Ordination

Last Sunday was my ordination. It was a special day. Since Risttee is part of the baptist union then the president of the union, Meego Remmel (who is also the pastor in Salem church where i grew up) and Toivo (he is currently the other pastor in Risttee but he will be going to Salem to help Meego pastor that church since summer) did my ordination.


Many people have asked me "Do you feel different now?".
I think that i do. Its not that my role or responsibility has changed or increased. But I do feel more confident in working/living as a pastor. At the same time i feel so honored to be able to work in the calling of God among the wonderful people of Risttee.

Estonians least religious in the world

I dont know if you happened to read this article about a study that was done among the countries of the world. It is definitely an interesting read. Here is the beginning of it.

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Five EU members figure among the world's top 10 least religious countries, with Estonia leading the list, a new poll has shown.

Just 14 percent of Estonians answered positively to the question: "Is religion an important part of your daily life?" according to a poll released by Gallup earlier this week.

Estonia is followed by Nordic countries Sweden and Denmark, where 17 and 18 percent of those asked answered positively to the same question.

The survey was carried in 143 countries, with an average of eight people out of 10 saying religion was an important part of their lives.

You can find the rest of the article from here.

reflections from Soma

Craig and I returned in the end of last week from Soma school in Tacoma, WA.
It was a great time. Definitely very stretching.

There were 11 international guys attending Soma School (+ around 10 americans)

Most lasting impression on me was left by Jeff Vanderstelt and his talks about the Gospel, what is church, and the identities of church/christian. It was specially powerful to me cause trying to understand the Gospel has been an area where God has working in my heart the most. I am convinced that the understanding of Gospel (and the full gospel) has to be the foundation of everything that we do, and everything we are.
I am still trying to process some of the things Jeff said about the gospel. For example the full gospel (means+purpose):
Means of Salvation (Gospel power): God-Sin-Jesus-Faith not works
Purpose of Salvation (Gospel story): Creation-Fall-Redemtion-Restoration

It was great to see how their church model worked. Instead of "come to us" (attractional model) they are definitely hard-core "lets go out to them" (missional model). They are really gospel based. people in their communities really get that the church is the people. And it was also interesting to observe their dialogical story-based teaching style. People in Soma really know the Story (their term for the bible, more specifically for the redemptive arc of bible stories).

Missional communities (small groups) are really on mission, that can be the specific neighborhood or target-group specific mission. Besides that very many people had their own personal mission projects. That was really great to see.

We are starting to process everything that we heard during that week to see what can we learn from it for our local context.

Seattle skyline

Appart from everything I learned there, it was hard to be away from Anna and Emma. But I have to tell you, NW seems to be a great place to go back to. I love the nature there. Totally my type! Maybe one day I can go riding the bikes in the mountains with my family there

Confessions of a pastor

This Sunday we will start a new series in Risttee church called "Confessions of a pastor". Throughout 4 weeks I will be talking about the areas in my life where I am struggeling the most. There are of course more than 4 confessions that i could make but after choosing among them here are the ones that we will talk about:
- I can't stand of lot of Christians
- I have to fight hard to keep sexually pure
- I am a slave to time
- I worry all the time

On one hand i really look forward to these weeks cause i know that God wants to use these weeks to deal with a lot of stuff in our church. On the other hand i feel scared, cause being open like that wont be easy for me. I have never been good at showing my emotions, specially communicating them.

You can pray for me that God would give me the right words and courage to be open. And that the horizontal confessions (between me and the people) would turn into vertical confessions between God and everyone.

The worst day of the week

Here is a piece of trivia for you - do you know what is the worst day of the week for pastor?

It is Monday! Thats when you feel most drained and empty. Overwhelmed by problems and challenges.

This Monday morning i really felt that way.
On days like that i start to compare the size of the vision with the current reality and it feels so out of proportion. I look at the number of people coming to church and feel discouraged. I look at the challenges that don't seem to resolve and feel worried. I think about the sermon that i preached the day before and wish that it would have been shorter and more convincing, not so informational but rather transormational.

These are the thought that were running in my mind this Monday morning. Even though i know that Risttee church is Jesus's and He is the one building it and I am replacable and priviledged to give my best in this season of my life.

But then we had the Monday morning staff meeting.
And I was filled again with new strength and joy to continue.
Spending time with the team, seeing them pouring their lives into the vision of seeing God start a movement in our city and country was what i needed.

I am so thankful for the team on both sides of the Atlantic.

National Prayer Breakfast

In the last days and weeks our team has been busy preparing for the national prayer breakfast. Once a year the council of churches invites the parliament members, the president and the government members to come and share a breakfast and be encouraged and prayed for by the churches. This years theme was "Today and tomorrow" which was about the youth in Estonia. Going up, as a youth organization was asked to be part of planning the morning.

Today the day was here. To summerize things in short - everything went great and God was really at work.
It was amazing to see the leaders of the country wiping tears from their eyes while Märt was giving a talk. His talk was followed by a video testimony of 2 guys, that have went through a life change because of what God has done in their life, and that was another great homerun.

After the official part was over then there were many people that came up to us and thanked for a great morning. But it wasn't really us that had to be thanked. Throughout the morning it was clear that God was there and was working in peoples hearts. I am sure that one big reason for that was also the worship and prayer nights that took place all over Estonia this weekend where people specially prayed for today morning. The youth of Tartu gathered acutally in Risttee and you can see pictured of that here.

As a leader it is always great to see your team excel in what they do. Today it was once again one of those times - our videoteam that had produced 2,5 video pieces, Märt who was speaking and Joonas who was drawing a painting on the stage during the breakfast. I am grateful for all of you guys!

Now back to Tartu where my sweet girls are waiting for me to return (and fix the car that decided to break down again).