This is the first post in our series on contextualization and the gospel. You can read more posts here: Contextualization and the Gospel.

Eight years ago today I married the woman of my dreams. We’ve been all over the world together, through good times and bad, sickness and in health. It’s been a wild ride that I wouldn’t trade for anything. As I reflected on our time together I began to see ways that this relationship with my best friend has prepared both of us for the ministry we do today with Hispanic college students.

You see, in a lot of ways, marriage is like contextualization.

• It is cross-cultural.To some degree all marriages are cross-cultural (men are from Mars and women are from Venus), but ours goes a step further. I am an Anglo-American and my wife is a 3rd generation Latina. The longer we have been married the more we have realized how our unique ethnic backgrounds shape the way we see the world, and therefore, how we treat one another. Our ability to see differences in each other in marriage allows us to step towards one another and communicate in ways the other person will understand us.

  Contextualization is no different. It is the process of recognizing differences between you and the person you are communicating with. It is then moving towards them and being intentional to speak and act in a way that makes sense within their worldview.

• It has deepened me in ways I never thought possible.Marriage has stretched me, grown me, challenged me in amazing ways. I’ve come face to face with how selfish I really am. I’ve had to learn to die to myself and live to serve another. Every day I have the choice to live out the Great Commandment and “love my neighbor as I love myself”.

  Contextualization has done the same for me. As I learn to make the Gospel known in a way that makes sense in someone else’s context I am simultaneously dying to my right for it to be communicated in a way that makes sense to me. Just as in marriage my life and ministry becomes about the benefit of the other person, not me. In the process I am deepened and begin to “have the same attitude that was in Christ Jesus.

• It has challenged me to persevere through failure.So many times in marriage it seems that I just can’t get things right. I seem to do one dumb thing after another. When my wife lovingly brings this to my attention, I am faced with a choice. I can be defensive, ashamed of my mistakes. Or I can continue to persevere in the process of becoming another-centered.

  I’ve felt the same tension in contextualization. With the best intentions I’ve done incredibly stupid things as I stumble towards bringing the good news of Jesus to a Latino audience. When they bring this to my attention, I can shut down emotionally and ask them to “give me a break, I’m trying!”. Or I can set my pride aside, ask for forgiveness, and make another attempt to contextualize. My wife is important enough to me that I’d never consider giving up. Those to whom I am contextualizing must assume a high level of importance, otherwise I’ll give up.

• It has made me more like Christ. Jesus calls us to love our wives as He loved the church. It is a sacrificial love that calls us to die to ourselves and live for another. The better I love my wife, the more I become like Christ.

  Contextualization is the same.  When I seek to make his Good News understandable in a given context (in this case, Latino college students) I am emulating his example of coming to Earth as a man. He became like us because He loves us. When we do the same for others we become more like Him.

• It has helped me understand the Trinity. My wife, @destinokristy, talks about how the Trinity is an example of difference amidst connectedness. Our marital union is a great picture of this. We are two distinct people yet united in one marriage. We have our own unique giftings, strengths, and weaknesses that are brought together as one.

  Contextualization is an implicit recognition of this same reality. Just as God is 3-in-1 so contextualization makes room for unity amidst difference. Contextualization says that even though you may express this facet of Christianity differently, we are still united in one body. We can be different from one another and yet still unified.

There are many more things that I could list here, but the point I really want to drive home is that just as marriage has been an incredibly enriching experience for me, so I believe contextualization can be for believers. The more that we begin to learn about it, practice it, live it out, the more like Christ we will become. It won’t be easy, just as marriage isn’t easy. But I believe that once you begin to step into it you wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Over the coming weeks we’ll have a number of posts in this series talking about contextualization and how it relates to the gospel and ministry in general. We’ll discuss a Biblical basis, common misconceptions, and various practices related to contextualization. We want to challenge you to think about how culture shapes everything you do. Everything. We believe that you’ll come out the other side a more effective minister for Christ as a result.

Marrying my wife was the best decision I’ve ever made. Being married to her has changed me for the better. If your experience in contextualization is half as sweet as my marriage then you’re in for a fantastic ride.

Get ready.

photo courtesy: Jeff Sims

The biggest correlation to our Destino students long term spiritual success has been the depth of their connection to local churches. Over time we’ve noticed that the students who are most involved in church are the most likely to be walking with the Lord when they graduate. After four years in Destino, our ability to involve churches in our movement has become make or break for the long term viability of our Destino movement.

