In early February it was a year since LELBāL deacon Ieva Puriņa was ordained a LELBāL pastor. We offer for your attention a short express interview with Ieva.
– Please tell us briefly how this year went for you as you carried out the duties of a pastor. Did the congregation accept you as their shepherd, or were there also difficulties?
– The year has gone by in a blessed way, but not so very differently from previous ones. I had already served in the congregation before – as a deacon. In practical ministry not much changed. The congregation had been favorable even before that, and my ordination, too, was only possible thanks to the congregation’s call. I am not the only pastor of our congregation – I serve together with Provost Klāvs Bērziņš. He has considerably more experience than I do, so I am glad that I can learn a great deal from him as we serve together.
– Have there perhaps been any comments made to you – positive or negative – about your new office?
– Personally, I have received congratulations and good wishes. The negative comments were on the internet and here and there in the media, but I did not read or listen to them. If it were a matter of objective criticism, we could talk, but if it is only mud and negativity, I have no need of it.
– Being a pastor is not a livelihood for you, unlike for some of your male colleagues. You work a secular job, but receive no salary for your pastoral ministry. Do you think that perhaps ministry in the church should be organized this way, so that it would be ministry from the heart and out of calling, rather than a daily routine with a bureaucratic and legalistic tinge?
– You know, both options have their pros and cons. If a pastor’s work is salaried and full-time, then, yes, there is a certain risk of sinking into routine and bureaucratic duties. But then the pastor is much more available to the congregation, and it is easier for him or her to plan their time, dividing it between spiritual and administrative duties. If there is a day job and the ministry is voluntary, then full pastoral care of the congregation is not possible, because there are only 24 hours in a day, even for a pastor. That is one more reason why services in our congregation are held only once a month. Unfortunately.
– I would be very interested to know how you feel in liturgical vestments, since ever since Luther’s time some people associate them with “men’s attire”?
– I do not experience the cassock as men’s clothing; I have no such associations. To me it is a vestment of office that covers my personal self, so that it does not hinder my being an instrument in God’s hands during the service. I received my cassock at one time from my first pastor and provost Viesturs Vāvere, when I began serving in the church as an evangelist. He had inherited it from some older pastor. The cassock is truly “of the old make,” because before my ordination to the office of deacon in Brussels I took it to the dry cleaner’s and got it back with little threads where the buttons should have been – they had all melted!
– You are taking courses. Tell us briefly what these courses are and what new skills you have perhaps drawn from them for your pastoral ministry?
– Yes, any moment now I will finish my first course in doula training. A doula is a woman who provides non-medical support to a woman during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. After this course I will be a doula in training and will be allowed to practice by leading supportive conversations with women.
These courses have taught me new skills that will also be useful in a pastor’s work. How to be a better listener, how to support another person in conversation, how to help a person arrive at decisions acceptable in every way on their own.
Aļesja Lavrinoviča spoke with Pastor Ieva Puriņa.
Proofreading – Milda Klampe.