The Moth Student Kohvik

The Moth youth kohvik is a coffee shop with a unique mission: to create an environment that nurtures the spirit of local community in Rapla by promoting social entrepreneurship among youth.

Our vision for The Moth emerged over the last few years as a possible answer to a range of perennial problems that we face in our efforts to disciple Rapla youth. As with many small towns, many young people growing up in Rapla leave us after High School to pursue education or a career in bigger cities. If they return to Rapla at all, it is not until they have established themselves financially and built a family. Missing this age group (20-30) means that our outreach to Rapla’s many unchurched youth is limited to a very small number of adult volunteers. On that basis, we can’t reach very far.

This has motivated us to find a sustainable youth ministry solution that is able to fund and staff itself apart from the ministry of the church while staying closely associated with our efforts at intentional ministry networking.

The Moth answers this challenge by creating a business-based, community oriented ministry platform – an environment in which connections are made and collaborations nurtured every day. The Moth provides a natural space in which faith can be demonstrated and articulated for youth who might not otherwise encounter the Gospel. To this end, The Moth is developing active partnerships with ministries and social enterprises in Rapla as well as working closely with local schools to invite youth to learn basic business skills through shadowing and shared development of the shop.

We are grateful to the Presbytery of the Inland Northwest for a ministry grant of 5,000 USD to help us get The Moth up and running! We are also looking forward to welcoming short-term youth missionaries in the summer of 2019 to help us leverage our new space. We hope to open the shop by January 1st, 2019.

Sõbralt Sõbrale Shop

In March 2018 we opened a consignment store in Rapla together with the company Sõbralt Sõbrale (Friend to Friend). Sõbralt Sõbrale now has 17 stores around Estonia and uses revenues from their sales to promote a number of good will campaigns for children, the disabled and needy throughout Estonia. When the opportunity to open the store came up in discussion in 2017, it was clearly an answer to a longstanding prayer for new ways to minister to the Rapla area.

The store in Rapla has been designed from the start with the idea that, in addition to demonstrating the love of Christ in a business environment, it could also become a space for welcoming, befriending, connecting, encouraging and discipling our customers. The showroom sits behind 18 meters of floor to ceiling picture windows overlooking one of the central squares in Rapla. Our vision is to equip an adjoining kiosk included in our rent as a coffee shop and juice bar. The coffee shop will use a selection of the furniture for sale in the shop for limited seating. After store hours, the shop can be converted into a cosy cafe with an open-mic stage for evening soirees and outreach.

Rapla Street Cafes

Each June, the town of Rapla celebrates the community by holding a street festival. Each year, the Rapla church hosts a one-day parking lot restaurant as a run-up to our anniversary celebration. This is a whole-church event with opportunities for everyone to contribute something special. Over the years we have developed a now famous hamburger recipe, offered live music and a mini fair in the church yard.

Dunamis (PRMI) Seminars

In pursuit of equipping our congregation to serve together in extending the Gospel into the places where it is most needed, we have engaged the help of a team from Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International (PRMI). This team has come to us now twice every year for three years to give biblical and practical instruction on participating in the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Throughout my life, I have encountered a number of similar resources. But in my experience, I typically have to choose between solid teaching and effective ministry. The doers can’t (or don’t) do the hard work of solid exegesis and the teachers can’t do (or avoid doing) what they are teaching. Not so with the Dunamis team!

In addition to thorough and solid biblical teaching and effective ministry, the Dunamis team has demonstrated patience, humility and sincerity in all that they have done with us. I highly recommend the services of the Dunamis Project!

You can read more about the Dunamis Project at the PRMI website. Dunamis Project topics include:

  1. Gateways to Empowered Ministry
  2. In the Spirit’s Power
  3. The Power of Prayer
  4. Healing Ministry of Jesus
  5. Equipping for Spiritual Warfare
  6. Listening Evangelism

Christ Child Search

Each advent an ecumenical team gathers from local churches to organize our annual search for the Christ child. This is a unique retelling of the Christmas story to a population that may have never heard it before. Each successive search has grown in number such that now we have kids streaming out behind our famed “star of Bethlehem” like a comet’s tail

Along the way, kids meet all the characters from the nativity scene along with some others that might have dropped in. Each station involves creative dialogue written by a very talented and beautiful teacher (ehem!) and fun activities. The final destination presents a reading of the manger scene followed by fun and treats for all.

A great outreach and a beautiful way to announce the Gospel together with our neighboring churches.

Hospitality House

Looks like a house!

When we moved to Rapla we had in mind not only a home for our kids to grow up in but also a space for hospitality. After 9 years of ministry here and a steady stream of visitors, ministry teams, guest speakers, and summer interns, there is no doubt that a space like this could regularly be put to good use well into the future.  Additionally, the refugee crisis and fallout from pandemic this year have reminded us of the time-honored practice of extending hospitality to the stranger.

In light of these things, we began sketching out the possibilities of replacing our shed/sauna into a guesthouse which would include all the elements of the present structure but reorganized and upgraded for the purpose of offering a peaceful place for guests and teams to stay during their time in Rapla. In addition to a garage and storage space, the guesthouse is divided into a self-contained studio apartment on the ground floor, sleeping spaces on the second floor and a separate sauna and washroom accessible to residents of either space.

I work on the house evenings and weekends and hope to have a complete project by September of 2022.

  • Hospitality House Sauna

    Hospitality House Sauna

    Back when I was serving as youth leader for the Viimsi Church youth group, I remember having sauna parties with the guys every few weeks (the church had its own sauna built in, a real perk both for those living in the house or for ministry purposes). In the winter while the sauna was heating,…

English Camp

In partnership with a team of youth from Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs and the Estonian organization KOMA, our youth hosted our first ever summer English Camp this year in the small town of Kaiu. The camp was a great success for our first foray. Not only did we see campers with little to no faith exposure make significant steps forward in their walk with Christ, we also made deep inroads into the local youth population setting us up for significant future outreach.

Marriage Mentoring

We learned the home-based marriage mentoring system from Paddy and Carole Ducklow during our time studying at Regent College in Vancouver, BC. The system has been developed as a holistic approach to marriage preparation. The Ducklows have developed a curriculum that covers 10 topic that play a central role in the health of a marriage. Couples preparing for marriage work through the questions individually and then share, compare and discuss their written answers under the care of a trained mentor couple. Mentoring takes place in the mentor couple’s home which not only provides a comfortable environment but also provides the marrying couple with an “inside peak” into the daily dynamics of a working marriage.

Since returning to Estonia, we have used the marriage mentoring system in every community we have served and have trained mentor couples in a handful of churches around Estonia. The Ducklows joined us for one of these training sessions in 2010 and even extended their visit when Eyjafjallajökull erupted in Iceland and cut off their escape!

Over the years, marriage mentoring has been one of the few ways Lea and I can minister as a team and always brings us a lot of joy. We have had the privilege of personally mentoring many couples from various backgrounds and situations and the mentoring process has resulted in long standing friendships.

Whitworth Fellows

This summer we had the pure joy of welcoming two interns from Whitworth University’s summer ministry fellowships program: Lilly Davidson and Mirra Matheson. Mirra and Lilly both graduated in the Spring and put their considerable talents to work helping us with our summer youth ministry.