How Churches Can Help Your Movement

Involvement of local churches, especially Hispanic ones, can do the following for your movement:

• Provide a place of continued growth. Let’s face it, students have had 18 years to learn to live a certain way. Two hours a week of Bible study is simply not enough time to help them learn a new way of relating. You can’t be there for them 24/7 to help disciple them, it’s just not possible. The more that you connect them to churches the more time they have to be around believers that can help them grow in their faith.
• Offer a glimpse of Godly familia. One of our key leaders shared with us, “I’ve never seen a relationship work out.” No marriage in their family had lasted and they had broken up with every boyfriend they ever had. Churches provide a place for students to learn how to relate to someone in healthy ways. They can see older believers who are seeking to honor God in their marriages. “Life is better caught than taught” is a huge reason why you want to work hard at involving your students with churches.
• Help students learn from older Hispanic believers. Many of the staff in Destino are Anglo, so it is imperative for students to see that older Hispanics do walk with the Lord. One of the best ways to do this is by having relationships with many different churches in town, specifically Hispanic ones. For many Anglo staff this will be a stretch. It is easier just to connect with the churches we are familiar with (often Anglo ones). But, you can never overestimate the value of Latino college students being around older Latino believers. For more on this, see “The Only people I’ve seen dream big are white people”.
• Accelerate reaching your campus. It has long been a maxim among the catalytic side of Campus Crusade that “there exist within two miles of every campus the resources to reach that campus.” We’ll never have enough staff to reach all the Hispanic students, much less all the students, on a campus. We need churches to partner with us.
• Help fund ministry. Not only can churches provided funding for ministry activity on campus, but if students have relationships with local churches then it makes it all the easier for them to raise support for venues like summer project. For many students they have come to faith in college, so their Christian community will only be Destino and the church you connect them with. Without that support raising will be very difficult for them.

A Hesitation That Keeps Us From Developing Church Partnerships

One common fear is that by connecting our students with churches that we will lose them from the ministry. If they get too involved in church then they won’t be able to be involved in the movement on campus. We’ve definitely felt this dynamic at our school. What changed our minds was realizing that we were losing students for many reasons (financial, moral, no longer walking with God). We came to the conclusion that if we “lost” students to churches that it was the best place for them to go.

In reality, we’re not losing students. God can use our movements to be funnels that help connect the lost Latino student with local churches. Many of these churches will never be able to afford full-time campus ministers, so we should consider it a blessing to be able to serve them, even if we “lose” students from our leadership chain as a result. The sooner we can see our relationship as symbiotic and not competitive the better.

Five Ways to Help Connect Your Destino Movement with Churches

When talking with various staff I’ve never heard anyone disagree that churches are crucial to the health of our Destino movements. People are sold out and committed to local churches. However they often struggle to know what first steps to take to begin to develop those partnerships. Here are five examples of steps you can take to begin to partner with local Hispanic churches, even if you are on a busy schedule:

• Start of the year. For the past 3 years we’ve had one Latino church in town commit to having a beginning of the year BBQ to welcome students back to campus. We split the budget and they provide the location and cook all the food. We have it the first Friday night of classes and have seen 100 people attend each of the past three years. It serves to bond students to Destino and introduce them to a church that cares about their spiritual growth. We’ve also experimented at having a “Church Open House” the second or third week of classes in the fall. We invite local churches to come to our weekly meeting and share with students.
• Adopt a College Student program. One of the best ways to get students involved in church is to connect them with families. We’ve worked on creating an “Adopt a College Student” program where we pair up families from local churches with two Destino students to be their adoptive families while in college (this is particularly meaningful if not on a commuter campus). We’ve created a flyer you can download to learn more about how we explain the program to the churches: “Adopt a College Student Program”.
• Monthly pastors lunches. Often community pastors already connect with each on a regular basis. Find out when those meetings are and join them. It offers a great chance for you to network. If they don’t already meet, consider buying lunch once a month for the Hispanic pastors whose churches have expressed an interest in helping Destino. You’ll be able to bless them as they become more involved in Destino.
• Provide opportunities for volunteers. Keep a list in your mind of places in the movement where you would love to have volunteers. It could be as a speaker at your weekly meeting, giving a presentation during a free lunch on campus, cooking BBQ for a tailgate party, or as a mentor for some of your key leaders. If you’ve thought through these opportunities beforehand then when you meet someone in the community (or on a support appointment) you’ll already have ways they can get involved. You’ll be able to tailor the opportunities to their specific giftings. For example, we have a local pscyhologist/rock star come and give talks on “How to Deal with Stress” or “How to Choose a Major” during free lunch on Wednesdays.
• Partner in Service. Students in our movement already have a heart to serve in the community. We asked a local church to provide free food for the students after one of the service projects was over. The students loved the food from the Abuelitas that reminded them of home and they were able to have another touch point with the church. The church also became more invested in seeing Destino succeed.

What are some of the ways you’ve helped local Hispanic churches be invested in your movement? Please share the wealth!

photo courtesy: whizchickenonabun

The following is a part of our series on Ethnic Identity.

