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Our teachings are purely Biblical, and as such we have had to reject many of the dogmas and practices of popular Christianity. This makes us unpopular with some but we will not compromise our faithfulness to God's word. Our websites are read by thousands of people worldwide. Our pastor and his team travel most weeks to baptize someone outside of Latvia. We have large stocks of his book Bible Basics and the New European Version of the New Testament which we distribute worldwide in various languages. We have people all over the world who have accepted what we are teaching and are interested in being baptized. So you will find on our audio page that there are teachings in English as well as Russian, which are listened to not only by us in Latvia but by the wider community we are part of world-wide. Our services are run in English and Russian, sometimes also with extra translation into French and Latvian. We have a significant number of members who came to Latvia as asylum seekers, whom we subsequently assisted and baptized. Our membership therefore includes not only Latvians and Russians but also people born in Australia, Azerbaijan, Congo, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, England, Iran, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Turkey and many other places. We are really honestly trying to run a church the right way, basing our beliefs and practice solely on the Bible, and God really has blessed what we are doing. Our pastor Duncan teaches us to read the Bible for ourselves using the Bible Companion, a plan where there are some specified Bible chapters to be read each day, so that in the course of a year we all read the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice. We understand a pastor to be one who feeds, who shares out to others the spiritual food in the Bible; shepherds were one of the lowest occupations in New Testament times and we don't see ourselves as followers of any man but just the Bible. All our Bible studies are based on those chapters for the day. So as a group we're bound together by reading those same chapters each day, whether or not we can get out to all church meetings. We're generally a congregation who had no deep religious beliefs before we got involved with systematic Bible reading, which lead us to understand the Lord Jesus Christ- and then become really committed to Him by baptism and living a life in Him. Our very real relationship with Him transforms our lives, in which we're encouraged by being surrounded by others in church who are experiencing the same wonderful changes, and guided by those who've been in the faith many more years than we have and who are running this church not for personal gain or glory but simply because they love God, love Jesus, love us and indeed the whole world... more »
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HISTORYAs the USSR broke up in the early 1990s, people in Latvia saw advertisments for free Bible literature placed by Duncan Heaster. They responded, and were one by one baptized by Duncan, who was then living in Vilnius, Lithuania. They began meeting in small groups in homes. Duncan and Cindy moved to Riga from Vilnius in 2003. The groups began meeting regularly in their home. It outgrew their front room, and so the church moved into a basement on Kalnciema iela. This gave the opportunity to run feeding schemes to feed people living in night shelters and to do other charitable works. Attendance grew rapidly, and we then had to move into our current location at Grivas 11/6 in Ilguciems. FUNDING We believe that a love of money has led many churches into error. Pastors teach what they are paid to teach, people attend where they think they might get the most personal blessing in material terms. We don't believe in the prosperity Gospel- the idea that we can get material blessing in this life; rather do we believe we're asked to carry the cross of Jesus in this life, to die with Him, to lose today, that tomorrow at His return we might rise to eternal life and blessing in His Kingdom. But each week we provide over 200 meals to people in our feeding schemes, and countless cups of coffee, plus we need to heat and run the Bible Centre. You can donate to this work through Carelinks Ministries, and by PayPal to info@carelinks.net . None of us take any salary or other form of reimbursement, we simply serve God as far as we can given our life situations.
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