Supporting Ministries with Latinos in North Carolina

Edgardo Colon-Emeric directed the Hispanic House of Studies at Duke Divinity School from 2007 to 2011.

At Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C., the Hispanic House of Studies is helping the United Methodist Church in North Carolina and the Divinity School strengthen connections with Hispanic and Latino families.

For church leaders, the Hispanic House of Studies serves as a resource center. For students, it offers opportunities that can enrich the Divinity School experience. A Fellowship program, for example, includes a 10-week summer field education placement in Hispanic/Latino ministry and a chance to experience the Methodist Church in Latin America. Fellows commit to serving at least five years in a Hispanic/Latino ministry setting.

Edgardo Colon-Emeric, an assistant professor of Christian theology at the Divinity School, directed the Hispanic House of Studies until July 2011. An ordained elder in the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, he serves as associate pastor of Reconciliation United Methodist Church, a bilingual, multicultural congregation in Durham.

He talked about the program in the following interview.

Please tell us about yourself and where you were before you came to Duke.

I was born and grew up in Puerto Rico and came to the United States to go to college at Cornell University. I studied engineering, and then went to the University of Vermont and did graduate work. I came to North Carolina in 1994 to attend Duke Divinity School and work on my Master of Divinity. In 2002, I entered the doctoral program in the Department of Religion here at Duke, and I graduated in 2007. My wife is a medical doctor; she works at Duke also.

I understand that you helped start a church in Durham. Are you still a pastor there?

I was pastor there for five years, but stepped down when I entered the doctoral program. The church closed its doors last year, so I am very intimately acquainted with the challenges of starting and sustaining Hispanic ministries in this area. Now I serve as a volunteer associate pastor at Reconciliation United Methodist Church in Durham and I help with their Hispanic ministries.

How old is the Hispanic House of Studies?

It started in 2007, the same year that I was pointed director.

And why did it begin?

The genesis for the Hispanic House of Studies was for the Western North Carolina Conference, the North Carolina Conference, The Duke Endowment and Duke Divinity to come together in some sort of statewide partnership to support Hispanics and Latinos in the state.

You have said that shaping students who are here at the Divinity School is at the heart of what the Hispanic House of Studies does. Will you explain?

We support and encourage students to interact and engage in areas of Hispanic ministry in North Carolina.

We support and encourage our students to participate in our field education placements in Latin America so they learn Spanish and cultural skills, and then apply those skills in North Carolina.

We provide course work groups to help students develop pastoral skills and spiritual formation from a Hispanic perspective.

We also want to connect more with the two Conferences and the work they do reaching out to Hispanic people in their area. We want to find ways that we can partner together.

But I believe the most important thing we can do as the Hispanic House at Duke Divinity is to provide a theological vision, and then to support practices that embody that vision. But that takes time.

Haven’t the two Conferences been involved in Hispanic ministry before?

Both Conferences have been engaged in Hispanic Ministries for a long time. I have been a part of that as a pastor myself. It is not as if our work here can start with a clean slate.

What we are trying to do from the Hispanic House of Studies and with this partnership is to cast a new theological vision – one that helps us move in a slightly different direction than where we’ve been heading. In the past, I think we’ve tried to start things too quickly – to start a standalone Hispanic ministry that gets people in the door. But a few years in, the question of sustainability becomes a real crisis. To me, that’s not the way to go.

What is your vision?

The vision that I see is to promote a more integrated sense of Hispanic ministry in the life of churches, where existing congregations start asking, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ and try to reach out to whoever their neighbors are – Anglo, African American, Latino, whatever. Instead of thinking that Hispanic ministry is something we do on the side, we should try to see it more as part of who we are simply because it is part of what North Carolina now is becoming.

That vision is very much grounded in scripture, but it is difficult because it requires reconciliation. It requires people who do not know each other at first to learn each other’s ways. It’s difficult because many of us prefer being surrounded by people who are just like us. It’s easier to start a Hispanic ministry in Spanish that’s focused only on Hispanics, but I don’t think that is ultimately faithful or sustainable.

What will success look like?

I think that success at this point is measured more by truly claiming this vision. I call it an Ephesians moment, where the dividing wall of hostility has come down and we are living in this new humanity of Christ. That really is our goal and we want to support all the steps that lead us in that direction.

For some people, the picture of success was the Hispanic ministry that would be self-funding, in its own building and so on. That has proven to be very elusive.

Tell us about some of the programs offered through the Hispanic House of Studies.

There is a 10-week field education placement in Latin America that is also a Spanish language immersion program. We also have a group of support – Caminantes – that provides spiritual, pastoral reflection from a Hispanic perspective. The group meets weekly. We sing Spanish hymns, we memorize scripture in Spanish, we talk together in Spanish and pray. Once a month, we visit a Hispanic ministry in the state. We have a retreat in the fall and an international trip on spring break. It is open to anyone in the Divinity School who is willing and able to make that level of commitment.

We have students who come here with maybe some interest in Spanish, but not too much knowledge. I encourage them to participate in one of the summer 10-day mission trips to Mexico where Spanish language skills are not required. They may come back from that with some interest in Spanish language ministries and, during the year, maybe work a little bit on their Spanish. The following summer, which would be after their second year, they could attend a field education placement in Latin America to learn Spanish and come back and join Caminantes, which offers a year-long formation experience.

Are more students becoming involved with the Hispanic House of Studies?