I remember several years ago taking a personality test that asked a series of questions connected to worldview in relation to God and humanity.  Essentially, each question related to how I viewed others and whether or not I believed the best about their motives and intentions when interacting with them.  I can remember each time I came across another question on this theme, I had this internal battle inside of me.  While I knew the “right” answer was to assume the best and to believe in people’s good intentions, I knew that I didn’t think or feel that way all the time.  I had experience after experience where, given the right stressful circumstances, all human beings, including believers, often responded out of their own broken humanity.  People are fallen, I thought, so how could we always assume the best about their motivations?

What I didn’t realize then was that this way of viewing others was influenced by my cultural worldview that I had grown up with as a Latina, and this worldview differed from the white Christian community I was involved with then.  Dr. Juan Martinez, professor at Fuller Seminary, jokes that “Latinos are 1 point Calvinists” because the depravity of man informs our view of all our interactions with others and even our view of the whole of human history.  Justo Gonzalez calls this a “non-innocent view of history” where Latinos recognize that all history, including that of Christianty, is a story about broken people.

My experience with this test several years ago highlighted to me how tied my understanding of the Christian life was to majority culture. In that season of my life, I had no understanding of how my own Latino culture influenced me at very deep levels.  While the white evangelical church I came to faith in was right to emphasize that my new identity in Christ was of ultimate importance, it failed to acknowledge that their own understanding of the Christian life was influenced by majority culture lenses and that this was the Christianity they taught me.

I picked up early on in my time as a believer that my life before Christ was to be forgotten and dismissed which implicitely included my ethnic identity too. I remember reading verses like Philippians 3:13 where Paul said “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” and believing that this meant that I needed to leave the past in the past and get on with my new life in Christ which was infinitely better.  Because my life in this new community didn’t include any Hispanics, I associated my ethnicity with the part of my life I was meant to leave behind too. Couple that way of thinking with the fact that my life before coming to faith was painful, and I figured ignoring that past and that part of my identity was the right thing to do.

The problem with only focusing on my new identity in Christ devoid of culture was that it wasn’t really true.  Neglecting to acknowledge my own Latino identity as a part of how God made me, didn’t leave me free from cultural influences.  It just left me confused.  When there were contradictions in cultural values that showed up in my discipleship within this majority culture Christian community, I always assumed the majority was right and I was wrong.  It couldn’t possibly be that my own cultural lenses influenced me in my walk with God to see the world differently, and that maybe I had something to offer majority culture in that perspective.  There wasn’t room for that kind of thinking so it was squelched in me instead. It left me feeling like I was always immature and in need of growth when my way of seeing God and the world differed from others around me.

Starting to work for Destino, though, sent me on a journey of exploring my own ethnic identity and the valuable ways the culture had shaped me.  I began to feel so affirmed in a community that for the first time shared my story and my assumptions.  Their view of God was similar to me because of our shared common experiences.  It was a beautiful thing.

But within this searching, I couldn’t just embrace the beautiful ways my culture had influenced me, I also had to face the broken parts of my culture and past that had left wounds in my life as well.  Orlando Crespo in talking about the bi-cultural journey said,  “I can’t let go of the fact that I have both of these worlds in me and both have left their beautiful and painful mark on me.” That was what I felt like God was doing in me as he was pushing me to deal with all of my story. There were beautiful parts to my Latino identity that I was willing to embrace, but I was needing to embrace the painful too.  At that point, I began to look honestly at the alcoholism and physical abuse in my past and how those realities were early shapers of my identity. Accepting both the beautiful parts and the broken parts of my ethnic identity was necessary for true depth of understanding of God and myself. There could be no healing without a holding of both.

Recently, I listened to NPR’s Alt.Latino describing how Salsa music is a good reflection of how life contains this exact tension and paradox of the beautiful and the painful. Most of the time salsa music is viewed as happy music that is joyful and danceable, but the lyrics of the music often carry dark themes that deal with sorrow and suffering. These two seemingly inconsistent parts together are what make Salsa music so powerful. I think thats true of my own life too. Like Crespo said, being bicultural means that two different cultural worlds have left their beautiful and painful mark. That’s what makes me who I am and how I understand God to be who he is in my life.

I think another significant piece to this journey for me was when I read the book Honor and Shame by Roland Muller. Again, in wanting to find healing from my own past, I learned that when you come from a shame-based culture like Latino culture, freedom from shame is at the heart of the gospel message. But it wasn’t only the shame I felt about the sins I had committed that I needed freedom from, but also the shame I felt as a result of the sins done to me. As I read through the book, this understanding of the gospel felt almost like a second conversion experience for me. I felt that while I had accepted that Christ took away my guilt through his death when I trusted in him, I had never fully accepted the truth that he had also taken away my shame, including the shame I felt related to my ethnicity. This was revolutionary in my life.

