It has been almost a month ago since I had an email conversation with Jakob Remmel from Estonia, but I think it is still relevant to hear what he has shared with me.
Jakob is married to Maali and a father to a daughter, Sofia. He is leading a startup company called YuMuuv and also is a church planter! Him and 10 other people planted a church called 3D already 10 years ago.
During this pandemic, Jakob and his church did something called a hackathon. So what is hackathon? Check out our conversation below! 👇🏽
How is Estonia these days with the situation?
Estonia is taking its best to fulfil lockdown measures. Generally the situation is stable, the worst situation is on our island, Saaremaa. Estonians are doing alright. Well, we are introverted anyways. However, economically it has been challenging like any other European countries.
So before we dive into Hackathon, can you tell us more about your church?
Our church is an open family that follows Jesus. We are a young church - most of us are between ages 15 and 35. We started the church with 10 people and now we have more than 200 members. Most of them are new converts without any previous background in faith.
Truly an inspiring church! We heard that your church had an event called hackathon. What is hackathon and how did it go?
Hackathon is a sprint-like event, often used for computer programmers or web developers collectively with people from related sectors to develop softwares or to find a solution to some important problem of interest. And normally it lasts for 24 hours - just to come up with some sort of solution.
So we thought about doing a hackathon with a topic : How can we create innovative solutions for the spreading gospel, discipleship and serving people in this crisis? The church environment has changed due to the pandemic situation and the church service will conduct online. We are limited physically, but God is bigger than the situation. So we hoped to see the both spiritual and virtual possibilities to spread the good news.
We had about 25 participants through the Zoom webinar, and formed 3 teams focused on different topics. Participants had to come up with ideas and problems and also initial solutions to begin the process together. So we all came up with different solutions concerning the COVID-19 situation and the church work. It was more like brainstorming with a vision and plan for next steps.
🖋 Editor : Tim SolWoong Kim | EBF Communication 🇪🇪 #estonia #europeanbaptist #covid19 #hackathon #gospel 3D kogudus