Our (not my) Ideas Build Community

Jeremy Steele

One of the most important lessons ministry has taught me over the years is also one of the most humbling: just because I have a good idea as the pastor, that doesn’t mean it is the right idea. And it almost never means it is the idea people actually need.

I relearned that lesson recently through a project in the Nooma Community that, on paper, seemed straightforward. Nooma is a fully digital spiritual community, and at some point it felt natural to ask what it might look like to gather in person, to take it from purely digital to phygital. I imagined a single retreat where everyone would travel from wherever they lived to meet for a long weekend of shared practice, conversation, and rest. I pitched dates. I asked logistical questions. I assumed interest would follow.

It did not.

The responses I received were quiet but clear. Some people did not want to travel that far. Some physically could not. Others named family, financial, or accessibility barriers that made long-distance travel unrealistic.

And then something else happened. A few people said, almost casually, that they would love something closer to home. A couple of them even offered to help coordinate it if that were possible.

That was the moment the project shifted from my idea to the community’s idea.

This is something I have had to learn over and over in ministry. Programs tend to work best when they grow out of the lives of the people already engaged, not when they are imposed from above, even with good intentions. The role of leadership is not to decide what should matter. It is to notice what already does and help make space for it.

So instead of one centralized retreat, we tried something different. We followed the energy where it showed up. Our first in-person gathering took place in the Kentucky area, organized and supported by members of the community who lived nearby. My role shifted from planner to participant, from organizer to guest.

I will admit I carried a quiet concern with me going into that weekend. Digital community is real, but it is also easy to underestimate how much of relationship lives in physical presence. I wondered whether people might feel awkward, like they were on a retreat with strangers they only knew through screens and usernames. I wondered if there would be a period of polite small talk while everyone tried to figure out how to relate in person.

That concern disappeared almost immediately.

From the moment people arrived, it was obvious that these relationships were already deep. These were not strangers meeting for the first time. These were people who had been supporting one another through difficult seasons, exploring spiritual practices together, wrestling with questions of faith, and sharing the ordinary details of their lives. They knew each other’s stories. They knew each other’s pets. They had prayed for one another before surgeries and checked in afterward. They had laughed together and sat with grief together.

Seeing each other in person did not create connection. It revealed it.

What struck me most was how quickly the retreat moved into depth. There was no long warm-up period. The trust was already there. The conversations were honest from the beginning. The shared practices felt grounded rather than tentative. The digital space had already done the slow work of relationship building, and the physical gathering simply gave that work a new dimension.

The weekend itself was beautiful. Not because it was perfectly programmed or tightly scheduled, but because it felt like a natural extension of the community people already inhabited. Meals felt like continuation of conversations that had been happening for months. Silence felt shared rather than awkward. Laughter came easily. The retreat did not feel like an experiment. It felt like a reunion.

What we learned from that experience is now shaping the future of this project. Rather than trying to replicate one large retreat over and over, we are planning multiple gatherings in different regions, led by different members of the community. Each retreat will reflect the people hosting it and the needs of that local group. Over time, we are also exploring how to invite people from outside the community to participate, offering a gentle and embodied entry point into what Nooma already is.

This model requires something that traditional church programming often struggles with. It requires leaders to loosen control and trust the community they are serving. It requires listening before acting and being willing to let good ideas go when better ones emerge.

The Kentucky retreat reminded me that digital community does not weaken human connection. When it is practiced with intention and care, it can deepen it. And when people who already know how to show up for one another finally share the same physical space, the result is not awkwardness. It is recognition.

We did not create something new that weekend. We simply allowed something that already existed to take on flesh.