Seminary reaches out to Hispanic ministers

“Most young people end up going to college, and if they sit under the tutelage of a pastor who has never been to seminary . . . how are they going to view him?’’ said Ortiz, a native of Puerto Rico who received his training at a two-year Bible institute that provides a kind of associate’s degree for aspiring ministers. “I don’t want to give some Cracker Jack box message and say, ‘Based on what I know, this is how I interpret this.’ There has to be more than that.’’

Ortiz is just the kind of prospective student that Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an evangelical Christian seminary based in South Hamilton, hopes to attract to a new gradu ate degree program for Hispanic pastors in Florida and South Texas, where Hispanic congregations are experiencing explosive growth but clergy often lack graduate-level theological training.

Leaders at Gordon-Conwell, whose Center for Urban Ministerial Education in Roxbury is nationally recognized for its work in minority clergy education, say the effort is a response to powerful demographic trends in American Christianity.

Hispanics are overwhelmingly Christian and increasingly evangelical, and they are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the country — the Hispanic population is expected to grow from 45 million today to about 130 million in 2050. But Hispanics remain underrepresented in US theological schools; in 2009, only about 4 percent of students in accredited divinity schools in the United States and Puerto Rico were Hispanic.

The Rev. Alvin Padilla, who will run Gordon-Conwell’s Hispanic Ministry program, said Hispanic clergy are increasingly recognizing that they need advanced degrees to do their jobs well.

“What has happened is that, as the church continues to grow here in the states, and as the laity become more and more educated, there is a need for pastors to become similarly educated,’’ he said.

As more Hispanic pastors become active in civic and political life, he added, “they are also interested in theological education because it enables them to earn credibility with the greater community.’’

In the next year, the seminary plans to offer students in Florida and South Texas the chance to earn a master’s degree in a unique three-to-four-year program that combines the usual courses in theology, church history, and biblical languages with a specific focus on Hispanic ministry. Classes will be taught in English and in Spanish, with a schedule — intensive weekend courses once a month, rather than weekly — designed to fit the busy lives of students who often already have a ministry, plus a day job on the side.

In order for the program to meet accreditation standards, students will also have to take courses at the Hamilton campus for several weeks each summer. The degree, which may include an online component as well, will probably require about 20 courses altogether. Tuition has not yet been determined; Padilla said Gordon-Conwell is trying to obtain grants to offset the cost to students.

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and a member of Gordon-Conwell’s board, said the program is badly needed in a country that does not have a single historically Hispanic seminary.

“By the end of this century, the majority of evangelicals in America will be of Hispanic descent,’’ he said. “So Gordon-Conwell is not investing just in the Hispanic community, Gordon-Conwell is investing in the future of American evangelicalism.’’

Until recently, many Hispanic pastors saw no need for a traditional seminary. Unlike the Catholic and mainline Protestant churches, nondenominational Protestant churches do not require clergy to have advanced degrees — particularly those that embrace the grass-roots sensibility of the rapidly growing Pentecostal movement.

“In many ways, these are religious entrepreneurs — by virtue of their charisma, their ability to speak, their devotion to religious life, their ability to harness the attention of small groups, they start a church,’’ said Edwin Hernandez, a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Latino Religion at Notre Dame.

Many Hispanic clergy also have families and hold day jobs because their congregations can’t pay them full time, making it financially and logistically impossible for them to attend a traditional seminary.

So their training often consists of self-study or courses at unaccredited Bible institutes, which can offer solid basic preparation for the ministry. But the quality of such schools varies widely. Other aspiring pastors turn to unregulated, and often exploitive, diploma mills that offer worthless degrees in exchange for thousands of dollars in tuition.

“You have a lot of people with the practical skills and knowledge of the community, and that is positive,’’ said the Rev. Samuel Pagan, former dean of the Florida Center for Theological Studies in Miami, and now a professor at Dar al-Kalima College in Bethlehem. “But that is only one part of Christian ministry — they are not well-trained in the history of Christian thought, or biblical languages . . . [or] theological reading. Those are subjects that need to be taught in a seminary context, with a good library and with good professors [who can teach] critical thinking.’’

Obtaining that sort of broader perspective helps pastors develop critical thinking skills and a better understanding of other forms of Christianity and other faiths, he said. Without it, “what is being shared with the people in the pew could be at best limited, and at worst damaging,’’ said the Rev. Gabriel A. Salguero, director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Scholars also say advanced degrees help Hispanic ministers earn respect in the larger community, giving them the clout they need to represent the poorest and least educated of their parishioners, including new immigrants who cannot yet speak English.

To provide that kind of high-level instruction, however, Gordon-Conwell may have to surmount a significant gap in Hispanic theological students’ own educational preparation. Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, said that about 9 percent of Hispanic nondenominational Pentecostal Christians have a bachelor’s degree, compared with 27 percent of the adult US population. About 4 in 10 never graduated from high school.

“This begins to give you a sense of the challenges on the theological education side of expanding the pool,’’ he said.

Gordon-Conwell will offer some extra coursework in basic research and writing skills for those students in the new program who need additional preparation.

But Frank A. James III, provost of Gordon-Conwell and a professor of historical theology, said that will change over time.

“The level of education is rapidly rising among Hispanics,’’ he said. “We are anticipating that they will be more and more qualified.’’

Finding the time to take the courses could also be a challenge for students. Ortiz, the pastor from Tampa, is keenly interested in Gordon-Conwell’s program, but if it’s offered in Miami, a five-hour drive from his home, it may be logistically impossible. And it would be very difficult, he said, to spend even a few weeks each summer in Boston.

But the Rev. Cecilio Hernandez, pastor of Iglesia Cristiana Ebenezer Asamblea de Dios in Lowell, a graduate of Gordon-Conwell’s master’s program in urban ministries who is now working on his doctorate degree, said he hopes to see many more Hispanic ministers invest in higher education.

“Over the years, I’ve noticed some pretty bright young, educated Hispanic youngsters moving to English-speaking churches because they feel like they will get what they need,’’ he said. “They find that our ministers may be lacking in the Word, and in [the skills needed] in running a church.

“I’ve got kids that are in junior high school, and I get all kinds of tough questions,’’ he said. “I really need to be prepared to look them straight in the eye, and not give them a stupid answer, but take them seriously.’’

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.