bell?

  You know what I mean?

• 23:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Rob Bell?

  And so many people will finally leave that corporate job and say, three years ago I had a window. And I didn't take it and I should have. And we just had the sense, leave now. It's beautiful. Bless these people, celebrate it. And then overall, I had this sense like I My job was to go talk to a larger, wider culture than just people who are in church.

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:12Rob Bell?

  And that that need, that would be in the Los Angeles area. It was, it was like for Kristen and I, we were walking the dog one day and I was like, we need to move to LA, don't we?

• 24:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:21Rob Bell?

  Um, and my friend Carlton Hughes, he made a show called Lost. He and I had created a show. So, um, we had.

• 24:28Lewis Howes?

  And this is the, this is the scene out here. This is what you need to be.

• 24:31Rob Bell?

  Yeah, we had sold this, uh, pilot to ABC and all of a sudden I sort of met a bunch of people who were like, hey, what do you want to do? And you're a pastor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and you start having these doors start open like, hey, what do you want to do next? What do you have in mind? If you could, and at the same time, the people are beloved friends who helped run the church were, said, hey, what do you want to do next?

• 24:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:54Rob Bell?

  And it was one of those things, you know, when you're asked a question and there's the answer that you normally give, which keeps everything intact. Um, what is the answer here that keeps everything running smoothly? And Kristen and I had this sense like, we're supposed to actually wrestle with this question. What are we going to do next? And I had this sense like, there are so many people who are spiritually starving and.

• 25:14Lewis Howes?

  Not just in this church, but in the world.

• 25:17Rob Bell?

  In the world and that for many of them, the current forms and systems and religious packages that they've experienced, there simply doesn't work. Um, need new language, need new images, need new metaphors, need new doors in. And I needed to go do that.

• 25:36Lewis Howes?

  New messengers.

• 25:36Rob Bell?

  So it's almost like that next step. And as I've watched a lot of people go through this, the next step has enough, it has enough shape and, and texture that you know, kind of the direction to leap in. But if you have too much, you know what I mean?

• 25:51Lewis Howes?

  It's too clear.

• 25:52Rob Bell?

  And a lot of entrepreneurs know exactly what I'm talking about.

• 25:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:55Rob Bell?

  But if you have too clear, too much clarity, then that's not interesting.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 25:59Rob Bell?

  So.

• 25:59Lewis Howes?

  There's gotta be some uncertainty.

• 26:00Rob Bell?

  You gotta know which way to jump off the cliff. Which clip is, you know what I mean? And it had that perfect blend of like holy terror, heart beating. We gotta go this direction and we gotta do, take these next steps and it had this like. Dude, this could all

• 26:15Lewis Howes?

  Fail.

• 26:15Rob Bell?

  blow apart. Which to me, you know you're cooking.

• 26:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow, right, right.

• 26:19Rob Bell?

  When the thing could really blow up bad.

• 26:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So, so this was, you know, when you had 10,000 people coming to the service every week, correct?

• 26:26Rob Bell?

  There were a lot of people, yeah.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  10,000 or more roughly?

• 26:29Rob Bell?

  Yeah, it was, it was really a lot of people.

• 26:31Lewis Howes?

  Now, was this a big controversy and were people like, was there a lot of backlash? Or was everyone loving and understanding and say, you know, you created this, now leave? Or did you?

• 26:39Rob Bell?

  Um, I, people, everybody in the congregation got an email on a Thursday saying, Rob and Kristen have the sense that there are new opportunities they need to pursue in the Los Angeles area. And this Sunday, Rob will be explaining about it. And then when they're saying, what should we do Sunday? How should we do the service? Everybody, we were all like, don't even bother singing or doing announce. Just walk up there and talk. Cause whatever you do, the whole room's gonna be like, okay. So I literally just walked up onto the stage to tell these people that I dearly love, that I believe in, and the place just explodes in a standing ovation.

• 27:16Lewis Howes?

  Shut up!

• 27:17Rob Bell?

  And they just cheered.

• 27:19Lewis Howes?

  No way!

• 27:19Rob Bell?

  For like, eh, like an eternity.

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 27:23Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Lewis Howes?

  Were you expecting that?

• 27:25Rob Bell?

  Um, I had been through a lot with these people. They had surprised me.

• 27:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:31Rob Bell?

  So after a while, I got used to, these are really great people and don't be surprised when they do really interesting things. Like, we had had this tutoring program in an urban sort of un-resourced school. And this family from the suburbs with two girls.

