While many of the Luverne High School Class of 1976 graduates are thinking about retirement, Velda Maine is starting a new career.
She said sleeping in or planning the next travel destination may never be on her to-do list, but volunteering is.
She said one such experience led her back to school this year to become a local licensed pastor.
“I am feeling a real call to ministry,” Maine said.
In late August she began on-the-job training with the congregations of Jasper and Salem United Methodist churches as pastor while juggling her current duties as youth minister and secretary at the United Methodist Church in Luverne.
“People say you will have 10 jobs in your lifetime,” she said.
Maine may well be at that number.
She began working at the local livestock auction barn and at the former downtown bakery as a high school student. Her propensity for adding numbers led to a business management degree and office positions at the local hospital, medical clinic and at the former Tri-State Insurance Luverne office.
A lay-off notice from her last employer left Maine with a career choice after spending 21 years with the company.
“It took awhile to grasp life again,” she said. “At 55, what do I want to do now that I am grown up?”
Doing nothing wasn’t an option for the former farm girl and mother of four children. She had watched her late mother, Gertrude DeBoer, teach Sunday school and operate a day care well into her 70s.
As a result, Maine began volunteering at the United Methodist Church in Luverne and the hours spent there brought her comfort.
“I believe we are created to work and to serve,” she said. “When I was volunteering at church, there was something peaceful there.”
Two years ago she became the church’s youth minister, and while at a recent retreat she felt the call to become a pastor and minister in her own congregation.
Maine was a certified lay speaker and had been filling in for vacationing pastors around the area. In late August she received the on-assignment call to serve the congregations in Jasper and rural Ihlen.
Maine continues to serve as youth pastor locally but will eventually resign as secretary at United Methodist.
In her new pastoral career she has chosen to embrace rather than change the traditional service etiquette of her assigned churches. The old hymns and scriptural roots help Maine, who doesn’t see herself as a public speaker, adjust to being the center of attention on Sundays.
“I relate my message to their lives even though it’s (the Bible) over 2,000 years old. It’s (message) still relevant today,” she said.
That relevancy is something she hopes to expand to children in her assigned congregations by starting a youth ministry.
“Without children and young adults there is no future for us,” Maine said.