S2E5: Centering the Margins in Church Planting

Show Notes

Robert Guerrero, church planting catalyst for City to City North America and the Caribbean, discusses how centering the margins in church planting could reshape our imaginations for what successful city ministry looks like.

What is How to Reach the West Again?

Christianity is declining in the West. How will the church respond?

Redeemer City to City's "How to Reach the West Again" podcast takes the insights of author and pastor Timothy Keller's book of the same name—and explores them in greater detail with a host of guest ministry leaders.

Join us as we examine ourselves, our culture, and Scripture to work toward a new missionary encounter with Western culture that will make the gospel both attractive and credible to a new generation.

Brandon O’Brien: This is How to Reach the West Again, a podcast that aims to inspire and empower a fresh missionary encounter with Western culture.

I’m your host, Brandon O’Brien.

For the whole of season two we’re talking about cities—what are they? What does the Bible say about them? How do we plant churches there? What does it mean to love our cities?

I’m joined today by Robert Guerrero. Robert is a Vice President and Catalyst for Redeemer City and City and Director of the Latino Initiative for City to City North America. He was also my pastor for a season, when we both lived in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, which makes me a highly partial interviewer, I admit.

Born to Dominican parents in New York City, Robert has lived and planted churches in New York, the DR [Dominican Republic], and Chicago. He now lives and works in Miami. In this conversation he talks about how he learned to navigate majority-culture metrics and narratives about church planting—and what we stand to gain by making room in the center for marginalized voices in church planting conversations.

Brandon O’Brien: Robert Guerrero, thank you for being with us on the podcast. It's an honor to have you here.

Robert Guerrero: It's good to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you guys, to be with you guys it's fun all the time. So, I love it.

Brandon O’Brien: And this is not the place for impartial, objective reporting because I'm a big fan of yours and I'm glad to have you in the chair here.

Robert Guerrero: That's very, very, very honoring and humbling. Thank you.

Brandon O’Brien: You've got a breadth of experience in planting in lots of really diverse places. I wonder if you could give us just a quick overview, I know I'm asking a lot, but your trajectory from in ministry, in church planting and the spaces that you work in now. Where'd you start? How'd get into them and give us a quick view of your experience there.

Robert Guerrero: I became a Christian in a church plant in my neighborhood in Dominican Republic. So, churches weren't reaching my demographic, which were the street kids and gang bangers. And in that time, gangs were very common and defined. It was turf mentality and the churches that were non-Catholic, that were missional, reaching people, trying to grow, they weren't reaching, we were flown over. So, we didn't identify with the setting. So, this church plant was basically birthed in our neighborhood to reach us. And my spiritual father is a missionary who's from Holland, Jay Nauda, his name. I mean as white as you can be. But this dude just got into the neighborhood. So, my church experience, which I was on church, was that birthing, this organic, this highly relational and missional space. And so, I loved it.

I loved that. And when I came to Jesus, my desire and passion was to see my street buddies come to Jesus. So, in the church planting environment, it's easy to bring them in. You're so hungry for a warm body in the room that you accept anybody. and when churches get what I call, I got this from Erwin McManus, when we get civilized, suddenly the church is not as welcoming or easy to break into when you come from my background. So, I noticed that pretty soon. So, I always push for, let's start something new. Even before I was baptized, I became part of this SWAT team, they call it, to start new outreaches in difficult places.

And the church being the most welcoming thing for them. But then the awakening also, and this happened after I was already in ministry in church planting, is that the neglected people from the margins, the poor, the most disenfranchised, not just the kids and troublemakers that are in church, but the disenfranchised, I was finding, as I read the scripture, wait a minute, these are a center in Jesus' attention, but what's happening with the church? And so, then God called me to full-time ministry or ministry as vocation, because people were like, "Man, you preach good. And you like to teach, and you have this passion."

So, I went into it and I said, if I do it is to help start these...we didn't call it church planting, but it was just do church for this kind of people. So, then I moved to Chicago. In Dominican Republic, through the health club that I had. I helped start churches in our gym. So, we would start Bible studies that became churches. And then our business, we tied 50% of our business profit to outreach ministries. So, I saw myself in that sense until God called me to be a planter. And then I went to Chicago, went to study at Moody Bible Institute, and there, what do I do? I do what I do, start a church. In Cicero, Illinois, 10% Hispanic at that time, now is like 95% Hispanic. So, we started a ministry.