• 27:47Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 27:47Rob Bell?

  As white as they get.

• 27:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Rob Bell?

  Had started going downtown and tutoring. And there was a high school kid that they sort of came in contact with and fell in love with. And there was an opportunity to adopt this kid. And the parents are like, should we adopt this African-American kid from downtown? And bring him out and give him what he needs? And the daughters literally said to the parents, either adopt this kid or stop taking us to that church where they teach us this is what you do in the world.

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:21Rob Bell?

  So just like had seen story after story like that of people going. What does it mean to make a difference in the world? And what does it mean to step outside of your comfort zone? So I walk up there and they start cheering and there was like, you're leaving us and we, it was almost like a, this is really hard and yet we get it. You, you need, and I didn't even say like, and I'm leaving to go do X. I have this sense and I just said to them, what I, from the very beginning, I've always taught you that, uh, the central image was that Jesus has disciples, we're students. We're learning a way of being in the world and you never know what's coming next. And so you, you just, you're up for it.

• 29:00Rob Bell?

  And, um, now the thing I've been telling you is like, I'm in one of those spaces and I gotta go do this and this has been great. And they, yeah.

• 29:11Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 29:12Rob Bell?

  Yeah, it was really, it was really amazing. It's really, cause those things can, can go upside down so fast.

• 29:17Lewis Howes?

  Oh yeah, easily.

• 29:19Rob Bell?

  They, they were amazing.

• 29:21Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 29:22Rob Bell?

  And then a friend of mine became the pastor.

• 29:26Lewis Howes?

  So he or she is-

• 29:27Rob Bell?

  Literally Kent Dobson, beloved friend of mine after probably, we'd probably been gone six months or nine months and they brought him and now he's there.

• 29:36Lewis Howes?

  He's still there, running it.

• 29:37Rob Bell?

  And I constantly hear from people who are like, Kent is doing so great.

• 29:41Lewis Howes?

  That's awesome.

• 29:41Rob Bell?

  It's like a beautiful story.

• 29:42Lewis Howes?

  So your legacy is continuing there.

• 29:44Rob Bell?

  Yeah, and he's, yeah.

• 29:46Lewis Howes?

  And he's doing his-

• 29:46Rob Bell?

  It's a good story.

• 29:47Lewis Howes?

  That's great. So what is it that you believe in?

• 29:50Rob Bell?

  Overall?

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:51Rob Bell?

  The whole big picture?

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  The whole big picture. What is like, what's, what's the faith then?

• 29:56Rob Bell?

  I believe that there is something at work in the universe moving us forward.

• 30:02Lewis Howes?

  Do you have a name for this thing?

• 30:03Rob Bell?

  Yeah, I mean, I call it God, but I know that language for a lot of people, the word God carries. I don't believe in like an angry God on a cloud with a long beard who's just waiting to judge you and kind of shows up every once in a while and maybe does something good or not. By the way, the Holocaust would have been nice. I believe there's something at work in human history. There's a force of benign love. I call this force God. I think that's what Jesus was talking about. He kept talking about the kingdom of God, a very mysterious. There's something expanding, it's moving. There's something that when you give yourself to the well-being of other people, something deep within Lewis says, "This is good. This is my path." And when you see somebody else moving beyond themselves

• 30:47Rob Bell?

  for the good and healing and repair of the world, something within you says, "I see that thing. I feel that thing in me." And like we just had Easter Sunday, I take seriously the idea of resurrection, that the last word hasn't been spoken. That no matter how bad it is, no matter how much abuse, betrayal, suffering you've been through, all sorts of stuff can happen in the middle of the chaos and darkness. I've seen too many people just get wrecked. And then a couple of years later, they say, "Rob, this thing that I went through, I wouldn't have wished upon my worst enemy. It was hell on earth. There was blood everywhere." And yet, like when you, I'm sure when you interview people and you talk about, tell me the key moments in your life. Tell me the moments that have really shaped you. They rarely say stuff like, "Well, I went to Bahamas." Yeah.

• 31:32Rob Bell?

  You know what I mean? It's their biggest adversity. They usually say, "My dad got cancer." Yeah. "My friend got hit by a car. I got fired, but in some strange way." And then they usually say, at least I'm sure in your experience, in my experience, they say, "At the time, it was like a nightmare. And now I find myself kind of..." And then the word on the tip of their tongue that they don't know how to say is great, right? The counterintuitive impulse is, "I'm grateful for it." But there's no way I can be grateful for the cancer. But that is actually... So my experience has just been, there is something at work, even in the darkest stuff. Sure. And even the first, the Bible begins with a poem, and it's a poem about water and chaos and darkness and out of it.

