LCMS World Mission Blog

“Last year, Mark worked with Rev. Artis Eglitis, the chief administrative officer of the Latvian Lutheran Church, to design a pastor salary plan for the church. The plan provided funding so that 115 pastors in Latvia could serve as full-time pastors. The plan organized the selling of property in Latvia so that the proceeds could be invested in the LCMS Foundation to provide the funding needed to pay the pastors until the congregations grew strong enough to provide their own support.

“Now, Mark is working with a Latvia team to provide pastoral leadership training for the pastors of the church. It is important that the pastors are trained to be full-time pastors. For the many years under Soviet occupation, churches were only allowed to worship on Sunday mornings. They couldn’t have Sunday schools, youth groups, small group ministries, women’s groups, etc. So many of the ministry programs we take for granted in the United States are very new to the Latvians. Through pastoral leadership training we hope to provide guidance and instruction to help the pastors develop these types of ministries in their congregations.

“Mark and I, along with five Latvians, attended a Pastoral Leadership Institute (PLI) conference in San Antonio, Texas, in April. Following this conference, the team will work with us to design a pastoral training program for the Baltic churches. PLI has been offering pastoral leadership training for the past 10 years in the LCMS. Together, we hope to take many of the principles of PLI and design a program that would work to provide pastoral leadership training in the Baltic churches that would be especially relevant to their culture.”

• Learn about the mission work in Latvia
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