Nooma

In the Hebrew Scriptures there is no word for "spiritual." And Jesus never used the phrase "spiritual life." Because for Jesus and his tradition, all of life is spiritual. So what does that mean?

Where did the first caveman or cavewoman get the idea that somebody, somewhere existed who needed to be worshipped, appeased, and followed? And how did the idea evolve that if you didn't say, do, or offer the right things, this being would be upset, agitated, or even angry with you? Where did religion come from?

At the heart of the historical Jesus story is the provocative, compelling, subversive, beautiful insistence that nothing can ever be the same again, not after resurrection.

Follow Rob in this two-hour exploration of the endlessly complex relationship between suffering and creativity. This film was shot on location during the Drops Like Stars 45-city international tour.

Rob Bell addresses one of the most controversial issues of faith—the afterlife—arguing, would a loving God send people to eternal torment forever...? With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial, and his message is decidedly hopeful—eternal life doesn't start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins.

Affectionately known as "nooma | 025", explore the "Spirituality of Wonder" with Rob in this short video.

Rob shows how traditional ideas have grown stale and dysfunctional and how to return vitality and vibrancy to lives of faith today.

In this new edition, Rob Bell focuses his attention on explaining in ways both understandable and approachable to teens how it is that "love wins"—and why that's such an important lesson to learn.

New York Times bestselling author Rob Bell, whom The New Yorker describes as "one of the most influential Christian leaders in the country," does for the concept of God what he did for heaven and hell in his book Love Wins: He shows how traditional ideas have grown stale and dysfunctional and how to return vitality and vibrancy to lives of faith today.

Zimzum is a Hebrew term where God, in order to have a relationship with the world, contracts, creating space for the creation to exist. In marriage, zimzum is the dynamic energy field between two partners, in which each person contracts to allow the other to flourish. Mastering this field, this give and take of energy, is the secret to what makes marriage flourish. Rob and Kristin Bell are brutally honest about their own struggles, their ups and downs, as together they pass along what matters most for couples. In this wise book, they explore the secret of what makes a happy union—probing the mystery at the heart of the extraordinary emotional connection that binds two people. With his down-to-earth charm, a dose of whimsy, and memorable stories, Rob, writing with his wife Kristen, changes how we consider marriage, providing insight that can help all of us create satisfying and sacred unions of our own.

Kristen and Rob answer, "What is Zimzum?"

Is there anything better than a conversation about The Zimzum of Love with Pete Holmes? Here's one of the many great questions he asked…

For thousands of years, people have viewed the symbol of the cross as an icon of hope. But does it ever strike you as strange that the cross is actually an ancient execution device? Originally a clip from the special "The Rob Bell Show", in this short film, progressive pastor Rob Bell shows us a different way to look at this enduring symbol and how it can help us make peace with our past.

What does "evangelical" really mean?

The blinking line is asking you: What will you bring into existence?

In How to Be Here, bestselling author Rob Bell lays out the concrete steps we can use to define and follow our dreams, interweaving engaging stories, lessons from biblical figures like Adam and Eve, insights gleaned from Rob's personal experience, and practical advice.

In How to Be Here, bestselling author Rob Bell lays out the concrete steps we can use to define and follow our dreams, interweaving engaging stories, lessons from biblical figures, insights gleaned from Rob's personal experience, and practical advice.

In How to Be Here, bestselling author Rob Bell helps readers discover what gets them out of bed in the morning and shares ways that we align our lives with our passions.

In How to Be Here, bestselling author Rob Bell reminds readers that failure is part of the process of creating a life worth living. He encourages us to embrace failure and learn from it.

"When I did the first Everything is Spiritual tour and film in 2006, I remember thinking 'I wonder if I’ll ever do a part 2…' I knew that if there was going to be follow up, the ideas would have to be really compelling and it would take a long time to put it together and of course I’d need a new white board. Ten years later here it is my friends, Everything is Spiritual, 2016."

In the early aughts, when he was barely in his thirties, Rob Bell was a star. Bell, a pastor, was the founder of the evangelical Mars Hill Bible Church, in West Michigan. The church had started scrappily, in 1999, with just a few hundred congregants (it was a transplant from an established congregation in Grand Rapids where Bell had worked before), but, largely thanks to Bell, it quickly ballooned in size. Within a few years, Mars Hill was meeting in a building that used to house a mall, and Sunday attendance was around ten thousand. Bell had built an impressive reputation as a preacher; he had a conversational style and a knack for making his messages straightforward and appealing, especially to young people. But, as his preaching thrived, Bell’s personal faith was reaching a point of crisis. He began to feel that he could no longer share the standard evangelical messages that he had been preaching—about salvation and damnation and the infallible scripture—in good conscience. So he modified his approach, avoiding some topics and opening others to skepticism, and changing how the church was run. This evolution caused fractures in the congregation, some of them quite large; when Bell opened up church-leadership roles to women, for instance, attendance dropped by two thousand. In the course of a decade, the once celebrated wunderkind became a polarizing figure, and the turmoil came to a head in 2011, when Bell published a book called “Love Wins.” The book called into question the idea of a punitive, horrific, eternal Hell where God sends nonbelievers. The book was hugely controversial in evangelical Christian circles, and within a year Bell left Mars Hill. In this video from the Amazon Originals series “The New Yorker Presents,” based on a story by Kelefa Sanneh that appeared in the magazine in 2012, Bell talks about the path that led him to the center, and then out to the fringes, and beyond, of American evangelicalism. At his new home, in Califor