Hispanic leaders learn to build a stronger ministry together

GLEN BURNIE – Twenty years ago, Wednesday night Mass in Spanish at Christ the King in Glen Burnie drew about 10 people. Today, the Hispanic community there and at neighboring St. Bernadette in Severn fills three crowded Masses every weekend – a surge of growth that has brought new energy and new growing pains to the pastorate’s ministries.

That tension, and the effort to turn it into unity, was at the center of this year’s Latino Leadership Retreat, which drew around 200 volunteers and ministry leaders from both parishes for a course on formation and faith building. The event was held Aug. 14–16 at Christ the King. 

Participants spent the retreat working through the “Joshua: Leadership Formation Course” taught by Dexter Alejandro Reyes Villanueva, international director of the St. Andrew School of Evangelization. Through a mix of discussion, lectures and dynamic activities, Reyes Villanueva walked leaders through the importance of passing on the faith, the fears many of them carry in their roles and the need to keep renewing their own formation.

Reyes Villanueva has spent more than 20 years leading evangelization courses in more than 20 countries across Latin America, Europe and North America, and has authored several formation and preaching courses used internationally by parish leaders and grassroots Catholic communities.

Christ the King and St. Bernadette had been organizing the event since October of last year, though Reyes Villanueva’s presence was confirmed only a couple weeks before. 

“Thousands of dollars go into these retreats,” said Richard Cedeño, who has been a member of the parish for 18 years. “It’s materials, it’s food and, this time, it was the preacher who came all the way from Mexico.”

The community covered the cost through donations and a series of food sales.

For organizer Margarita Alfaro, the expense was worth it because formation is foundational to the parish’s mission. As Catholics, she said, the community works to evangelize, and preparation is essential to that work.

“Even though we are growing in number in the Hispanic community in North America, it’s necessary that this community forms itself to acquire biblical knowledge, the magisterium of the Catholic Church, (and) pastoral knowledge so that it is not just devotional faith, but a trained, formed faith,” Reyes Villanueva said.

That formation, he said, is meant to ripple outward.

“Evangelization is my passion,” Reyes Villanueva said. “It is not just about kindling a fire here; I want that fire to spread and become a blaze. Our idea is to start a fire here so that the entire diocese – the entire Archdiocese of Baltimore – catches fire.”

He said experiences like the retreat are a way to break paradigms and bring “out-of-the-box” thinking to the table to provoke evangelization through new methods, and he expressed gratitude that the archdiocese was open to that kind of formation for its Hispanic ministry leaders.

“We believe [the retreat] reflects the broader mission of the Archdiocese of Baltimore to accompany, evangelize and strengthen Hispanic Catholics through well-formed lay leadership,” said Father Jaime Garcia, associate pastor of Christ the King and St. Bernadette. “It is our hope that the experience and fruits of this retreat will inspire other communities throughout the archdiocese as they continue to build strong, missionary disciples.”

Garcia sees the retreat as a way of giving back to the community – a chance to reset and to knit together a Hispanic ministry that, as it has grown, has also grown fragmented. Leaders described increasing competition between the various ministry groups, often simply over space.

“We have a very large Hispanic community, but it’s a community that can often be caught up in their own little ministries because there’s many different ministries,” said Father T. Austin Murphy, pastor of Christ the King and St. Bernadette. “And there’s very little communication.”

Reyes Villanueva addressed that tension directly in one of his sessions, telling leaders that their mission is to share their gifts, not compete for territory. He compared each of them to a seed: each will grow differently and bear different fruit, he said, but all belong to the same garden.

The course leaned heavily on the biblical figures of Moses and Joshua – leaders who were far from perfect, but who managed to pass on the faith and inspire others to carry it forward. In one session, a volunteer dressed as Moses presented an “album” of the people he had learned from and the people he had taught, and Reyes Villanueva interviewed him in character, drawing out lessons about leadership and about learning from the mistakes of the past.

For Father Murphy, that model is the whole point of the retreat.

“When you look at people like Moses, you look at Joshua and the people that they formed, they didn’t just want you to have people who followed you,” he said. “They wanted you to be a leader who made new leaders, and that’s really the ultimate goal: to become a leader who creates new leaders, not just followers.”

Enrique Pérez has watched that kind of leadership take root over more than 20 years at the parish, where he met his wife, married and raised children who now serve the church themselves.

“It is a lot of effort and dedication to reach the objective and it is a blessing that almost everyone was able to attend,” Pérez said. “We are learning to become someone who a lot of people follow and work so that someone else will someday take up the baton and reach others with the same mission.”

Also see

Hundreds of Hispanic catechists and liturgical ministers come together to celebrate faith and growth

Archdiocese of Baltimore responds to growing immigration enforcement

La Renovación Carismática Hispana atrae al arzobispo Lori a la sesión de formación

Hispanic Charismatic Renewal draws Archbishop Lori to Baltimore formation session 

Baltimore Catholics bring voice of migrants to U.S. capitol

In midst of uncertainty on immigration, Archdiocese of Baltimore provides support

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