Bishop Ivan Laptev talked about the life of the Church during the pandemic and about the implementation of the ELCIR development strategy, giving the examples of several congregations.

 

Rev. Yevgeni Mikhailov, senior pastor of the Congregation of Pushkin, St. Petersburg, shared about the successful establishment of a board of trustees which is comprised of Head of the ELCIR Mission Department Rev. Yevgeni Raskatov, Rev. Dean Ivan Hutter of the St. Petersburg Deanery, and representatives of the Synodal Council and the Headquarters. The newly established team have worked well and efficiently for the good of the congregation.

 

Other speakers included Head of the Diaconal Dept. Aleksandr Smirnov and Head of the Children & Youth Dept. Nikolai Minenkov. Oleg Belezhenko shared about Anna Pomogayet Charity Cluster. The leaders of the ELCIR family ministry Rev. Valeri Antipov and his wife Natalia participated in the meeting online. The meeting developed a plan of work for the deanery. Among some of the “housekeeping” matters, Dean Hutter shared about his experience in receiving an anti-terrorist safety certificate for a church facility. The pastors of the congregations received step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

 

The meeting included a presentation of Istseleniye lyubovyu (“Healing Love”), a counseling guidebook by Petri Välimäki in Russian translation by Tatiana Shadrunova.

 

Quick facts: The St. Petersburg Deanery is the largest of the ELCIR deaneries. It’s comprised of 22 congregations located in St. Petersburg, Leningrad Oblast, Pskov Oblast, and Kaliningrad Oblast: https://elci.ru/sankt-peterburgskoe-probstvo/

 

Photo credits: Eduard Gnezdilov