Princeton’s Hispanic Leadership Program equips pastor to fulfill calling, serve community

Julissa Garcia

Commissioned lay pastor Julissa Garcia is bilingual in Spanish and English and could have just as easily completed a leadership training program in English if she had chosen to.

But Garcia, pastor of Principe de Paz (Prince of Peace) First Hispanic Presbyterian Church in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, said there’s nothing like being connected with the Bible in the language you learned as a child during early spiritual formation.

That’s one of the reasons she chose to take part in the Hispanic Leadership Program (HLP) at Princeton Theological Seminary. The program, an entity of the seminary’s center for continuing education, is designed to nurture and strengthen Latino leadership in order to better serve the church and the world.

The program “was presented from people who had had the same life experiences that I’d had,” Garcia said. “It was pretty much like you were home.”

The HLP provides a range of offerings – from conferences and seminars to educational programs providing certificates in Non-Profit Financial Management and Christian Caregiving. It also has under its umbrella the Spanish- and Portuguese-language Academy of Biblical and Theological Studies.

Garcia, who resides in Newark, New Jersey, graduated from the Academy in 2005 and was commissioned in 2006. An elder and session member at her church when she first started participating in the HLP, Garcia said her idea initially was just to further develop skills she was already using.

But the more she moved through the program, which enabled her to interact with others in ministry with like-minded interests, she realized parish ministry was what God was calling her to do.

 “It just developed,” Garcia said of her call to preach and pastor. “Little by little people started inviting me more” to do pulpit supply and to help congregations that had no pastor, she said.

Just before she graduated Garcia was asked to preach at Principe de Paz, which was struggling with various issues, including losing a building. “I felt that the need was there,” she said.

The opportunity to help the local church and, to help heal a Latino community ultimately led Garcia to become the church’s pastor.

She said if it had not been for the HLP, she would not have the network of people she now draws support from in her own ministry.

“We were able to see how much we had in common, what our common concerns were,” Garcia said of her core group, which met in different communities. “That is how my networking started.”

Being exposed not only to what others were doing, but also to various Spanish-language resources, and to different worship styles “really equipped me to be able to initiate different types of programs,” she said.