We had no training on church planting. It was very organic. We did what we knew what to do, and that was beautiful and painful at the same time. That's another story. But then I started to be discipled and mentored on the theology that is robust on reaching the margins. And there was an opportunity to start a church in a very marginalized neighborhood in Chicago. And that was an experiment for me to strategically and intentionally do that. And Noel Castellanos, who was the CEO of CCDA for many years before that, he moved to Chicago, invited me to co-plant with him. That was the game-changer for me, that experience, that was just one of the most formative things in my life in ministry. And so, I said, this is what we got to do. I was thinking a lot about Dominican Republic.

This is the kind of church the DR needs, this is kind of mission. So, when I finished and planted the church in Chicago...and Chicago, there was three plants. One failed. And then La Villita is still alive and serving in the church. And within this Christian community development association world, it was the first Hispanic church.

Brandon O’Brien: Is this La Villita Community Church?

Robert Guerrero: Yes, La Villita Community Church. And then I went back to DR with the idea, this is the kind of church we got to plant. That was my mission. So, I planted a church. I became the church planting director for a charismatic organization that was very missional. And I loved the missional impulse that they had. And so, I was in charge of helping find leaders to plant churches in the 30 provinces of Dominican Republic. So in a period of three years, when I stepped out, we were able to plant either a starting church or a church fully started in those 30 provinces.

Brandon O’Brien: Wow.

Robert Guerrero: And I was coaching them and all that. But then God called me to center-city, Santa Domingo. That was the neglected place for church. And I just had a heart for the urban and the high-density population and stuff like that. So, my wife and I moved there and we started in our living room, as we knew again, no church planting training, not even church planting language at that time, this 1995. And so, we started a church, but my idea was, I really started a church to be like, I want this church to be inspirational so that this kind of mission in urban centers reaching the down and outs and the people who are disenfranchised, takes priority. So, it's called Iglesia Comunitaria Cristiana en Santo Domingo. And we did that for almost 17 years. And then out of that, because a pastor started approaching us, saying, "How do you do this?"

We started businesses and they asked us, they were coming and approaching us. I prayed, I was praying like, “God, who else is doing this?” And I found a Pentecostal pastor. And then I found another Wesleyan guy and a Methodist. And we became friends and they had their smaller expression of us. And we joined and we started a network. It was just for us. And it grew in those 16 years to be 10 countries and about 2,000 churches altogether that were committed to being this kind of church in the neighborhood. It's called La Red del Camino, Del Camino network for Integral Mission in Latin America and the Caribbean. And that's when we got connected with Renee Padilla, who became our mentor in that process.

And that took it to another level, that journey. And in that process, I didn't know. You don't know what's missing until you see it somewhere. And what was missing was a robust articulation and also a seamless way to show how this transformation connects with gospel dynamic. We are very biblical. We preach Jesus, we called for conversion, but we didn't have the training and the language and the skill to know how that renewal process is directly through a gospeling process. So, Tim Keller, when I heard him aside from being a life changer for me, healing a lot of the stuff in my heart that was just under the rug for so many years. And it was when I heard Tim Keller the first time, it was like...back in the day, when you say, man, I never heard the gospel before, now I heard. Of course I did hear the gospel before, but I never heard it in a way that seamlessly connected it to everything.

But again, no training and trying to do it as best as I can and become an imitator of Tim as best as I can. But I always said, for a season in my life I was a translator for Tim, I dumbed down Tim for the street. That's what I did in DR. So, then gospel centrality and the intentionality of gospel centrality and gospel renewal became language. Then God called me back to my neighborhood where I was born and raised, in New York. For 15 years, I did a prayer walk in that neighborhood. I would go to New York to take a two week retreat and pray, plan my preaching calendar and all that, and walk the streets to Washington Heights. And the churches were closed, they were closed, gated, but the drug dealers were open 24/7. This is in the nineties and a lot of crime. and I had this incredible burden for my neighborhood and I just prayed I made it. I had everybody praying for Washington Heights, little did I know God was going to call me back.

And that's when I moved back in 2012, but that's our intersection with City to City. I was asked to lead the efforts in New York for City to City, which was an incredible privilege. So, I led the effort of our goals to help catalyze and plant churches in New York city. And so, I did that for 10 years and planted a church, which you were part of, Church of the Heights, as I did it, everybody was like, "How do you do that and do this?" I said, "Bro, we Latinos, we're tri-vocational. We're hustling. We hustle. We can't do just one thing."

