Dade County African American churches bridge cultures to begin Hispanic works

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In an ordination service at Grace of God Baptist Church in Miami, three were recently set apart for ministry at the church including Jerome Council, Jorge Sanchez and Patrick D. Coats.

DADE COUNTY (FBW)-Two Dade County Baptist churches, both predominantly African-American, recently started new Spanish-speaking congregations. Both new ministries grew out of the hearts of the churches' pastors who sensed a need to expand their churches' reach to the Hispanic families in their neighborhoods.

The Hispanic congregation of Grace of God Baptist Church in Miami began in June with the ordination of Pastor Jorge Sanchez. Pastor Mark Coats led the ordination service, and Emanuel Roque, director of the Language Church Planting Department of the Florida Baptist Convention, spoke.

Courtesy photo

Mark Coats, pastor of Grace of God Baptist Church in Miami, with Jorge Sanchez, who will lead the church’s new Spanish ministry.

"I was humbled to be invited to speak at this special event, but most of all by what it represented," Roque told Florida Baptist Witness. "I shared how Pastor Coats and I grew up in Miami in the same era that was known for division and 'race riots.' Here God was initiating a new day."

Pastor Coats described Miami as "fiercely divided" in the 1980's when the Mariel Boatlift was underway. He echoed Roque's confidence in a new era when "love spreads beyond the color of one's skin and ignites the fire of brotherhood."

"It is a privilege, an honor, to look into the economy of the Kingdom and be witnesses to what God is doing in South Florida," he said.

The genesis of the Hispanic work at Grace of God was Coats' vision for reaching Hispanics in the church's neighborhood. Several new homes, many owned by Hispanic families, are in neighborhoods within a quarter mile of the church. Only two months after he began praying for God's leadership in beginning a ministry, Sanchez walked into a Grace of God Sunday service to "feel us out and see what we are about," said Assistant Pastor Patrick Coats. The younger Coats and Jerome Council were ordained with Sanchez in the June service.

Mark Coats and Patrick Coats said the inclusiveness of the Grace of God congregation stems from the legacy of their father and grandfather, the late Pastor Joseph Coats of Glendale Baptist Church who worked to include all races in his church. Glendale was one of the first African American churches to join the Florida Baptist Convention, and Pastor Coats values his family and church history with the Southern Baptist Convention.

"There is nothing better than the Southern Baptist Convention in Christian education and in lending itself to the spirit of brotherhood," he said.

Mark Coats leads his congregation "to be about the Kingdom's agenda," he said. The veteran pastor said Grace of God, a congregation of African Americans, Anglos, Hispanics and Jamaicans, has adopted the spirit of Proverbs 18:24: "He who desires friends must show himself friendly."

Patrick Coats is Mark Coats' nephew. The younger Coats, a student at the South Florida satellite campus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, said the Ordination Council "was absolutely hard on me" when they heard his name, but everyone at the service knew that 'love was in the house," he said.

The sense of unity contributed to an inspiring 'God moment' for Roque.

"Thank God for the efforts of many others along the years, and the progress made in different ways through the churches in the community," Roque said. "To be able to hold hands together in prayer...represented what God is doing for His glory."

The Grace of God Hispanic congregation, of about a dozen, meets at 10 a.m. on Sundays, while Sunday School is taught in English. Some of the Hispanic congregants, especially of younger generations, join the English-speaking congregation at 11 a.m. Sanchez teaches a Bible study Tuesday evenings.

Pastor Erik Cummings of New Life Baptist Church in Carol City considers beginning the Hispanic congregation at his church part of his "mantle to be a bridge-builder." The first service in Spanish at New Life Church was Feb. 10.

Cummings has spent his entire ministry life with New Life Baptist- as youth pastor, associate pastor, and pastor for seven years. He began learning Spanish as a young man in preparation for leading a ministry among Hispanics.

"It has always been a dream of mine, and I had envisioned doing the ministry myself. But God is doing something different," he said.

Although he participates in the Hispanic service and can interact with people in either language, Cummings said he learned that he needed a Hispanic pastor on staff "to bridge cultures." After a year-long search, the church called Sergio Ramirez to lead the new congregation.

Fifty attended the first service, and Cummings said the next step will be to "blanket the community" to promote the new work, and to cultivate its reputation in the neighborhood, which is 67 percent Hispanic, he said. Several Hispanic children attend the church's day care, and the church hopes to continue and nurture that positive relationship.

"We want to look like the community that we serve," he said. "I want our church to be a hub of the community."

Currently, the new congregation meets Sundays at 6 p.m., but Cummings hopes the meeting time will soon move to 9:30 a.m., during the English-speaking Sunday School. Whatever the meeting arrangement, he wants New Life Baptist to be "one congregation that worships in two languages," that will meet together for communions and baptisms.

Maxie Miller, Director of the African-American Ministries Division of the Florida Baptist Convention, commended the Grace of God and New Life churches for "proving that to be missional churches, you must cross cultural borders to engage the lost with the Gospel, regardless of their ethnicity."

Cummings encourages churches of every ethnicity to branch out to those in its community: "If God has laid it on your heart to reach your community, trust God for the resources to accomplish it."

Roque hopes the Hispanic missions of Grace of God and New Life churches will be "models for the future" for churches who are willing to "collaborate cross culturally."

Grace of God and New Life churches "are two churches that are willing to go beyond their comfort zone, histories or preferences so that people are won to Christ, and together the community can see Jesus' love demonstrated," he said.