• 32:15Rob Bell?

  Something beautiful and diverse and unexpected comes, which is my observation of how the world often works.

• 32:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 32:21Rob Bell?

  Yeah, so I believe in that stuff. I'm a believer.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  There's so many questions about this.

• 32:25Rob Bell?

  Yes.

• 32:25Lewis Howes?

  It's insane.

• 32:26Rob Bell?

  It should raise a bunch of questions.

• 32:28Lewis Howes?

  Well, I know there's lots of, someone told me the other day about their favorite book on, you know, God and like the questions they have is called God Calling. I've never read that one. Have you read that?

• 32:37Rob Bell?

  Mm-mm.

• 32:37Lewis Howes?

  God Calling? I heard it's supposed to be a really good one that kind of answers all the questions that a lot of people have about like, why do bad things happen to good people?

• 32:44Rob Bell?

  Yeah, you can answer that question. Well done, because that's a, and I actually,

• 32:49Lewis Howes?

  You don't have the answer, right?

• 32:49Rob Bell?

  I actually think serious faith that's intellectually honest has to be, has to be straight up about the darkness and suffering in the world. There's some pain there aren't answers for. And in my experience, a lot of religion, especially a lot of Christian Jesus-y stuff, charges in with this verse and this theological idea.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  They give an answer for it?

• 33:11Rob Bell?

  And try to give the whole thing nice, neat, clean. And I, whatever's going on, it works in the middle of the mess. And that any sort of faith that's going to have anything to say in 2015, you gotta leave a giant gaping hole for the mystery. And that's not, that's not a cop out. That's, you gotta have, that's at the heart of any sort of authentic worldview.

• 33:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Rob Bell?

  I mean, there's, there's,

• 33:38Lewis Howes?

  So you don't always give a clear answer for people when they have questions for you about like, why it works in the world or why?

• 33:45Rob Bell?

  Yeah, actually, all, all suffering, like why'd the car go off the road? Why'd my daughter get that disease? I don't know. And anybody who does tell you why with certainty, I would probably be really suspicious of. I was doing, I was doing this Q and A in Miami and a woman raises her hand and says, what do you say to somebody whose young daughter just died of a mysterious illness that only a few people get? And this woman starts crying and there's like a big crowd and they're handing a mic. What I love is a big crowd in a public place and they hand the mic to the crowd and anybody can ask anything they want. So awesome. This woman says, what do you say to me? Because I just lost my daughter.

• 34:24Rob Bell?

  And I said, first off, in the ancient wisdom tradition, some suffering, there are no words. There's silence. So first off, I would just begin with anybody who does give you nice, clear cut answers for why your daughter died. I don't know. Secondly, I do know this, at some point down the road, you're gonna meet up with a woman who's also lost her young daughter. And you're gonna look her in the eyes. And you're gonna say, me too. And in that moment, that you'll be staying on some holy ground. And here's what happened.

• 34:57Lewis Howes?

  I just got the chills.

• 34:59Rob Bell?

  Because solidarity is, is divine. When somebody stands with you, the woman standing next to her starts gushing.

• 35:08Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 35:08Rob Bell?

  This is a

• 35:09Lewis Howes?

  Don't even tell me.

• 35:10Rob Bell?

  Yes, this is

• 35:13Rob Bell?

  And says, my young daughter is really sick and they've given her only a little bit of time to live. And this woman turns to her and yeah, that's

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 35:22Rob Bell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:24Lewis Howes?

  So what do you think?

• 35:25Rob Bell?

  I don't even need to finish that.

• 35:26Lewis Howes?

  It's just ended in a moment of silence.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  Man, what do you, oh, this is what I was gonna ask you. Do you take the, you read the Bible then, right?

• 35:37Rob Bell?

  Sure.

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  And do you take the inspired word or the literal word of the Bible?

• 35:41Rob Bell?

  I read it literately.

• 35:43Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 35:44Rob Bell?

  I read it as the literature that it is. So I begin, I begin with, if that's a poem, read it like a poem. If that's a letter, then ask yourself, who's writing to who? What was happening in the world at that time? Are there economic, political things at play that would help this make more sense? So I always begin with, it's real people and real places at real times.

