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by Marlene Gasdia-Cochrane, Editor
June/July 2005
They moved to a new country, where they didn’t know the area, didn’t know the language, and didn’t know the culture. Yet they were expected to restart a church that had closed its doors because of a lack of a pastor, leadership squabbles, and disbanded members. It might seem an insurmountable task to most people; but not to Cesar and Lisa De Paz.
Five years ago Cesar De Paz, a minister in Costa Rica since he was 15 years old, traveled to New York for a seminar. There he was approached by clergy who thought he would make a good minister in the United States. Cesar was referred to the Massachusetts Conference and was offered a church in Jamaica Plain that needed a pastor. At that time, the church was Hispanic-based, with 30-40 members and 6-7 staff people. However, when Cesar and his wife Lisa arrived in Jamaica Plain in 2001, there was no one left. But that didn’t matter to them.
“The heart of my husband lies in starting a church from the ground up,” says Lisa De Paz, a United Church of Christ lay person. “We restarted a church in Costa Rica so we knew what we had to do.”
What they had to do was pound the pavement. First they found that the Central Congregational Church of Jamaica Plain, which had hosted the Hispanic church, wanted an Hispanic minister to help reach out to the community. Supported financially by the Massachusetts Conference, surrounding local churches, and Our Church’s Wider Mission monies, the couple arranged to rent out space at the Central Congregational Church to hold worship services in the small chapel in the back of the building. They then walked around the city and put up flyers in stores, talked to the people on the streets, and invited them to their newly formed Hispanic Community Church of Jamaica Plain. “It was very difficult at first,” says De Paz. Although Spanish is our first language, there are different dialects and Jamaica Plain encompasses several different Hispanic cultures. “I had to be careful of what I said to people originally from Puerto Rico and Honduras because some of the language is completely different from Costa Rica and I occasionally inadvertently insulted them,” joked De Paz.
After the neighborhood became better acquainted with the De Paz couple, they were invited to hold Bible study meetings in various houses. The hosts of the study groups invited their friends and relatives, and eventually more people started to join in and trust the minister and his wife. “Originally there were just two people at worship service,” explains De Paz. “Then there were four, then seven, then after about a year there were fifteen to twenty people at each weekly service.”
“After a year, we were approached by Hispanic radio people and were offered to host an hour-long live radio program for a small fee of $130. We took the chance and spent the hour preaching about family issues, talking about the Bible, and answering calls from the community requesting prayers and counseling. We invited the listeners to pray and join us at church.” The show was so successful that Cesar and Lisa took the next step of appearing on Hispanic cable television to get their message to a bigger audience. Now you can see and hear the De Paz couple on Channel 26 in the Boston area during their live half-hour Saturday morning program.
“We are always preaching about positive messages of faith,” says De Paz. “The TV and radio shows are very successful, but our Bible study cell groups and personal visits are still the most influential way to get the message of faith to our community.”
The De Paz’s 27-year old son, Cesar Jr., moved to the area last year to help his parents grow the church. (The couple has four grown children, and five grandchildren, all residing in Costa Rica.) Cesar Jr. is trained in keyboard and guitar and leads the music at the church. Hispanic music is important to the community, so Cesar Jr. ensures the music is both Godly and contemporary.
These grass roots efforts have proven successful for the De Paz family. This combination of hands-on work, use of various forms of media, and personal contact with the Hispanic community, along with the couple’s hard work to earn trust from the neighborhood, has attracted a large following. Members travel from the surrounding communities, including as far as Scituate. Each week, over 180 people now attend worship, which was moved from the chapel to the upper sanctuary. Because of this wide outreach, the De Paz couple train members on how to be faith leaders within their own communities and spread their faith even more.
“Our goal is to keep growing and keep in contact with the members, even if they move. We want to help them improve their spiritual life and feel that church is always their home and we are their family. The members are all brothers and sisters and they need to know that we are all here to take care of each other,” explains De Paz.
The couple is spreading that message to the north of Boston as well. While on the radio they noticed they received many calls from Lawrence, Massachusetts. Subsequently they tried starting a church in Lawrence, but found that there was a bigger need from Lowell. But Lowell did not have access to the same radio stations and did not have transportation to get to Lawrence, so a year ago they moved their operations to Lowell. They applied their same grass-roots evangelism methods to the Lowell area, partnered with Christ Church United in Lowell and started the Hispanic Community Church of Lowell. Over seventy people now attend worship service there each Sunday.
The couple presently split their time between the two churches and think Lowell will be even more successful than Jamaica Plain because neighborhoods in the Lowell area tend to be more stable.
For more information about the Hispanic churches of Lowell and Jamaica Plain, visit http://www.iglesiahispanaboston.org. (Note: content is in Spanish.)