By Dr. Gus Reyes
Editor's Note: The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, a Sacred Sector partner, has a long history of facilitating empowerment of Hispanic faith communities. In this two-part series Dr. Gus Reyes shares with Sacred Sector’s director Chelsea Langston Bombino about how Hispanic faith-based organizations and congregations are navigating the interconnected social, cultural and public policy challenges in this moment presented by both COVID-19 and recent incidents of racial violence.
I serve on the Executive Committee for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), an organization dedicated to equipping Evangelical Hispanic congregational networks to build their capacities to serve their members and their communities. The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), speaks to the denominational gatekeepers who represent over 40,000 Evangelical Hispanic congregations nationwide. Founded in 2001, NHCLC exists to unify, serve and represent the Hispanic Evangelical Community with the divine (vertical) and human (horizontal) elements of the Christian message through what we call the 7 Directives of Life, Family, the Great Commission, Education, Justice, Stewardship and Youth.
Hispanic faith communities are living in challenging, and in some ways, unprecedented times. We are navigating how to live out our faith in the midst of a global pandemic, and in light of recent events related to racial violence. Our congregations and ministries have holistic, integrated spiritual commitments to continue to worship and serve and advocate through these challenging external circumstances. Ministry outreach to the community in an integral part of how we worship God: we are ‘doing church’ when we are operating a community-centric food distribution program in a neighborhood experiencing food scarcity, just the same as we are ‘doing church’ when we are gathering together to take communion. And now, in the midst of COVID-19, ‘doing church’ [through] community outreach and traditional worship is now taking on new, and sometimes innovative, forms.
Hispanic Congregational Innovations During COVID-19
Hispanic faith communities believe that we worship a dynamic, creative and generative God. We have the opportunity, because of COVID-19, to incarnate God’s image in our congregations and in our communities through how we innovate and engage in creative problem solving to provide services to our congregants and larger communities in new ways.
For example, many of our Hispanic ministries are navigating how their Christian beliefs call them to honor their elders through following public health guidance to practice things like social distancing, limiting gathering sizes, hand sanitizing, etc. Our congregations...are coming together as the body of Christ to celebrate communion and sitting at the Lord’s table together, even when we are not in each other’s physical presence. For some of our congregations, this looks like taking pictures or video of congregants taking communion from home, and then sharing them with the broader church during worship services. These are real innovations that will not cease when COVID-19 is over. We believe the spirit of innovation that has empowered so many of our congregations to connect more often and more intentionally with each other through technology, from Zoom to Whatsapp to old-fashioned phone calls, is here to stay. We are learning, through the act of engaging in creative ways of taking communion together from our own homes, how Christ’s presence is with us as we engage in His guidance to engage in His supper in remembrance of Him.
As Hispanic faith leaders seek to live into our commitments both to commune with God and each other, while at the same time honoring the health of our faith family, we find this moment full of opportunity and challenge. Our natural inclination is to hug and embrace each other. But we know an embrace would not be loving to our faith family or to our community if it puts them at potential risk of contracting COVID-19. In the midst of it all, Hispanic churches are navigating new ways of doing ministry. For example, in Texas, churches can reopen for up to 75% of occupancy. I have seen churches where people are six feet apart. In my church, we have to make reservations to attend certain services. We have dispensaries to wash and sanitize our hands. For most of our Hispanic churches, online will be there from now on. It is not going away - it expands access. There will be a hybrid going forward. We want to be very cautious. Our faith is not not just building-centered, it is relationally-centered.
La Familia as a Unifying North Star During COVID-19
The motivation for this community-centered, service-oriented spirit in Hispanic congregations is our common understanding of family, or la familia. We know that Hispanic faith communities and leaders operate in a very familial and relational way. Hispanic congregations draw on their distinct Christian practices related to their conception of family to navigate how to flourish during COVID-19. As one Hispanic faith leader shared during a recent discussion: “Familia in the Hispanic Christian community takes on so much more depth and meaning than in general parlance. It is central to our Christian understanding and practices. Everyone deserves the honor of a brother and a sister. The notion of familia can be expanded upon to shape how we respond to the changing needs of our communities as we serve externally.” Many of our brothers and sisters in our congregations are working multiple jobs and balancing so much. They care, on an innate level, about protecting their faith identities, but they also have very pressing issues, whether it is economics or immigration or education, that can become front and center.
Family is central to our theological understanding. Many Hispanic people in our churches have families all over the country, so they are video conferencing to maintain those sacred familia connections. In a sense, we can see each other in minutes, as opposed to hours, and that is a gift. It is not a hug and a kiss, but [video calls demonstrate] a different kind of affection.
This is also personal for me as a faith leader. I have a five-year-old granddaughter who wants to Facetime her grandmother and play games over the phone and read together. We are finding new ways to live out our spiritual commitments to family. There is something called TeamViewer, which is a software that allows me to control my 87-year-old mother's computer, and I get her on her computer and now I can walk her through pictures of her family on social media, etc. I wouldn't have figured all that out if not for COVID-19. Marco Polo (a mobile app) is also a new solution in the Hispanic community. You make little videos, but it is almost real time, and you can do face-to-face videos. In the Hispanic community, we value and honor our elders and grandparents. Now, honoring our elders means that we have to give them face-to-face time, and develop family members' capacities to see their grandchildren without risking their health. Honoring our multi-generational families by equipping our elders to see their children and grandchildren requires equipping them with new technologies and addressing the digital and generational tech divide. Whether it is NHCLC or Texas Baptists, we are all giving a lot of time to equip members and congregations with best practices. For us, doing church is not just about how we do worship and be safe, but how we serve our people through ministry in our community. For us, church encompasses being the presence of Christ in our community.
Dr. Gus Reyes serves on the Executive Committee of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC). He advances NHCLC’s strategic vision to unify, serve and represent the Hispanic Evangelical Community with the divine (vertical) and human (horizontal) elements of the Christian message all while advancing the Lamb’s agenda. Dr. Reyes also serves as the director of the Christian Life Commission with Texas Baptists.
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