• 36:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:05Rob Bell?

  Then I always ask the question, why did people find this important to record? Cause some people say, why did God do this? Wait, it was written by real people.

• 36:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:15Rob Bell?

  So as the great theologian Bruce Springsteen said, whatever we know about the divine, begins with the human. So I'm fine with words like inspired, but to get there, you have to start with, why did these people tell these stories?

• 36:29Lewis Howes?

  Thousands of years ago.

• 36:30Rob Bell?

  Yeah, what were they wrestling with? So for example, in the Babylonians had a creation story. They had an explanation of what we're doing here. And the Babylonian creation story, and they were like the big dudes on the block. They were like the global military superpower of their day. The Babylonians had this story called the Anuma Elish, which was their explanation. The god Marduk was in battle with the goddess Tiamat. He crushes her. He pulls apart her carcass and with the two halves of her carcass makes the heaven and the earth. So you ask a normal dude in the street 5,000 years ago in ancient Babylon, which was the Tokyo, the London, the LA of its day.

• 37:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:06Rob Bell?

  What are we doing here? He'd say, there was a great battle between the gods and out of this carnage and destruction came this world. Well, that doesn't make, that kind of makes sense then that if that's your animating story, you're going to go around crushing other people.

• 37:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:19Rob Bell?

  So this group of Jewish folks ends up in exile in Babylon. And they're in danger of losing their culture, but they have these oral traditions they've been telling. And one of them is a poem. And the poem begins, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And in this poem, this God loves to create. This God loves diversity. This God makes stuff and says, that's good. God makes more stuff. That's good, that's good, that's good. It's a poem and the engine of the poem is joy. It's, it's overflowing creativity. Let's make more stuff. And then this God makes stuff that makes even more stuff. So what's really interesting to me is it's an ancient primitive, we would say barbaric book. And yet the first poem of the Bible raises this question.

• 38:04Rob Bell?

  Is the engine of the universe carnage and destruction? Or is it overflowing creative joy? And that's a pretty compelling question for 2015.

• 38:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:14Rob Bell?

  And when there's corporate greed and Wall Street, and when there's a nuclear arms race, and when there's environmental destruction. But then when there's also people feeding the homeless and people helping empower people to live lives of freedom. It's almost like they're, which one is the better engine? So I always begin, don't fall prey to this idea that this ancient book doesn't have some really provocative, interesting questions that have always been the human questions.

• 38:40Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 38:41Rob Bell?

  So it might be a little like Shakespeare, I might be a little unfamiliar at first, but you go in there and you find all sorts of interesting stuff.

• 38:46Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. I like that. And you compared, I think it was in a book that you wrote, that you compared God to an Oldsmobile. Is that right? Is that a book you wrote it in?

• 38:55Rob Bell?

  I grew up in Lansing, Michigan, which was like where Oldsmobiles were.

• 38:58Lewis Howes?

  I had an Oldsmobile, 1989.

• 39:00Rob Bell?

  What'd you have? A Cutlass, a Delta 88, a 98?

• 39:04Lewis Howes?

  98, I think that's what it was.

• 39:05Rob Bell?

  Oh, that's.

• 39:07Lewis Howes?

  My dad gave it to me.

• 39:08Rob Bell?

  That was.

• 39:08Lewis Howes?

  For high school graduation. It was his car that he handed out to me after he got a Denali or something.

• 39:13Rob Bell?

  That vehicle.

• 39:14Lewis Howes?

  It was nice, so smooth, man. It was like a Cadillac.

• 39:17Rob Bell?

  My brother-in-law always says you could palm those things.

• 39:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Rob Bell?

  On the wheel.

• 39:21Lewis Howes?

  So, oh, the steering wheel is where it's at. I now have a 1991 Cadillac Eldorado, yeah.

• 39:28Rob Bell?

  That you like totally.

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  Berets.

• 39:29Rob Bell?

  That's sweet.

• 39:30Lewis Howes?

  No, my mentor's mentor passed away. He had it since 1991 and it's got 50,000 miles on it.

• 39:37Rob Bell?

  No way.

• 39:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's like mint condition.

• 39:38Rob Bell?

  Like Southern California.

• 39:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I get offers for it all the time. People just leave notes on it when I park it, just.

• 39:43Rob Bell?

  Do they really?

• 39:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 39:45Rob Bell?

