Hi, I'm Jeremy Steele. I'm both a skeptic and a pastor, and I am the founder of the Nooma Community—a spiritual community for people who don’t, and often can’t church.
For most people, the Nooma Community begins online. I have a social media presence as The Skeptic Pastor, where I reach between 200,000 and 1 million viewers a week. I release three different types of videos (one per day): a progressive interpretation of scripture or insights from archaeological finds that illuminate the Bible, confessions about harmful church practices I once participated in, .and how to find spiritual beliefs that work for you.
The videos themselves aren’t the focus of the ministry. The real work happens in the thousands of comments and the more than one hundred direct messages I receive every week, all of which I do my best to answer. People write things like: “When I came out to my family, they told me I was going to hell and I believed them. But now I wonder if they might be wrong, and I want to know how to reconnect with God.”
That kind of interaction is how this ministry began. After I began amassing these large number of views, people started asking for a community space because they saw the same people commenting regularly. They began calling themselves the Skeptic Pastor community. Out of that came the decision to form an intentional community. I told my district superintendent that, unbeknownst to me, it appeared the Holy Spirit had been forming a church through this work.
Many members of our community have been traumatized by manipulative practices in churches, particularly around money. Because of that, we don’t ask for donations. Instead, we use a pay-for-what-you-get model, ensuring a free option for everything we offer. Everything that typically happens in a church happens in the Nomma Community, just digitally.
This online church is different because it is full of people who have been hurt so deeply by church that they can never—or will never—return. Often people begin the conversation by saying, “I’m never going back to church. Don’t try. But I still need a pastor and a church. You’re it.” That’s why we call this tight-knit group Not Church.
Because seriously engaging in spirituality needs more than a couple minute video, we also have a podcast called Unbelief. On Sundays, we release episodes that include thirty minutes to an hour of teaching on the Bible as an ancient spiritual text. In the middle of the week, we release interviews with people who are deconstructing their faith, professors, or others who offer deep insight into spiritual life.
As powerful as digital space is, it’s not fully incarnational. We have a deep human need to be face-to-face outside of a zoom window. That’s why we’ve begun planning in-person retreats in different parts of the country, and eventually abroad, since our community is global.
Our community talks about spirituality and religious history, but also shares the everyday parts of life—pets, hobbies, creative projects. And we have an area where we hold space for one another, or in more churchy terms, we pray for each other. Someone might post, “I’ve got a job interview,” or “I’m on my way to the ER with chest pains.” No matter the time of day, someone will respond, because while one part of the world sleeps, another part of our global community is awake. In addition to group connections, people can schedule pastoral meetings online.
I see my role as the pastor of the Nooma Community as helping people find spiritual beliefs and practices that actually work for them—beliefs and practices that help them become the best version of themselves (you can read that as sanctification), that help them find a purpose greater than themselves, and help them experience transcendence.
That’s me, and this amazing thing called the Nooma Community.
