Ekklesia

A church-focused event marketplace — Eventbrite for faith communities.

Stack

• Monorepo: pnpm workspaces + Turborepo
• API: NestJS + Prisma + PostgreSQL + Better Auth + Stripe Connect
• Web: Next.js 15 (App Router) — public marketplace, organizer console, platform admin
• Mobile: Expo (React Native) + expo-router — iOS + Android from one codebase
• Shared: @ekklesia/shared (DTOs, enums, Zod schemas), @ekklesia/ui (design tokens)

Layout

apps/
  api/      NestJS backend
  web/      Next.js web (public + console + admin)
  mobile/   Expo React Native app
packages/
  shared/   Cross-runtime DTOs, enums, validation
  ui/       Design tokens + primitives

Quick start

# 1. Install
pnpm install

# 2. Start Postgres
docker compose up -d

# 3. Copy env
cp .env.example .env

# 4. Migrate + seed DB
pnpm db:migrate
pnpm db:seed

# 5. Run everything
pnpm dev

• API: http://localhost:4000
• Web: http://localhost:3000
• Mobile: pnpm --filter @ekklesia/mobile start

Optional services

These are off by default — the app works without them, with graceful fallbacks.

Image uploads (MinIO, S3-compatible)

brew install minio/stable/minio
mkdir -p ~/minio-data
minio server ~/minio-data --console-address :9001 &

# In another tab, create the bucket + make it public-read.
brew install minio/stable/mc
mc alias set local http://localhost:9000 minio minio12345
mc mb local/ekklesia-dev
mc anonymous set download local/ekklesia-dev

Then in .env:

S3_ACCESS_KEY=minio
S3_SECRET_KEY=minio12345

Restart the API. The "Cover image" / "Church logo" uploaders on the organizer forms will now work.

Transactional email (Resend)

Sign up at https://resend.com → create an API key → add to .env:

RESEND_API_KEY=re_xxxxxxxxxxxx
EMAIL_FROM="Ekklesia <onboarding@resend.dev>"   # or your verified domain

Without a key, RSVP confirmation emails are logged to the API console instead of dispatched — useful for development.

Markets

UK, EU, US. Open marketplace from day one. GDPR baseline.

Phases

1. Foundation — monorepo, schema, auth, roles, feature flags, CI (current)
2. Free marketplace — discovery, church pages, free RSVP, tickets
3. Organizer + admin consoles — onboarding, verification, moderation
4. Payments — Stripe Connect, paid tickets, donations, payouts
5. Scale + compliance — analytics, GDPR tooling, observability