  Yeah, so when I grew up, like Thanksgiving, all the uncles will go out in the garage and look at whoever has the new Oldsmobile.

• 39:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:51Rob Bell?

  But then they shut the factory down. Like they're not making any Oldsmobiles anymore.

• 39:54Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 39:54Rob Bell?

  Like no one's like, if you see my new.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  I love Oldsmobile.

• 39:56Rob Bell?

  If you see my new Alero, that's just not happening. You know what I mean? So actually in that book, what I was just asking the question, for many people, God's a bit like Oldsmobile. Like, yeah, that worked for me when I was 13.

• 40:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:08Rob Bell?

  But, um, Oldsmobile couldn't survive in the modern world.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 40:12Rob Bell?

  And so one of my books is just simply asking the question, can this idea survive? And the truth is, some ideas about God have to die. They can't keep up. And so you have to let go of that conception.

• 40:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:25Rob Bell?

  And for a lot of people, they were handed a way of seeing things and it doesn't work anymore. And so you have to be honest about that.

• 40:33Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like God's making a comeback then? Because, you know.

• 40:36Rob Bell?

  It's a great question.

• 40:38Lewis Howes?

  Don't call it a comeback.

• 40:39Rob Bell?

  You know, I've been here for, been here for like thousands of years. We. As human beings, we'll always be asking about ultimate reality. We'll always be asking, what's driving the thing? Are we alone? So there'll always be a comeback. There'll always be some oppressive view that, um, I mean, even within the Bible, there's a, there's an evolution within the Bible of how people understand the divine.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Rob Bell?

  Um, and that's the really interesting about the Bible is people often see, well, that's the thing holding us back. No, that's a beautiful record of what evolving human consciousness looks like.

• 41:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Rob Bell?

  Um, so we'll always have, and right now you have, we have, we're living in an expanding universe.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Rob Bell?

  Like it's an omni-centric reality. Every point is an expanding center. If your God isn't as big as your science, you're in trouble.

• 41:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, that's true.

• 41:32Rob Bell?

  So you have lots of people right now going, wait, wait, we've learned some things about biology and cosmology, and if your God can't speak to this, it's not going to work.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:43Rob Bell?

  Let's just be honest about it now.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  That's true. Now, I feel like, uh, religion and spirituality and God is coming into the media a lot more. You're doing a lot of this, but I see, I think I saw on the Today Show last week that like Hillsong was doing a performance or I forget the guy's name, the pastor there or?

• 42:00Rob Bell?

  Oh yeah, like a big church.

• 42:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, big church is like on the Today Show and it's like more and more in the media. Is that just me saying that or is that happening? Is this movement that the media is picking up a lot more?

• 42:09Rob Bell?

  That's happening. I think it's why you're seeing, especially in urban areas. Is if you live in a city, you have a lot of concrete, you have a lot of neon, you're surrounded by stuff we've made, but then you go to the beach and you put your feet in the sand and you see a big wave and it produces a particular feeling within you. You go out the canyon, you go up on the mountain, you go out on a glacier. There's this wonder and awe that gets lost when you can buy tomatoes at three in the morning out of season.

• 42:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:38Rob Bell?

  When you live in a world that humans have created and have controlled, light, dark, when you can get food in or out of season, when you live in a world of our making, it can, it makes you feel big, but big can get a little boring.

• 42:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:51Rob Bell?

  You know what I mean?

• 42:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Rob Bell?

  And then there is that thing that happens when you bump up against that, which is way larger than yourself. Uh, my wife and I love, I, I try to surf every day. I love the ocean, but we stand up paddle. And a couple of months ago, we're out in the ocean and we'd gone way out and a whale goes under-

• 43:08Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 43:08Rob Bell?

  -her board. Surfaces between us.

• 43:12Lewis Howes?

  How big of a whale?

• 43:13Rob Bell?

  Big blue, big, like big, like, like, I don't know, like,

• 43:17Lewis Howes?

  scary.

• 43:18Rob Bell?

  Like trailer park big. Mobile home big.

• 43:21Lewis Howes?

  In between both of you?

• 43:22Rob Bell?

  It goes worse, worse somewhere, I don't know how far apart.

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  Twenty yards away.

• 43:26Rob Bell?

  It goes under her surfaces between us and then goes under me. And

• 43:31Lewis Howes?

  It's surface between, didn't surface.

• 43:33Rob Bell?

