On Saturday, September 14, the St. James’ extended family will gather for the Celebration of New Ministry. I have asked The Rev. Canon Simón Bautista Betances, Missioner for Latino Ministries at Christ Church Cathedral to be the preacher for that occasion, and I want you to get to know him.
Even before I began working with Simón in August of 2014, when, as Curate, I served as an assistant to him in Latino Ministries at Christ Church Cathedral, I knew of him as a prayerful presence in the House of Bishops, where he was chaplain, and as a dynamic catalyst for Latino Ministries in the Diocese of Washington and beyond. I did my field education in one of Washington (DC)’s Spanish-speaking congregations, where Simón was known as a charismatic preacher of the gospel, capable of inspiring and equipping English and Spanish-speaking church leaders to explore and get involved in their communities, to try new things, and to challenge their own communities to live lives formed by the gospel. It amazed me to know that he did all this even as he planted three new congregations!
When Simón came to Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, he came to tackle a new challenge. The Cathedral’s Spanish-speaking congregation had plateaued in growth shortly after its founding. It had become an entrenched, inward-looking community with little interaction with the larger Cathedral community, much less with the community of downtown Houston and beyond. Reviving a long-standing community that has stagnated is a different kind of challenge from church planting, and it is pretty amazing to meet someone who can do both. Working with Simón at the Cathedral during my curacy capped off my seminary experience with a master class in conflict management, evangelism, and congregational change.
Simón had wisely intuited that a downtown Spanish-speaking Cathedral congregation would never grow, unless it began to look outward and to establish outposts for ministry in the places where parishioners lived and worked. In spite of resistance, he began to show the community how to go out, starting first with Las Posadas and other home-based celebrations that were already part of the congregation’s tradition, and building upon them to create missional communities in the neighborhoods. He was careful to connect this work to the Church’s call to Eucharistic life and to our experiences of encounter with Christ at the altar on Sundays. Through patient identification and training of lay leaders and through some changes in liturgical and community life, he worked to transform a community that had turned inward relying on one priest for pastoral care into a community that understood better how to care for each other and how to welcome others.
As a young female clergyperson still learning to work in multicultural contexts, I found that Simón was a generous supervisor and mentor. He is not afraid of the conflict that is the inevitable byproduct of change processes, but he is good at staying engaged and in relationship with an eye always to reconciliation. Working with him prepared me to do the work of re-envisioning college ministry to reach socioeconomically and ethnically diverse student populations through Houston Canterbury. Working with him also taught me things I had not known about the afro-latino immigrant experience.
I am so excited that he has accepted the invitation to preach at this Celebration of New Ministry, and I know you will welcome him and his family with that well-known St. James’ hospitality.
Rev. Eileen
