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2010-04-06 issue:

Spanish-speaking pastors connect with seminary

Pastors graduate from Seminario Bíblico Anabautista course in Dallas

by Mary E. Klassen of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary

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Seminario Bíblico Anabautista, the first Spanish-language theological program offered by Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Elkhart, Ind., concluded with its final session in early February.

The program was established to provide ministry training to pastors of Hispanic Mennonite churches, but it achieved more than that. It also helped bridge gaps between the seminary and the Spanish-speaking pastors.

Front row from left: Oneida Duenas, Blanca Vargas and Aurora Parchmont. Back row, from left: Alberto Parchmont, Juan Limones and Samuel Moran.

Seminario Bíblico Anabautista, which began in 2006, included graduate-level courses taught in Dallas, Texas. Over the last three years, the seminary’s Engaging Pastors program sent several professors to Dallas to sit in on classes, learn to know the students and find out about the congregations in which they minister.

Then, before the end of both programs—Engaging Pastors in December 2009, and the Seminario program in February—the seminary brought the Hispanic pastors to Elkhart.
Nina Bartelt Lanctot, assistant director of Engaging Pastors, who planned the October visit, says: "The goal was mutual learning. The Seminario students could see resources here and become aware of those that could be useful to them, and the AMBS community could learn to know a slice of Mennonite Church USA that these pastors represent."

Blanca Vargas, pastor of Iglesia Menonita Comunidad de Vida, San Antonio, Texas, says she valued "the sharing that we had with all the administrative and teaching staff and their interest in getting to know us and listen to us."

As part of their class work while they were in Indiana, students joined in a seminary chapel service and participated in the Sunday worship service at  Iglesia Menonita del Buen Pastor in Goshen, Ind. The experience also included a visit to MennoHof (the Mennonite and Amish visitors center in Shipshewana) and to the Mennonite Central Committee facilities in Goshen, where AMBS alumni Jorge Vielman and Saulo Padilla explained the work of MCC Great Lakes.

Juan Limones, pastor of Iglesia Menonita Luz del Evangelico, Dallas, said after the visit, “I became aware that the purpose of the Mennonite church is very missional and missionary and that there is also a concern for [providing] education for others. For me it was a great blessing.”

Oneida Dueñas of Ferris, Texas, appreciated the warm welcome from the AMBS community. Those who planned the visit and the AMBS students "showed me that in the Body of Christ there is no distinction of race, color and culture," she says.

The final course, which concluded on Feb. 6, focused on worship and preaching with instructor José Ortiz. Seminario students who participated in this course, in addition to Vargas, Limones and Dueñas, were Alberto Parchmont and Aurora Parchmont, pastors of Iglesia Menonita Casa del Alfarero, Pasadena, Texas; and Samuel Moran, pastor of Ministerios Restauración, Oak Grove, Ore. Several of the students who completed all the Seminario course work earned credits toward AMBS’s Certificate in Theological Studies.

Seminario Bíblico Anabautista was coordinated by AMBS-Great Plains Extension and the Western District Conference of Mennonite Church USA. Funding for the program came from the Lilly Endowment-funded Engaging Pastors project, the Schowalter Foundation, Western District Conference and AMBS.

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