  Yeah, I've had this happen. I've been out a fair bit with whales. And every time it happens, what's so interesting is there are things that are terrifying. And then there are things in life that are good. But what's interesting is how rarely as human beings, we experience something terrifying. That's good. That creates almost like a, it's a, it's not a fear, but it's like a, a humbling reverence. You know that feeling when you're like, whoa. It humbles you, but in a really transcendent, inspiring, empowering sort of way.

• 44:00Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 44:00Rob Bell?

  And honestly, in the modern world, you can live in a, you can live in an air conditioned, heated, microwaved, neon encapsulated world, cut off from wonder and awe. And I'm sure you've seen this people. They climb the ladder. They won. They have a big salary, nice car. And yet that electric sense that I am but one small instrument isn't there. It's like you conquered, but in the process you lost something. That's actually the thing you wanted. And so I, I perhaps what you are seeing is simply, even if it's crazy, even if it's like you hear that religious person talking, you're like, okay,

• 44:45Rob Bell?

  that is just nuts. Still, perhaps what they're appealing to is somewhere in here is this sense. The great Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with Martin Luther King, he said, I didn't ask for success. I asked for wonder.

• 45:02Rob Bell?

  And I think that's what a lot of people are like, I did the success thing, but I'd love some wonder.

• 45:07Lewis Howes?

  Do you think that's what everyone wants?

• 45:09Rob Bell?

  At the end of the day, um, the Japanese have this word aki-gai. It's that which gets you up in the morning. And they have this, this sort of cultural sense. You gotta have an aki-gai. You gotta have something to get you up in the morning. I always say, success is what can I get? And craft, working a craft is, can you believe I get to do this? Cause I know just from meeting you, you have a sense of like, I can't believe I get to do this.

• 45:35Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 45:36Rob Bell?

  Yeah. And you're essentially trying to share that with others. I know the success thing is attractive. But here's the thing I actually want to give you is I want to give you this gift where you could wake up in the morning and go, can you believe I get to do this?

• 45:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right?

• 45:47Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. So what would you say is your mission now?

• 45:52Lewis Howes?

  In this state of your life?

• 45:52Rob Bell?

  You know, I wrote on your wall over there. I, I want to wake people up to the miracle that is your life. That's at the heart of spirituality.

• 46:03Rob Bell?

  Jesus used this great Hebrew word teshuvah, which means to return. You have a path. You have a true path that you, that is the gift of God to you. You have a destiny. You have something you're here to do. And oftentimes we wander off the path.

• 46:20Rob Bell?

  Return. Come on home.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Rob Bell?

  And, and that's not like a beat yourself up shame thing. That's a joy thing. Like, I think a lot of people, they got, they got the right internship. They got the right job. They're living in a good zip code.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 46:34Rob Bell?

  And yet at some deep level, they wandered off into the deep weeds.

• 46:41Rob Bell?

  And that's why you see people take pay cuts. That's why you see people go work for an NGO. That's, you know what I mean? Is they realize that's why they leave the monster thing and startup thing in their garage is, it's this ancient idea of teshuvah, return. Like, there's something I'm supposed to be doing. And I was handed a playbook, which always says bigger is better. And yet something within me says, no, wonder is better. Joy is better. Sacrifice is better.

• 47:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I like service is better.

• 47:11Rob Bell?

  Yeah, living beyond yourself. That's better. There was a couple of things to talk about.

• 47:16Lewis Howes?

  Love it, man. Gosh, we're gonna have to have it come back on like 10 times.

• 47:19Rob Bell?

  Let's do it.

• 47:20Lewis Howes?

  Um, a few questions left for you.

• 47:22Rob Bell?

  Got it.

• 47:22Lewis Howes?

  What are you most grateful for recently?

• 47:24Rob Bell?

  My kids, cuz they tell the truth. We have 16 and 14 year old boys and five year old girl.

• 47:35Rob Bell?

  And they just say exactly what's up. Like dad, that makes no sense.

• 47:41Rob Bell?

  Hey, this is really fun. They live with a certain ruthless, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I'm feeling. This is what that meant to me. And I, I just, I feel like, you know, everyone's your teacher, but my kids, they keep me so like, and with them, the thing they, the thing they ask, they don't ask for, but they do ask for, they just want you as the dad and mom to be present.

• 48:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 48:09Rob Bell?

  You don't need to, you don't need to like balance chainsaws on your head, like you don't need to juggle fire. You don't need to, you know what I mean? You don't need to do backflips, just be here.

