Students train to serve Winnipeg’s Hispanic community
WINNIPEG, MB—A small group of Hispanics in Winnipeg are training to be church leaders at a new Spanish Bible school and leadership training centre.
More than 6,400 people make up Winnipeg's Hispanic population, with most living in the northeast section of the city.
But while the Hispanic population is relatively large, only about 400 people attend one of the nine Hispanic churches in Winnipeg says Angel Infantes, a council member of the Bible school and associate pastor at Braeside Evangelical Mennonite Church.
"I would like to see people reach out to Hispanics," he says. "We can do it together but we need to prepare people to do it."
Escuela de Entrenamiento Biblico (EdenB) launched in 2009 to meet the growing need for local leadership training for the Hispanic community. Classes are held once a week at the Christian Family Centre in Elmwood.
Fred Stoesz, a long-time urban pastor and church planter with World Impact Inc., helped launch Winnipeg's School of Urban Leadership (SOUL) an inner-city Bible school providing local leadership training in 2006.
The Spanish school, which partners with SOUL and the Rio Grande Bible Institute of Canada, aims to do the same. Before the launch of EdenB, Spanish-speaking students would often travel to schools in the U.S. for training.
The entire program consists of 16 modules that take about three and a half years to complete. Subjects include theology and ethics, Christian ministry and urban mission. Students receive a certificate of Christian leadership.
"The course modules allow students to go into the Bible and then to practise what they have learned. They work together with their pastors and practise teaching in Sunday school or small groups," Infantes says. "The students are also very excited about missions."
There are currently 20 students enrolled in EdenB and the first group, which started taking classes last year, will graduate in 2012.
Four members of Roberto Hernandez's church are enrolled in the program, and their enthusiasm is spilling throughout the congregation.
"They are an encouragement for all members of the church," says Hernandez, pastor at Iglesia de Dios Pentecostes in Elmwood.
He says the students are particularly enthusiastic about outreach ministry, which is important because "Hispanic churches were focusing too much inside the church but not outside the church." Now that view has changed to a more mission-oriented, outward focus, he adds.
"We went three times in the streets working in the community, and now new people are coming to church. This has created a good environment in my church to encourage one another and it also to be faithful to the Great Commission."
That outcome is exactly what EdenB organizers were hoping for when they started the school.
"One of the priorities in this is the unification of churches and congregations," Stoesz says. "We will continue to build partnerships with churches and see where God takes it."
Raising up the church leaders of tomorrow is also a main priority.
Before coming to Canada from his native Peru, Infantes lived in the U.S. where the Hispanic population was exploding and new Hispanic churches were popping up everywhere. But many churches started without actually having a pastor in place.
"I don't want to see the same thing happen here. That's why this [Bible school] is so important," Infantes says.
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