All of these experiences are a part of what God has used and is using to grow me into wholeness in my ethnic identity. So, while there was a time in my life where I would have wanted to deny being Latina, I can now say with confidence that my ethnicity is a part of who God has made me to be.  My culture isn’t a liability, but a blessing that wasn’t meant to be erased at my conversion. I am thankful for the whole of the story He has written and is writing over my life.

photo courtesy: craigcloutier

The following post is part of our series on Ethnic Identity.

At some point in my career I had to do a presentation about Mexican culture in a multicultural team. I gladly did it, but no one else did one. It was only me and though there were many minority friends in the group I was the only minority with no other counterpart minority friends in the mix. This experience pointed out to the separateness between us. I had to explain myself even if no one else had to. It was as if somehow my culture was harder to understand or as if others did not know what to do with my culture and so it required an explanation.

Identifying as Mexican and Latina at this point meant identifying as complex in a way that required an explanation.

There was also a time when communication styles were impacting the dynamics of our team. It was becoming harder for all of us to be effective and to continue to believe the best in each other when we were constantly misunderstanding each other. At some point the norm became to assume that “communication was for the hearer.” With this in mind we needed to speak in a way that clearly communicated our message so that others could understand it. However, it seemed as if this norm was only applicable for us indirect communicators. Under the guise of communicating for our audience there was an underlying devaluation of indirect communication and a great appreciation for direct communication.

Indirect communication was referred to as a secret code that was hard to decipher and in that season of my life direct communication seemed rude and aggressive to me. Much of my comfort and familiarity with indirect communication was tied to my cultural background, therefore, identifying with being Latina meant identifying with someone who though able to speak English was not able to express preferences or ask for help clearly.

Experiences like the ones above have turned me away from identifying as a Latina, because I long to be understood.

Later that semester I remember driving down Lamar frustrated as thoughts were running in my mind. I made it to the light on MLK and as I waited for the green to turn onto campus; I finally figured it out. The problem with my existence was that I was Mexican. The reason my experiences were so hard was because I was Mexican. It finally clicked and as I connected the dots, they pointed to my “Mexicaness.” I shouted out to God and busted out crying “If only You did not make me this way then I could better relate to people, I could speak their language, and I could get done what you have called me to do.”

Sometimes, it has felt as if the burden is solely on me to help others understand my experience or culture when relating to me. It is almost as if there is no mutual move towards each other, but rather there is an expectation that I will know what others need to understand in order to decode my culture and that I will be able to explain it in a way that makes sense to all. Now, don’t get me wrong I love decoding my culture and love sharing what I know and understand with others. What I dislike is doing all the work for someone else because the lack of investment in seeking understanding to me has communicated a lack of interest or value.

Often, in an effort to understand others we miss that we too must be understood. As much as my culture needs to be explained so do other cultures need to be decoded and explained. As we are able to decode our own culture and identify our own cultural “bottom-of-the-iceberg” elements we are better able to comprehend other people’s explanation of their “bottom-of-the-iceberg” elements.

When the Lord called me to LA, it finally became clear that I was made Latina for a reason. My experiences and heritage were so for such a time as this in a place like this. Because of who I am I am able to tell the story of God in a unique way that makes sense to Latinos whom He loves. Because of who He made me I am able to offer a breath of fresh air through a different perspective to many in the greater body of Christ. Because of whom God made us we can bring Him glory. It was God’s idea for us to be born like we were, in the times, and places where we were so that He would glorify Himself through us, delight in us, and so that we would enjoy Him and reflect Him beautifully and uniquely.

Today, I I have begun to grow in gratitude to God  over being Latina. Further, I have been able to tell my story to Latin@s and non-Latin@s and I have been more understood by many who provide the strength to be misunderstood by many others and to continue engaging.

I have experienced understanding when my fellow Latin@s share their stories and our stories resonate with each other. I have experienced great support from them as they challenge me to further explore my ethnic identity. I am honored by the respect some have offered me and for how they have shared their pain and joy in their journeys. I have been enriched by them.

I have been understood by non-Latin@ friends as they have chosen to come into my context purely to engage. I have been humbled by those who have joined me in going to places where they become the minority and they are there with a sense of awareness that their presence impacts the dynamics of the environment, yet they choose to respectfully engage and see potential for developing relationship. I have been enriched by them.

In decoding the Latin@ experience, it’s easier to explain it when people believe or trust what we share rather than judging its weirdness or complexity. I love when people have taken the time to be around us and get to know us just by being with us. I enjoy when a relationship has been established and there is room for genuine questions, asked from a place of true desire to learn.

I have been honored and understood when people let themselves be influenced by my experience. I have experienced healing when my experience matters to others and when they have shown compassion to me by acknowledging my journey and the shared experience of Latin@s.

photo courtesy: Johan Larsson

The following post is part of our series on Ethnic Identity. It is written by Melissa, a staff member with Destino in Texas.