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 48:19Rob Bell?

  There's always that thing, like I got one more email on my phone in my pocket and for them, it's like, can we do this puzzle?

• 48:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, can we just hang?

• 48:25Rob Bell?

  We just make this puzzle. And my one son, it's sports, my other son, it's music. Can we just listen to the Clash? Yeah, I'm really grateful for that.

• 48:32Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Uh, you've written, I think 13 books, right?

• 48:36Rob Bell?

  Uh, no, no, oh man, man.

• 48:38Lewis Howes?

  10?

• 48:38Rob Bell?

  Yeah, let's eight, maybe something like that.

• 48:40Lewis Howes?

  A bunch of books.

• 48:41Rob Bell?

  Cut in half.

• 48:41Lewis Howes?

  You're probably gonna write a bunch more. Uh, let's say it's the end of, uh, your existence, 100 years from now, however long you last. And, uh, you are only allowed to leave three books behind that to your kids, to the world and all of your, you can't leave your books behind. So you only get to leave three books behind that kind of the message that you want to leave for the world through these three books. What would those three books be that have either inspired you or you think would be a great message for the world to serve them?

• 49:14Rob Bell?

  Holy cow. Um, there's a philosopher from USC named Dallas Willard who wrote a book called The Divine Conspiracy.

• 49:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 49:22Rob Bell?

  I would leave that one. And I got two more.

• 49:26Lewis Howes?

  Two more?

• 49:28Rob Bell?

  There's a guy, uh, who wrote a book called Lamb, The Gospel According to Bith.

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 49:34Rob Bell?

  Which is just fantastic. And then I would leave.

• 49:40Rob Bell?

  Thirdly, I would leave the Bible because of all of the ways that it has shaped

• 49:45Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 49:45Rob Bell?

  me and all the ways it's actually shaped civilization.

• 49:49Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 49:49Rob Bell?

  And I would let them wrestle with that for the next thousand years.

• 49:52Lewis Howes?

  I like it. Okay. Now, it's your last day. Uh, this is really like morbid getting, no, but your last day.

• 49:59Rob Bell?

  You're gonna die.

• 50:00Lewis Howes?

  Your last day, a hundred years from now, and um, you don't get to leave any books.

• 50:06Rob Bell?

  Okay.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  You get a piece of paper and a pen. And everything you've ever written or ever said has been erased from time and deleted. The internet's blown up and there's no more of your work. All your books are gone.

• 50:17Rob Bell?

  Okay.

• 50:18Lewis Howes?

  Theoretically.

• 50:19Rob Bell?

  Got it.

• 50:19Lewis Howes?

  You've got a piece of paper and a pen, and you get to write down three truths that you know to be true about the world and life. What would those three truths be that you'd write down?

• 50:28Rob Bell?

  Okay, what would those, um, love wins? Love, love wins would be the first one. Second one, everything is spiritual. Like there's all, there's depth to everything. Um, and third, there's way more going on here. In every situation, every conversation, interaction, there's always more going on here. It's never just a conversation, never just an interaction, never just a meal. There's more going on here.

• 50:53Lewis Howes?

  I like that one. Okay.

• 50:54Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 50:55Lewis Howes?

  I got a one question left for you, but before I ask you that one, I want to ask, what's going on with you now? What's next? You've got a tour happening. You want to talk about that?

• 51:03Rob Bell?

  Yeah. Um, in 2006, I did a tour of like clubs and theaters around the country. I think it did 25 American cities in 28 days. And I had this giant white, custom whiteboard made. It was 24 feet across. And then I filled it in with like drawings and sketches. And it was about quantum physics and Hebrew spirituality and what it means to be fully present in your life.

• 51:26Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 51:26Rob Bell?

  And I always thought I would love to do another, and then I've done a bunch of other tours, but I need to do, it's called everything is spiritual. I need to do everything is spiritual, part two someday. But I gotta have an idea that's worth. Getting the family on a bus, going around the country. I need to figure out the next great whiteboard thing. And a year ago, I was like, started to get it. So this July, I'm gonna start a tour that'll go around the world for the next like six months on and off.

• 51:52Lewis Howes?

  And where, where, when does that start?

• 51:53Rob Bell?

