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Chuck Kelley's book
Surprised by the Father's Plan is now available. Please click here for more information. 
uring the summer of 2004, the Protein Youth Network took a giant step forward in the process of equipping young people and church youth groups to impact their world. Motivated by the Protein conference teaching of Sam Williams and Eric Swanson, consultants with CitiReach International, on the importance of blessing and impacting cities through service, more than 100 Latvian young people, with a handful of eager Americans, invested 10 days in ministries of public service and outreach in Riga. The idea, according to Sam, was to "change the conversation between the church and the city."
 A year earlier Sam and Eric invited three key Latvians, including Almers, to come to England to observe more than 5,000 youth from the whole of Europe serving the city of Manchester for the week, culminating with a weekend evangelistic festival with Luis Palau. While the young people worked on the streets, more than 300 practical service projects were completed, resulting in numerous long lasting benefits for the city. These acts of service were noticed by the media, community leaders and the police who said that six months later there was a 40% reduction in crime and a 60% increase in property value where many of the projects took place. And then, when the gospel was proclaimed in the park, locals attended by the tens of thousands.
The Latvians returned home enthusiastic about the Manchester model, and we decided that the best group of people to carry out the "city reaching" model of ministry in Latvia would be the Protein Youth Network. Kristaps was equally enthusiastic about this challenge, so he eagerly recruited an exceptionally bright and capable colleague, Liena Krumina, to help him lead and manage the project. Together they built bridges to the Riga city council and other community leaders, offering them the labor of more than 100 young people where it would have the greatest impact on community livability.
They called the project "TeRiga", which means "Here in Riga". Nothing like this had ever happened before in Riga so the city officials were not sure how to respond. But eventually, nine service projects were identified. Kristaps and Liene traveled to churches around Latvia inviting and challenging the students to come and serve the city. Brochures were designed and ads were run over Latvian Christian Radio announcing the opportunity.
Kristaps said, "The goal of the project is to motivate Christian young people to demonstrate their faith in a practical way, serving the city by tidying it up externally and lifting it up spiritually; to invite the residents living in the vicinity of the work projects to also participate; and then to provide friendly and sincere evening events so people can become aware of the role that God could play in their lives."
Meanwhile, back in the US, our office recruited Americans to also take part. I was thrilled to learn that several people from my home church in Corvallis had decided to participate and that the church had given this effort its strongest endorsement and support.
So for ten muggy days in July 2004, more than 100 young people lived in a local elementary school in Riga, sleeping on the floors, eating cafeteria food and showering in the gym facilities. Each morning began with worship, followed by a message from the Scriptures. My long-time friend and colleague, Jeff Harris, the Director of Campus Ambassadors at Oregon State University, was the Bible teacher in the mornings, handling the Word of God with great care, and a work horse in the afternoons, wielding his shovel with precision and power.
The city gave the team free public transportation passes to get to the work sites. At the end of each day, the students returned to the school, got cleaned up and had dinner and free time until 9:00 pm when they came together again for a time of more worship and sharing.
One particularly challenging work site was a marketplace that had burned down two years before. Since the end of the Soviet occupation, city council had done a nice job of making sure that the city was clean. But this wasn't the case here in this horrible half-acre site, on a major thoroughfare, abutted against several Soviet block house complexes. It was littered with tons of trash-broken roof tiles, shards of glass, burned fiberboard and plywood, all overgrown with weeds.
As people walked by the cleanup site, many stopped to stare at the hard-working youth. Joyfully the youth interacted with passersby and when asked why they were cleaning the city, they answered that it was their way of showing Christ's love to the people of Riga. Several neighbors near the site expressed kindness toward the youth by offering them drinks and the use of their bathrooms. One pastor who stopped by the site said, "What these young people are doing to share the love of Jesus with the city is tremendous. Next year there will be even more people."
After spending a whole day filling twelve giant construction dumpsters with debris the group sang a worship song and prayed.
On the last day of teRiga, the youth assembled at the Ethnographic Museum, outside of Riga for a work project, followed by a picnic and a special ceremony where city council officials expressed their thanks on national television for the work that was done.
That evening, TeRiga featured a full concert on the steps of city hall, right across the square from the House of the Blackheads, where at that very hour Thomas Kinkade was exhibiting his five new paintings of Latvia at a VIP reception. Kristaps and his band, as well as several other bands, played and shared testimonies to several hundred enthusiastic youth and passersby.
Reflecting on TeRiga Eric Swanson said,"The Christian youth of Latvia were letting their light shine in such a way that got the attention of the city."
Nearly every day there were stories and pictures in the newspapers of TeRiga. An article in Latvia's largest newspaper, "Diena", was entitled, "Christian youth declare their faith through their good works." The headline story on the front page of the Rigas Balss proclaimed, "Christians in the Dirt" and was followed with a huge picture and impressive story. The largest television station in Latvia filmed the various project sites and broadcasted a special half-hour documentary on TeRiga. As young person after young person was interviewed, they had the opportunity to share the message of Christ's love with the people of Latvia.
Eric Swanson summed it all up, "The good news came over the bridge of good deeds to the city."
If you would like to order Chuck Kelley's book Surprised by the Father's Plan click here.
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