A Powerful Cup of Coffee

Holistic ministry at work in Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia

by Hope Mills Voelkel

Are you drinking Dominion Trading Company coffee? Did you know that every cup means an Ethiopian farmer was paid fairly and Ethiopian church planters can establish more churches?

The story of Dominion Trading Company coffee is a story about partnership—of a friendship between three pastors in two different countries: Gus Bess and Doug Wieber, both Evangelical Free Church pastors in the United States, and Werku Golle, an association board member for the Kale Heywot Church, one of Ethiopia’s largest groups of evangelical churches.

In time, these pastors enfolded their congregations into a growing relationship, and back-and-forth trips soon followed. All along, the three pastors talked repeatedly about Ethiopia’s very real needs.

What first developed out of this cross-cultural, cross-denominational relationship was the New Covenant Foundation: a nonprofit organization that empowers those in developing countries to care for themselves physically, spiritually and economically.

“On our first trip to Ethiopia,” says Craig Meredith, director of technology for NCF, “the people we met said, ‘We want to get off foreign aid; aid is killing us.’ The only way to get out of Third World status is to create exportable products. So what they need most is economic growth. ‘Success’ in Ethiopia is when they are no longer dependent upon aid but can be reaching out to extend aid to others.

NCF organizes resources from U.S. congregations, including people with expertise in medical, business and financial fields—inviting them to travel to Ethiopia to train local business leaders, pastors, health-care workers and teachers.

The seven initiatives in NCF’s model—church planting, health, education, assistance, finance, innovation and marketing—work with the whole person, not just one area of life. (Visit www.newcovenantfoundation.org to learn more.) And Dominion Trading Company is the way that innovation and marketing come to life.

In Ethiopia, coffee has to be part of the conversation. After all, some of the world’s finest coffee comes from here, and it’s the crop of necessity for 90 percent of the population in southern Ethiopia. So as NCF developed, it became obvious that if local farmers were to benefit from their labors, the coffee profits needed to come back home.

In 2002, the business minds behind NCF formed Dominion Trading Company—a for-profit venture to help local coffee farmers better market and export their product. Then in 2004, DTC Holding was formed as an Ethiopian-owned and -managed corporation. With help from NCF, DTC Holding purchased a wet-processing coffee facility in the town of Yirgacheffe. The plant employs 200 local workers and purchases coffee from approximately 2,000 local growers. The plant’s capabilities continue to grow, including the recent addition of coffee-processing equipment that eliminates environmental waste water.

A large percentage of Dominion Trading’s net income is invested back into NCF and as profit-sharing with local coffee growers. So the sale of coffee leads to improved health care, better business training and more church plants through Ethiopia’s National Kale Heywot Church association. All of which leads to communities better able to stand on their own two feet.

“I would like to see Ethiopia able to feed its own people, meet basic health needs and get rid of the dependency syndrome,” says NCF board member Mekonnen Tesema. “The New Covenant Foundation is doing something sustainable at the grass-root level.”

The benefit to U.S. churches is also obvious. “It’s gotten people energized and involved in doing ministry in some really wonderful ways—people you wouldn’t think would be able to utilize their skills in a mission kind of setting,” says Kevin Kompelien, EFCA ReachGlobal international leader for Africa.

As an example, His Place (EFCA) in Post Falls, Idaho, recently sent a welder to Ethiopia to help set up the coffee-processing machine. “This welder would never think of himself as a missionary,” says Pastor Doug Wieber, “but he may have more long-term impact on Ethiopia than I will ever have, in terms of economic development.”

“The real heartbeat of the ministry,” he adds, “is that we are partnering in ministry. We have some resources they don’t have; they have some spiritual depth we don’t have.”

“They are extremely good at church planting and evangelism—no need for us to help there,” agrees Craig Meredith. “What they need is the capability to economically support their own church planters to take Africa for Jesus.”

Approaching one another humbly, with a willingness to link arms and walk together toward a common goal is what true partnership looks like. And a lot of good conversation over coffee.

Hope Mills Voelkel is a writer at Journey Group in Charlottesville, Va.