Second coming of Billy Graham?

SECOND COMING OF BILLY GRAHAM? Some people predict that Rob Bell, the 35-year-old pastor of the Mars Hill nondenominational church in Grandville, Michigan, will be the next Billy Graham, rather than Graham's son Franklin. Bell's church, which meets in a converted shopping mall, is one of the fastest growing churches in U.S.

history, drawing more than 10,000 people each week. Another 30,000 people download the services each week from the church's Web site. While preaching an evangelical message, Bell also encourages social outreach: on a recent Sunday, without advance planning, the congregation raised $500,000 for AIDS relief for a village in Africa. Bell, who is making an innovative series of religious movies (called Noomas, from a phonetic spelling of pneuma or "spirit"), has at least one thing in common with Graham: they both graduated from Wheaton College. When confronted with the comparison to Graham, Bell said that he'd be deeply suspicious of anyone who has a clever response to such a claim (Chicago Sun-Times, June 7).

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