Pastor Arman and his wife Marina lead a church and a church-planting network in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan. During their recent visit to Advancing Native Missions, I and another writer, Eric Vess, interviewed them about being part of the first generation of Christians in their country.
Rebecca: What do you want the American church to know about your needs or what you’re doing?
Arman: I’m 47. [My co-pastor] is 45. Our age group is the oldest Christians. As the first generation we don’t have anything behind us. So needs would be translating materials like books. Trainings for pastors and pastoral care. Literature, conferences, and encouragement to help pastors go deeper.
Marina: I’d like to speak on behalf of the pastor’s wives. We never had a mental image or stereotype of who a pastor is, and we never thought about who a pastor’s wife is. Nobody told us that you might be going to the church — the pastor and his family — and you might start arguing and having conflict in the car. And nobody told us what to do when you would enter the church with that weight in your heart, you know?
[Or how to] act when a teenage son will say into your face, “I don’t want to go to the church anymore.” What to do? And we are glad that it didn’t happen in our family, but [it did happen to] our friends. And it’s really hard. We’re not ready for all that stuff.
And what is [also] really challenging when you are a pastor’s wife, you need to be the leader of the Sunday school. You need to be the leader of the women’s ministry, and you still need to feed your family, be a housekeeper. You’ve got to be perfect for everyone. We don’t have like, an example before our eyes [of a woman who does all this]. We would like to see it in someone’s life.
Three years ago, we had to take a sabbatical. After 12 years in the church, we were burned out. We came for the sabbatical and we had the best time during that time. We could be together as a family. It was just us. Nobody from the church. We didn’t even think about them.
Rebecca: You didn’t have that pressure.
Marina: We didn’t have those expectations, yeah.
Arman: We need to draw the lines, draw the boundaries, but we are afraid that people wouldn’t understand us. They would say stuff and [start to gossip].
I’d really like to invest into pastors to help them to grow. And that’s one of the reasons we created that group of servants. [My co-pastor] calls it coaches. But the whole idea is to help pastors because they are burning away. They’re burned out. Just to help them. And sometimes you don’t need to bring programs or projects, you just gotta be near. Just let him know that he is not alone, and that’s it. Sometimes just knowing that I’m not alone really helped.
Eric: You want leadership and discipleship examples.
Arman: Sure. And support. We need encouragement. It’s not even a desire. It’s like a scream of the soul, like nobody can hear. Except other pastors. Because they’re going through similar issues, especially in our culture. They think …you gotta do this really long list. People think that you need to answer every question they ask. They want to hear the best sermon in the world, and they want you to smile all the time. They want to be in the midst of their problems in their place, in their houses – they want everything. You cannot do that and live. A man like that doesn’t exist in this world.
Eric: They also want perfect [pastor’s] wives.
Arman: Yes, and everyone expected from her [Marina] like she gotta be everything for anyone, you know.
Eric: That’s just the recipe for disaster, you know? It’ll burn you out.
Rebecca: Thank you, Arman and Marina.
