The Union Baptist Association (UBA) of Houston is investing in the lives of Hispanic pastors, their wives and church leaders through the training program “Lideres Transformadores,” or Transformative Leaders.

“This is not just another retreat,” Victor Marte, UBA Hispanic church consultant, told Baptist Press (BP). “This is a two-year process that includes four retreats, once every six months, and each retreat (focuses) in one of four areas of transformation.”

The pastors, pastors’ wives and church leaders who participate in the training will focus on personal growth in order to be more effective leaders, growing others through discipleship, transforming their community and transforming the world by being missionaries.

“Instead of just telling them ‘do missions’ we teach them how to get involved with the agencies that handle human trafficking in the city; Houston is a hub of this,” Marte said. “We have some members who can’t travel internationally, so we show them how to do missions at home. We show them how to work with refugees and diasporas.”

A community tour is part of the process to show participants opportunities for missions in the city. “It’s more than going to China,” Marte said. “China is here.”

Pastors also learn how to develop and discern a mission and vision, learning not only to communicate and implement their goals, but also to train leaders to help and to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation.

Screen capture from UBA video Pastors and their wives learn together about discipleship during a Lideres Transformadores session.

The program, which costs $130 to attend, has been running for more than 15 years and has trained close to 100 pastors and approximately 800 congregational leaders, consultants told BP.

“We started with just four or five pastors,” said Campo Londoño, Hispanic consultant for UBA and support pastor at Iglesia Bautista Horeb in Houston. “Not long after, we developed the training for the pastors’ wives and congregational leaders because we didn’t want the pastor to be alone in his new knowledge.”

According to Marte, if pastors try to implement what they’ve learned, but other leaders at the church “don’t know what they’re talking about … they stop using their new knowledge. That’s why we started asking the pastors to bring their leaders to conferences tailored for them and [started] training them on how to support their pastors through this new process.”

Victoria Fuentes, a pastor’s wife, counselor, and women’s prayer and missions leader, conducts the women’s training portion of Lideres Transformadores. The training for women, Fuentes said, is very similar to the pastors’ training, focusing on personal growth, the church, the community and missions.

Screen capture from UBA video Jackie Marte, director of The Promise Center, trains pastors, their wives and congregational leaders on human trafficking and domestic abuse and how to help victims.

Themed tea parties are held in which the women learn about unreached cultures, pray for people groups and learn about the roles and achievements of women in missions.

“It’s not just another training, it’s not just another retreat,” Fuentes said. “It goes further to touch and change our lives as Christians.”

The UBA’s Lideres Transformadores has not only provided training, but it has also created a more connected Hispanic community, program leaders said.

“Houston has a large, connected Hispanic church community because of Lideres Transformadores,” Marte said. “A mission group was born out of this initiative that does work in Senegal and other countries in that area. These pastors are even sending missionaries to those parts of the world to plant churches.”

“Lideres Transformadores creates community between pastors,” added Londoño. “We feel that we are friends and brothers and that we are doing something together.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE – Keila Diaz is Hispanic life correspondent for Baptist Press.)