My ethnic identity journey has been one of joy, tears, and trust. Joy in knowing that in the Lord’s good and perfect sovereignty He chose for me to be a person of Mexican descent. Tears as I enter into the painful parts of embracing my culture– from feeling “less Mexican” because I am not a fluent Spanish speaker, to being left speechless after someone said something derogatory about Latinos. Trusting that the Lord is using this journey for my good and His glory. Before I enter more into my ethnic identity journey, let me first share a little more of who I am.

I am a third generation Mexican American who grew up in South Texas, doesn’t speak Spanish fluently, and didn’t really realize I was Hispanic until I moved out of South Texas. That last statement may be a little hard to believe, but honestly — when the majority of people around you look like you, it’s a lot harder to recognize that you have a culture. The Lord has graciously used my time working with Destino to help me recognize and embrace my ethnic identity.

Though I would mark the summer of 2010 as the beginning of my ethnic identity journey I can see ways the Lord was moving in my heart to move forward in the journey and to truly embrace all of who He created me to be. In February of 2009, a staff member of our organization called me up to see if I would be interested in joining a new team in Dallas — one that would reach ethnic minority students at different schools in the city. I felt the Lord leading me in that direction, so I took a step of faith and obedience and saw the Lord provide the financial support needed to go.

The thought never crossed my mind that ministry would look different than what I experienced as a student in CRU. I can confidently say that I am not the same person I was when I first started working in Destino. My experience working with Destino and my ethnic identity journey are so intertwined, which is probably good because it reminds me that my ethnic identity journey isn’t just an isolated event, but really does impact so many areas of my life.

As I have walked on this ethnic identity journey I have learned a couple things along the way.

1) My ethnic identity journey is a process. In the summer of 2010 I spent some time in the Arab world with a group of Latinos. It was the first time I had spend such an extended period of time with that many Latinos, other than my family. I felt right at home. I understood the indirect communication that I heard and could relate to experiences students had with feeling lonely when they were the only Hispanic in their classes, etc.

It also felt so natural to talk with the Arabs I met. They insisted on feeding us and made sure you had enough to eat. They also gave hugs and would kiss your cheek when they first saw you and when you were about to leave. There was also no such thing about a “group hello or good-bye– you said bye to everyone individually. All of these things felt like I was back at my grandmas house with my family or back in South Texas. After this trip, it was the first time that I loved being a Latina.

I didn’t hate being Latina before, but up until this trip didn’t feel like my ethnicity was valued or significant. When you don’t see many Latinos in position of power in society, it’s easier to believe lies that your culture and ethnicity isn’t really that significant.

In the way that I’m wired I really value closure. I enjoy finding solutions to problems and according to strengths finders, 2 of my top strengths are “developer” and “restorative”- both of which are essentially seeing the potential in situations and working to bring them to completion. So, with my new found love for my ethnicity, I wanted to embrace being Latina. I started with the most logical thing to do — watch Selena and go buy some Spanish music to put on my Ipod. I also needed to learn how to salsa dance and speak spanish fluently ASAP. The problem with wanting to see all these things happen was that for 23 years of my life I didn’t listen to spanish music, or practice my spanish, and had only danced Salsa a couple times.

Another problem with wanting to do these things, is that I was looking to these things to make me Latina. If only I spoke Spanish all the time, THEN I would be Latina and embrace my ethnic identity, or if I was only the best salsa dancer, THEN I would be Latina and embrace my ethnic identity. But, if I looked in the mirror I could see that I already was Latina! Also, when I did try speaking Spanish more or Salsa dancing and the reality that I was still a beginner in both of these areas was staring at me straight in the face, it was hard for me to know who I was, because I had looked to these things to find my identity. I’ve learned that there isn’t going to be a point where I have all of my ethnic identity journey figured out. It’s not as simple as just learning Spanish, or just doing this or that. It’s a lifelong process of running to Jesus as he walks with me through this journey. All of who I am is found in Him and in Him I have been made complete.

2) It’s OKAY to walk through the pain. It’s easier to not walk through the painful and hard parts in your life. Like I mentioned before you don’t see a lot of Latinos in position in power, so it’s easy for me to believe the lie that I couldn’t dream big, because my dreams probably wouldn’t come true. I also walked through pain when others around me would point out the obvious — “you don’t speak Spanish?!” it made me feel shameful for not knowing the language of mi gente (my people). Another painful thing to walk through was thinking that it was wrong to embrace my ethnic identity. There has been growth in each of these areas and I can acknowledge the lies that I am believe and run to Jesus and rest in knowing that all of who I am is found in Him and in Him I have been made complete.

