House of Unity - Alive and Kicking in 2016
Roberts Porciks is the new coordinator of the activities of the house of unity in Latvia focussed on Latvian youngsters from different churches. He is also board member of the newly made Latvian foundation House of unity, founded to serve integrated in the Latvian society as we focus on integration of local culture and faith. On a regular base guest are received for an locally integrated stay in Latvia, connected with the engagement of local churches.
In 2015 there we organised the great exchange program between the Netherlands and Latvia. A Latvian praise band came singing in the churches of big cities in the Netherlands. This was awesome.
They danced with elderly people, sang in the pub, gave concerts in churches, were doing evangelisation on streets. And we organised a youth pilgrimage for Dutch youngsters to in Latvia, camping, walking, singing, praying...
In the house of unity ecumenical youth work is supported. We will in 2016 come up with a monthly event. There will be praise events, a ecumenical new year party. Regularly there will be cinema evenings of unity. Beauty is important way of discovering God in postmodern society.
The night of churches evolved from a prayer group in the house of unity. With Jesus in the middle a fruitful team came up, with as chiefs the youngsters Sintija Sproge (Roman Catholic) and Jurgis Klotins (Lutheran). In 2014 the first night of churches was organised. Now already more then 150 churches of different denominations will participate in 2016. An own foundation was needed to be supported by European funds, for culturally rooted events.
In September 2014 there was the regional Taizé meeting in Riga. Priest Jacques Grubben and Stefan Schevers were there to support it. Now there are some people creating a Taizé prayer group in the house of unity. It began with the big Taizé meeting in Rotterdam at the start of 2011 Latvian youngsters were sponsored to participate. Articles came in the catholic local newspaper. There were already some small initiatives, mainly in the Lutheran church like prayer evenings. Now it is even thinkable Taizé will be going to Riga for their biggest event, the pilgrimage of trust. When it will be...
we will be there and youngsters till 30 years of age, will be invited... !