  And it'll start, the first opening nights will be at the Regent Theater in LA, June 25th, 26th, then July, I think 6th, we start San Diego and it's like, Phoenix, Texas, all the way down to Miami Beach, then all the way up to New York City to the House of Blues in Boston, then across. So we'll do the whole

• 52:11Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:12Rob Bell?

  country, probably 30 cities. And it's, you buy a ticket and it's me and I come out and I do like a hour and a half, two man, two hour, it's like a one man lecture show gig, sermon on steroids, and it's so much fun. And this one is about, you know, we're learning more and more from science that the universe is expanding.

• 52:30Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:31Rob Bell?

  And that, when you think about your own experience, your most joyful, satisfying moments are when you move beyond yourself. So what we're learning about our universe through science and the science of your soul, there's a number of connections there. And I haven't heard that many people make like a really beautiful sort of presentation or connection of how all this works. And I think I got something I'm really excited about. You have to, if you're gonna go do a talk like 30 nights in a row, you have to love, it has to be like, I cannot wait for you to see this.

• 53:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:04Rob Bell?

  So that's, I'm really, really, really excited about that. And then I'm working on the next book, which will come out early next year and um.

• 53:10Lewis Howes?

  And where can we get information on all this?

• 53:12Rob Bell?

  Robell.com.

• 53:13Lewis Howes?

  You're taking, you're taking all the dates and the books?

• 53:15Rob Bell?

  Tour dates will be coming soon for the summer tour. And then I do events in Laguna. I do a lot of events for leaders, for entrepreneurs on innovation and creativity and all that. Yeah.

• 53:26Lewis Howes?

  Oh, we'll have to go down there. Check it out.

• 53:28Rob Bell?

  Yes, and we go surfing, of course.

• 53:30Lewis Howes?

  There you go, that's cool. Very nice. So we'll have that all linked up here in a second. I'll tell you guys where to go to get that, but robbell.com, obviously. Final question before I ask it, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you, Rob, for the gift that you are in the world and for so many people that you're impacting and educating and inspiring along the way to reveal their gifts and give it away. I think I'm on message with that, that I want to maximize my gifts and my talents every day and expand always and always be open to learning. And I appreciate the work you do and the commitment. And I really acknowledge you for the calling you felt to leave and something that you created that was so powerful and so, so beautiful for the community that you created.

• 54:15Lewis Howes?

  And then leaving it, that takes a lot of courage to do. And I don't know if so many people could do that. It takes a lot of courage to, to leave something that you've built, that's your baby, that you feel that everyone is there depending on you and you left to do something on a bigger scale. So I acknowledge you for everything you're up to and I appreciate you for all that you're doing.

• 54:33Rob Bell?

  Thank you. That's really meaningful. Thank you.

• 54:36Lewis Howes?

  Final questions, what's your definition of greatness?

• 54:39Rob Bell?

  When you leave the room, people have more hope than when you entered.

• 54:46Lewis Howes?

  Rob Bell, thanks for coming on, man. Appreciate it.

• 54:48Rob Bell?

  Thank you.

• 54:52Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you enjoyed it, make sure to go back to the show notes to get all of the links that we talked about here and covered, and also see the full video interview with me and Rob in my LA studio. I think you're gonna dig that as well. Please share this with your friends. It's lewishouse.com/175. Again, lewishouse.com/175. Go ahead and share it over on Facebook, on Twitter, on Google+. Let your friends know if they're interested in learning more about spirituality and religion and faith and hearing this story, because I think it's really valuable to get this message out there, to open up different observations, different ideas and stories for people to learn about.

• 55:35Lewis Howes?

  Also leave a comment over on the blog, again, LewisHowes.com/175 and let me know what you thought about this episode. What's the biggest takeaway you gained from this interview? And post that in the comments section below the interview. Again, thank you guys so much for coming on, for listening today. A big thank you to Rob for being on here. Make sure to check out his website, which we have linked up over on the site as well, and all of his other social media sites. And we've got some incredible guests coming here in the future. We've got a lot of people lined up, ready to go. So I'm excited to release these. Again, we release these every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Monday and Wednesday, it's the longer format interview. On Friday, it's Five Minute Fridays, which a lot of

• 56:17Lewis Howes?

  you have been loving. So we keep creating that content for you guys. I'm super pumped for what's to come. Again, big thank you for any beginners, any newbies that came on here for the first time. I welcome you to the School of Greatness community. Make sure to check me out over online, on Facebook, and on Instagram, and everywhere online. And I'm just very blessed and grateful you guys are here. So again, thank you guys so much. Big guests coming up soon. You guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.