Often book reviews carry an heir of superiority and can reduce the book writer’s labor of love to an academic and detached exercise. It is our effort to avoid the pitfall of criticism, while simultaneously providing readers with information on thought provoking resources. Please read this review in the spirit with which it was intended – as a way of exposing you to new thoughts and ideas on how to better live the life of a Christ-follower that seeks to connect college students to Christ.

Book Review: Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

Writing a review of Velvet Elvis is like riding a wild bull. This book – controversial to many and life affirming and revolutionary to others – is a profound achievement that oozes from a life well-lived. Even saying that Rob Bell is an example of a life well-lived will probably make him blush, but in a day with few examples of radical evangelical American Christian leadership Rob Bell serves as a lighthouse to ships that are skirting dangerously close to rocks and wreckage.

Velvet Elvis is systematic theology (although some may question the use of the word systematic), exhortation, a loud call for Christ-followers to right our courses, and gut level honest insight from the pastor of one of America’s fastest growing churches.

After reading the title of this book, you probably asked yourself the same question as the writer, “What is a Velvet Elvis and what does that have to do with Jesus”? Bell takes the title of the book from an old Velvet Elvis painting that was hiding out in his basement for years. The premise of the book is simple… each generation of Christians has to create their own “painting” of what the life of a Christ follower looks like today. Our “painting” is best when it incorporates the good and true practices of our parents’ generation while discarding the religious “stuff” that has infiltrated their practice of the Christian life. Our “painting” is a picture of the Christian life for our generation, for ourselves. It is a rediscovery of how we live life on a daily, practical basis.

This premise is carefully explained and Bell lobbies for our participation in this grand adventure of living the real, authentic, and current life of a Christian. Weaving narrative and Biblical teachings, Bell truly does create a picture of an authentic Christian life in modern, middle-class . Far from checklists, this book offers a whole new framework through which to view the “how” of the Christian life.

Bell possesses a unique ability to bring real life to stories from the Bible. Using stories that span scripture – from Deuteronomy to the Gospels, he manages to clap his hands in the face of an that is truly off-track. Bell concentrates like a laser on the practical ways that our thought and life patterns can and have deviated from the restored and full life that Christ intended and commanded.

I do not agree with all that Bell advocates and there are points of interpretation that I am still praying through and investigating. However, following ancient rabbinical patterns for teaching, Bell uses images, questions, and deep Biblical insight to convey important concepts of practical theology that affect how we feel and act in community and in our relationship with Holy God.  The book is a call to hope and to a new way to live the Christian life. For some, Bell’s examples will sound weird, opposite to all that they have known, and scary. They are!!! They are truly countercultural. They are counter-American-middle-class-watered-down-Christianity cultural. I found this book to be healing, balanced, scary, profound, and thought-provoking.

I believe that it bears GREAT significance for ministry to your college students in at least three areas:

The book advocates the kind of radical, cause-driven Christianity that is attractive to collegiate and young adult believers.  College-age adults are looking for purpose and for hope and for a promising future. Bell drives home the point that Christ offers these blessings both now and in heaven. A current popular Christian song by Natalie Grant (What Are You Waiting For), is another example of this powerful message. This song is very popular because it is a challenge to us all to change the world. For the most part, students have not given up on the idea that they can change the world (i.e. God can change the world through them).  Ask God to give you a radical vision for your group. Ask Him to give you His vision for your group and then share it. Make sure that the vision is not inward focused. If our only goal in the church is to have more students in a Sunday School room on a Sunday morning, we have missed the point and students will not respond. Challenge students to tackle a real problem or a God-sized goal for reaching a certain group of lost people, to go on a mission trip to a place where people have not heard of Jesus, to minister in a real way to a person or people in need. Let it be big!

Bell’s teaching models a laser focus for this generation. It is Socratic, rabbinical, and image driven. Leonard Sweet’s ubiquitous acronym E.P.I.C. has been around for a few years, but I firmly believe that it is a key to reaching this generation. E.P.I.C. is an acronym for Experiential, Participatory, Image-Rich, and Connective. Sweet proposes that to connect in a significant way with this generation, our teaching and activities must have all of these components. Bell’s book is a sermon on how to live, love, and teach in an E.P.I.C. way. By simply reading this book you will be confronted with images and stories that force you to make a decision. Students learn through images, connections, questions, and participation. Our teaching and mentoring times with students need to contain these components. Bell’s book is a model of how this can be done.

His theology is about life and how to live. College students want to know their purpose and they want life to the fullest. College students live for the here and now. They are creatures of today. They have little concern for heaven. They focus on this week and the next step in their lives. They focus on careers and love and fun. Bell proposes a theology that oozes with life and instruction on how to live. The instruction is not didactic. It reasons with the reader and works to teach us how to think and discern God’s design for our lives versus giving us lists of do’s and don’ts.

Regardless of your role as a college leader in the church, this book will be challenging and helpful to you as you both live the Christian life and as you connect college students to Jesus Christ.

For resources on leading your students to be on mission with God visit the International Mission Board (www.thetask.org) or North American Mission Board (www.answerthecall.net) websites.

Also, visit our “Articles for Your Ministry” section of the website on the right-hand side for ideas and articles on leading college students in your church or