[2] The features of her ministry have been pastoral care, leading spiritual retreats and contemplative prayer,[3] and encouraging use of the creative and performance arts for worship.
Pain is married to Nikolai Blaskow who is an Anglican priest, teacher and chaplain;[7] the couple are described as being a team and having a "shared ministry".
[16] The next day Pain moved to Adelaide to take up a position as Deacon-in-Charge at Emmanuel Anglican church, Wayville[14] where she preached and undertook all the duties of a priest except for blessing and serving the eucharist.
[17] On 5 December 1992 Archbishop Ian George ordained Pain as a priest along with Joan Claring-Bould, Flo Monahan (Walters), Sister Juliana CI (Community of the Incarnation) and Susan Straub.
[20] While at Wayville, Pain wrote about her work as a priest: "It is a privilege to stand alongside men and women in the crisis time of their lives, baptising, marrying, burying, finding ways to express in ritual the pain of divorce, the joy of a new home or a new relationship, listening, teaching, facilitating and learning.
Pain led an ecumenical service at St Peter's Cathedral on 11 February which included a dramatised conversation between Mary Lee and Catherine Helen Spence (South Australian suffragists) and a litany honouring the wisdom and struggles of women.
The service was organised with other clergy, Elizabeth McWhae and Catie Inches-Ogden and the guest of honour was then Governor of South Australia, Dame Roma Mitchell.
[27] Pain was installed as the 23rd Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in Sale on 3 September 2016 by Kay Goldsworthy, then Bishop of Gippsland.
[29] She was interviewed in 2020 by the new Bishop Richard Treloar about the role of a dean, her family connections with the diocese, the meditation and prayer services she led online and her ordination to the priesthood where she referred to the photo of her distress after the "non-ordination" in February 1992.
[31] She also gave an online talk about her ancestor, former Bishop Arthur Pain and his wife Annie and about living in the deanery which she had dedicated in 2007.