Argentine Church Forges New Direction in Congregational Ministry

First IELU Lutheran Deaconess to Serve as a Pastor

(LWI) The United Evangelical Lutheran Church (IELU) in Argentina has for the first time called a deaconess trained in diaconal service to serve as a congregation pastor.

Deaconess Maria Elena Parras will be installed on 1 August as pastor of the Maria Magdalena Lutheran Church in Resistencia municipality, northern Argentina. IELU’s initiative to encourage diaconal workers to serve in the pastoral ministry is supported through The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Transformative Leadership and Good Governance program. Church sustainability is one of the focus areas of the program coordinated by the LWF Department for Mission and Development (DMD).

“The call of deaconess Elena responds to the challenge to grow as a church, opening other spaces of service and enhancing the concept of preaching the word in the framework of holistic ministry,” said IELU President Rev. Gustavo Gómez.

The Maria Magdalena congregation is located in the Juan Bautista Alberdi community in Resistencia, the capital of Chaco province. The city is considered as one of the poorest in Argentina, with more than 50 percent of its inhabitants living in poverty.

Gómez noted that the congregation which has been serving the Resistencia community for the past 20 years has a grassroots diaconal ministry that emphasizes solidarity with vulnerable persons as a mark of the mission of the church. “Deep love that drives into service is rooted in the biblical teaching and understanding of the sacraments, which is an invitation to humbly serve the neighbor,” he said.

“The Maria Magdalena Church is at the vanguard in understanding and setting up the church’s agenda in the mission of God because it responds to the critical challenges of its members,” the IELU president added.

Gómez explained that the decision to call a diaconal worker to serve in the pastoral ministry was the result of a long process of discerning how to connect the various IELU ministries while at the same time ensuring the sustainability of congregations. “It is important to have the right gifts and resources,” he emphasized.

The LWF Transformative Leadership and Good Governance program promotes an integrated approach to ministry that includes peer learning and a focus on developing leadership models that increase churches’ capacity to serve their respective communities, said Rev. Dr Patricia Cuyatti, LWF area secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean region at DMD.

“It is exciting to see IELU affirming the church as a community that is gifted with lay and ordained men and women. Using all the available human gifts and talents makes the church more sustainable to carry out God’s mission among people in need,” Cuyatti noted.

Elena, who has been managing projects and coordinating workshops on diaconal involvement at the IELU, said she believes her experience in bringing together a network of women pastors in Latin America will strengthen her new ministry.

She said the calling to the Maria Magdalena congregation was an important step for her and for the church. However, she noted, this pastoral ministry is also about the commitment that is needed in order for this move not to be seen as a simplistic solution that the IELU should adopt everywhere.

“We are being challenged as a church to become more deeply aware of the gifts people have and how they can be developed by using traditional assets and especially creative resources,” Elena said.

“I am strengthened by the thought that everything has its time, its place and happens for a reason,” she concluded.

The IELU has 31 congregations in Argentina and Uruguay with a total of 11,000 members. It has been an LWF member church since 1951.