3) I’m not alone in this journey. The Lord has met me where I’m at, has provided friends to walk through this journey, and has used me to walk people of different ethnicities through their ethnic identity journey. I’m sure that especially with the growing population of Latinos in America, there are many others who are thinking/will be thinking about their ethnic identity. I’m thankful that in the midst of the unknown, the pain, and the joy all of who I am is found in Him and in Him I have been made complete.

John Piper has a book called “Don’t Waste Your Life”, which challenges us to make much of Him in every part of our life. I don’t want to waste my life — or my ethnicity!

photo courtesy: digitizedchaos

The following post is part of a series on Ethnic Identity. It is written by Ana, a volunteer intern with Destino in Texas.

“So you and your family are from Mexico huh?” Emily, my freshmen roommate asks soon after I move into the dorm room my first semester at Texas A&M. “Yes, but I grew up in Deer Park a suburb of Houston” I reply, trying to deflect the question. In fact I had moved to Deer Park at the age of seven, where the majority of people at my school, as well as my friends, where white. Her curiosity persists, “so this must be very different for you. Do y’all have running water in Mexico?” Her face is completely serious, and from her expression I can’t figure out if she knows she’s being offensive or not. This has never happened to me. “Monterrey is a huge very modern and industrialized city. We have running water,” I reply slightly annoyed. She goes on to ask if my parents know how to read and write, and if we use donkeys as our main mode of transportation. I can’t believe she is seriously asking any of these things. I get the feeling that she isn’t just curious about my nationality, but rather purposely being insulting. I seek a roommate change soon after this conversation.

I had never felt insecure about my ethnic identity until that moment. Immediately I could tell I was very different to the majority of students on campus, and that it was a bad thing. I looked around my economics class from the back of a large auditorium and started wondering how many Latinos were in the class. I began to feel so insecure about being one of few Latinos on campus; I wished so badly at that moment that I could blend in and be like the majority of students in class. Although I didn’t consciously decide I wanted to look more white, I dyed my hair platinum blonde and put light colored contacts in my eyes because that’s what most girls in my classes looked like. I was not ready to admit to the world who I really was. I wanted to be accepted.

It wasn’t until I joined Destino that I realized I had been desperately trying to hide from the world my ethnic identity. One day while car-pooling to a Destino social, a girl I had just met asked what my last name was. Without thinking I said, “Villarreal,” pronouncing it in English. My good friend Denise said, “say it right!” I repeated my last name in Spanish with the proper ‘y’ sound for the two ‘l’s and rolled my ‘r’s. It was then that I knew I was in a safe environment that accepted who I really was and not who I had to pretend to be in order to blend in and be accepted. I could unashamedly admit that my favorite breakfast is barbacoa with tortillas de harina, I like listening to Luis Miguel, and that it feels very weird not greeting everyone with a kiss. I could call my parents and speak to them in Spanish in front of my friends and no longer had to feel embarrassed or uncomfortable. I even became aware that when I pray silently I do so in Spanish, so when I am asked to pray aloud in English I become tongue-tied. The language I use to communicate with God is Spanish and my Destino friends didn’t mind when I asked to pray in Spanish around them. In fact they understood, because some of them felt the same way.

Destino offered me a home away from home in college. The familias, el pan dulce at the meetings, the salsa nights, making flan and empanadas with friends, being surrounded by Spanglish, listening to Spanish music in the car on road trips to winter conference or fall retreat; all these things offered glimpses into the identity I had chosen to hide. I could finally look around and see myself reflected among fellow students, and it was comforting. Destino created a safe environment to allow me to discover my ethnic identity and helped me to embrace all the cultural factors that have shaped me. The most valuable aspect was not to have to embark on the journey to find my ethnic identity alone. I am grateful to have had the support and understanding of friends who were on a journey to discover their ethnic identity also.

photo courtesy: jorislouwes

The following post is part of our series on Ethnic Identity. It is written by Rico, a student intern with Destino in Texas. 

I am brown.

Brown is not a weakness…

God loves me and wants me to embrace who He’s made me to be?

It took me nineteen years to boldly proclaim being a Mexican-American and to stop pretending I was a white guy with an epic ability to tan quickly. Intellectually I understood my ethnicity since the time I first had to bubble in the option identifying myself as “Latino/Hispanic/Chicano” on a standardized state test. The fear of living out my fate as an alcoholic, high school drop out, gang member, construction worker, field reaper, pre-martial dead-beat father that the American society laid out for me allowed me to keep my culture from influencing my life an arm’s length away.

I was born in South Texas, raised in a predominately Anglo township in Michigan. My surroundings helped foster my need to turn my back on the Hispanic community. There was no benefit to learning Spanish, so I didn’t. I was a chameleon, blending in well with my Anglos friends. I adopted the ideology of individualism, living for myself not for my family.

