“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”
– John 10:10 NRSVUE
I have decided to share my passion for mental health and its impact on the Hispanic community to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. This is the last part of my message.
Ethical and Culturally Humble Ministry with Latinx Populations
For disciples of Jesus Christ, for the Church of Christ to be in ministry with our Latinx brothers and sisters, we need to develop the agility to adapt and be open to creating new spaces of worship, Christian education, fellowship, and cultivating a posture of cultural humility.
We must adopt a learning posture and seek support and accountability from Latinx clergy and laity. We must be courageous and immersed in the Latinx community to learn directly from the community we strive to serve. Even more significantly, we need to adopt a posture of recipients and open ourselves to receive the wisdom, values, and spirituality that our Latinx brothers and sisters may offer to us, our churches, our communities, and our society.
As faithful disciples of Jesus Christ committed to making disciples for the transformation of the world, we need to grow in our ability to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Yes, immersing ourselves in cultures, not our own, is complex and painful. Why? We often want to have control of the spaces we visit and the relationships in which we engage, and the truth is that any ministry that requires us to move out of our comfort zone requires a high level of trust—trust in God, trust in our neighbor, and trust in the stranger.
Faithful disciples of Christ seeking to be in ministry with the Latinx community need to be “…more comfortable with different cultures and worldviews, identifying and reducing cultural biases, and using [their] relationship with power and privilege to become [allies] for justice” (Hook, 2017, p.88). As the Church of Christ, we can contribute to the mental wellness and wholeness of our Latinx brothers and sisters by becoming spaces of refuge, belonging, and healing—let’s not ignore such opportunities.
Although this is the last message of this series, I plan to write another one before the year ends that speaks more about the rich spirituality that the Latinx community can bring to our Churches. For now, I invite you to pay attention to this graph from the Pew Research Center, which indicates that Latinx Protestants have increased in the last few years. The question is whether they see the United Methodist Church as one option.
Almighty God, help us celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by embracing the opportunities to create hospitable places in our Churches for our Latinx brothers and sisters, not only this month but permanently. Amen.
