Pastor and author Rob Bell is a phenomenon hard to avoid. His best-selling books (e.g., Velvet Elvis) and his popular Nooma video series have made him an attractive figure for many Christians during the past six or seven years. Ten thousand souls attend his Mars Hill Bible Church in a suburb of Grand Rapids. Hailed as either an enfant terrible or on the leading edge of evangelicalism, Bell is deliberately provocative, iconic, and charismatic. He appeals to “hipster Christianity”—a younger, edgier, and less traditional form of church that challenges established patterns of worship, teaching, and Christian practice.1 While attending a talk he gave to a packed room, I noted that Bell draws in many through his postmodernist ethos—informality, humor,