My parents decided to uproot the family and move back to south Texas at the end of my freshmen year of high school. The only thing on my mind was the countdown of days left before I could escape the predominately Hispanic setting I now had to call home. People at school spoke Spanglish. Some sported Mexican flags and shirts that said “Viva la Raza.” To them I said, “Go back to Mexico.” The rest of the student population was fairly assimilated to American culture, but I only thought of them as poor imitators of my people up north.

No one really knew what I was doing. My Anglo friends in Michigan quickly accepted me into their circles; my ethnicity was never brought up. The assimilated Hispanic crowd in Texas shared my views on the “Viva la Raza” supporters. As for my family….well, I just didn’t involve them in this aspect of my life.

When I came to faith, the world and the self-complex I created for myself was turned upside down.

Ironically, the gospel was presented to me by an Anglo Destino staff guy, but I didn’t accept Jesus as my savior until about a month later, after sitting in a room filled with Hispanic students talking about God’s work in their lives.

A year passed, I became deeply involved with the Destino movement on my campus. My thoughts also wondered off to reaching more Hispanics for the Lord. One afternoon, a Destino staffer asked me how we could make our Destino movement more Hispanic. He knew my past and current struggle to accept my ethnicity. My response to his question was that I didn’t have to clue what change, because I didn’t know what it meant to be Hispanic. That’s when he plainly, and flatly said, “It’s in you. You’ll find what it means to be Hispanic and to make a Hispanic movement. I’m white; the most I can do is help make this movement not white.”

This was when confusion and shame settled into my heart. His response launched me on my journey to finding my ethnic identity. Many times I wanted to give up, because it is easier to be only Anglo or only Mexican. The stereotypes I fought hard not fall into slowly became real people to me; my papa the carpenter, my Apa the field worker, my parents who gave birth their son out of wedlock, my uncles who struggle with alcohol. Who did I think I was putting myself on a pedestal above my own family?

As I dove deeper into my journey, I found healing and security in being bicultural; studying the rich history of my family’s culture, both Anglo and Hispanic. It helped to explain my desire to be relational, even though I fought to suppress it with individualistic ideas. Mostly it has helped me understand that God didn’t leave me in the oven after the timer went off.

The thing I struggle with most now having discovered my ethnicity is opening up to tell my family about my past denial. This struggle is rooted in the fear that they would feel betrayed or unloved by me because of my thoughts. To be completely honest, writing this post has left me anxious, wondering if a family member is going to stumble over this before I get a chance to discuss it with them. However, I have not let this stop myself from sharing my journey.

I have been given opportunities to lead seminars on the topic of ethnic identity. Both times I have had other students come up to me sharing how they too struggle with identity ethnically as a Hispanic and were encouraged that they were not the only ones battling this fight. Recently I received a text message from a friend who shared her struggle with ethnicity in front of her entire movement and has experienced freedom from it.

When I think about my story and see the influence it has had on other peoples lives I can’t help but lift my hands and praise the Lord who wrote it. Three years ago, I never thought I found dignity in indentifying myself as a Mexican-American Hispanic.

God loves me and wants me to embrace who He’s made me to be.

Brown is not a weakness…

I am brown.

photo courtesy: heacphotos

Our ethnicity is part of our identity in Christ. Ignoring it means we ignore part of how God has “fearfully and wonderfully” made us.

Rarely have I ever read a book or listened to a talk on discipleship that included a section on ethnicity. It is almost as if when people become believers we treat them as the blood of Christ has washed away their ethnicity (I actually read a commenter say this on a blog recently). Many times people will quote Galatians 3:28, “There is no longer Jew or Greek…” to say that our ethnicity no longer matters as believers.

While it should no longer serve as something that divides us, there are (at least) two problems with the interpretation that our ethnicity becomes irrelevant after conversion:

1. Galatians 3:28 goes on to say, “…nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Obviously becoming believers does not remove our gender (if so, then why do we have men’s and women’s ministries?). So the verse must be pointing more to division than to the removal of gender or ethnicity.
2. In Revelation 7:9-11 John describes a crowd of believers in heaven, “ I looked again. I saw a huge crowd, too huge to count. Everyone was there-all nations and tribes, all races and languages.” The word for races in Greek is literally ethnos, where we get our word ethnicity. Whatever our glorified bodies will look like, they’ll still maintain enough visibile evidence of ethnicity that John could tell just by looking at the crowd.

God has created each of us with an ethnicity. We’ll still have that ethnicity when we get to heaven. We’re willing to talk about becoming “men or women of God”, then why not “Godly Latinos”? Why not what it means to be an Asian American who is a follower of Christ? He’s given us our ethnicity for a reason, so what keeps us from talking about it?

I think part of why we ignore ethnicity in discipleship is as a result of the highly individualistic culture we have here in America. It is hard to think of people belonging to groups. We tend to over-emphasize the uniqueness of the individual at the expense of understanding group dynamics.

We ignore ethnicity in discipleship because we equate ethnicity with heritage. For many people from the majority culture, this can be a problem. If our families immigrated to the US so long ago many of us don’t know our exact cultural heritage. We can falsely believe that we don’t have a culture because we don’t know our heritage.

In Destino we believe that rather than ignoring our ethnicity it is something that God has given us to embrace. It is not the main thing that defines us, our identity as followers of Christ has priority. But it is part of how God has created us. So we talk about ethnic identity at all of our venues. It is part of our discipleship process. Many times students can be running from their ethnic identity not out of pursuit of Christ, but fleeing the shame they associate with people from their ethnic background. We want to help them face that shame and see that God has created them Latino, Caucasian, Native American, African American, or Asian American for a reason.

We’ve begun to use a resource in Destino called The Ethnic Identity Model that we’ve adapted from Orlando Crespo’s book, Being Latino in Christ. The goal of the model is to be able to help a student/disciple identify where they are in their ethnic identity journey and what steps they need to take to move towards wholeness. Because no one’s story is the same, no two ethnic identity journeys are the same. Our life experiences take us on different turns, but we’re all on a journey.

The Ethnic Identity Model we use in Destino.

We have the privilege over the next two weeks of hearing from five different Latino/a bloggers about their ethnic identity journeys. Our hope is that as you read their stories you will begin to see firsthand what a crucial role ethnic identity wholeness plays in helping someone grow into full maturity in Christ. We’re so grateful for the vulnerability these staff and students are showing by putting their stories out there.

Our authors this week are:

• Rico
• Ana
• Melissa
• Sandy
• Kristy

Please stop back over the next few days to hear their stories and interact with what God has been doing in their lives in the area of learning to embrace their ethnic identity. Read The Ethnic Identity Model and engage with your own journey.

photo courtesy: kate.gardiner

Kids Choice Awards 2012: Meet The 22 Coolest Latino Kids In Hollywood http://huff.to/HpTQRH

Hispanics spell out why labels don’t fit – CNN.com http://bit.ly/HJs0Ls

How a Mega Millions winning couple used their jackpot to enrich Latino education - http://bit.ly/HJsNfc

Latinas are Lowest-Paid in the US, Report Says | Fox News Latino http://bit.ly/HJt41R

CONTEXTUALIZATION

ESPN debuts Spanish-language ad – “Esto es SportsCenter”  http://bit.ly/HJs4Le

Univision to Launch Sports Channel - http://bit.ly/HJrUn5

HISPANIC CHRISTIANITY

Christianity in the Americas: Pew Report - http://bit.ly/HJr0XG

Mexico’s Evangelical Shift - http://bit.ly/HJrP2H

EDUCATION

Latinos address cultural roadblocks to college – San Antonio Express-News http://bit.ly/HJrk8N

Latino Links is a weekly roundup of news and views from the Hispanic community. Let us know if you have anything you’d like to share.

“One of the most traditional and popular devotions in the Christian world is the Stations of the Cross…every generation of Christians, driven by some instinct of faith, has tried to retrace the steps of Jesus to Calvary, discovering that he continues to journey with us in our own passion and way of the cross. ” -Father Virgilio Elizondo

I’ve been thinking today about this tradition within the Catholic church to retrace the passion of Jesus. In Destino, we have many Catholic students that will go to mass today and take part on this meaningful and beautiful experience. They will take time this Good Friday to grieve the death of Jesus and to grieve the fact that, as Elizondo writes, “suffering has not been erased, loneliness continues, and betrayal and abandonment of friends break my heart”.

I appreciate this about the Catholic faith, that they take today during Holy Week to pause and grieve before Easter Sunday. We in the Evangelical world can often rush past grief out of anxiety or fear of it, where as many of our Catholic brothers and sisters recognize the value and necessity of it in truly experiencing hope in the resurrection.

So today on Good Friday, I want to invite us to stop and to grieve with the saints as we think about the death of our Savior. Just as the quote from Elizondo illustrates, let us take time today to “mourn with those who mourn” knowing that the fullness of the Kingdom has not yet come. There is still injustice, pain, brokenness in our world, and it deserves our sorrow as we look to the cross that reflects the agony of our Savior.

In what ways can we be present this Good Friday in the realities of those around us that are suffering? While sorrow and loss may be common, that doesn’t make it normal. The world is not as it should be and grieving is our way of acknowledging that painful truth knowing our Savior intimately relates. Isn’t that ultimately what compassion means? To share in the pain of another? Let’s be people of compassion today agreeing with those who are hurting that the world has yet to be made new. Today let’s make space in our lives for grief knowing that Christ understands our suffering and also knowing that hope is coming.

photo courtesy: jam343