So, I did that. And then God gave me a burden to bring this intentionally to the Latino world. And I was burdened for the Hispanic church, which is very missional, but doesn't have the tools and all the trainings, all the privilege, that as a Latino I had. Learning from Tim Keller and being in this church planting universe and all this. And these guys do it with nothing, just the missional impulses. I say the Latinos plant churches is just expecting that the Holy Spirit is...I think the Holy Spirit is leading me and they started a church. Som I wanted to bring that and we started the Latino initiative. And Miami is a key city. When you think all things Latino, Miami is the key city in the East Coast. So, that's why I relocated to Miami.

Brandon O’Brien: I've heard you speak in other places and then trainings at City to City about the way the church planting story is told. The way and the narrative about church planting in cities is often told. And it's often told from a majority culture, white perspective. And I'm curious if you can tell me how does that story of church planting that's often told in the conferences, in the literature, in the networks, et cetera, in what ways does that exclude or fail to account for the kind of church planting that you've experienced and that you see on the margins and you see in the Latino network, the kind of church planting you're trying to encourage? How does the story that we tell about church planting miss that activity?

Robert Guerrero: Yeah, that's a really good question, because it's one of the things that has caused somewhat of disturbance in me. Because again, when I get exposed to church planting and I realize, it's a whole discipline. But then you realize it's an enterprise, it's got its inner language, it's got its strategies, it's got its package, and so many good things. I mean, when I entered that world and it started giving me language for stuff that I did, but also I saw stuff that...oh, I wish I would've known that. Oh man, this is great. Great stuff. But as I heard and saw that and was understanding, I also was picking up that the reality of the context in the margins is not computed in the design of this thing called church planting in America. And the people in the poor, the immigrants, the homeless or et cetera, the urban poor is in the language in that world, but as objects, not as subjects.

So, I kept asking the question when these scorecards and these definitions were thrown in the table, there was no black and brown people in that table. And we have our narrative of mission. The Latino church is missional on steroids. We plant churches that study the zone with less resources and proportionally, we're planting more churches and we're serious about evangelism. And we move into the places where nobody wants to move in. And that's a narrative. And the black church, the story of the black church and it's mature historic expression of engaging the gospel and the faith with the problems of social issues and brokenness and systems, that narrative wasn't in the room shaping how we think about church planting and why church planting and what are the scorecards and how do we measure success? So, this is what I felt.

I felt that I was learning, but I was also being stripped away from my story and the story of our people. And then when we tried to bring that to them, it felt like a violence, because it was imposing these categories and measurements of success and what we legitimized based on the conversation that was shaped when we weren't in the room, when this world was shaped. And when I hear the definition of sustainability in church planting, that does not compute in my story or neighborhood.

Brandon O’Brien: Meaning getting to self-sustaining in a certain number of months?

Robert Guerrero: Oh, in three years.

Brandon O’Brien: Yeah, right.

Robert Guerrero: Like in three years a church is self-sustainable, because they are not even biblical language, self-sustainability, we're a family.

But self-governing, all these things that were important to think about, but the way that, what does that mean in the hood? The question was never asked, what does that mean? And that definition, in your reality for what does it mean to empowering the indigenous leader? And what does sustainability mean in your context? And then we define, we adjust, too. I attend these assessment for church planters and my minority brothers and sisters that were there, I still remember every time I walked in, they were like, "Oh, we got one of us assessing us." And I was just there as an observer and I ended up assessing. Because they wanted somebody to understand their reality where they can be. And then I started a lot of conversation with black leaders that were in the church planting world and Latino leaders, in backdoor conversation they all felt oppressed.

Oppression, feeling oppressed, feeling trapped, feeling that they got to play the game was a comment everywhere. And I fought with them. I said, "Well, that's your problem? Why don't you speak up? Why do you submit to that?" But then I'm like, man, it's not fair. It's not right.

Brandon O’Brien: And does that sense of feeling trapped, where does that come from? It's a feeling they have, you said play the game, that there's certain metrics, certain expectations and I have to, in order to get what I need, to plant, I have to do-

Robert Guerrero: Yeah, to get what I need, to get the support, to get the training, to get the good stuff that we need and stuff, they have to do it the way that satisfies those who legitimize them. And then the people who legitimize them sometimes don't know jack about their reality, the context. So, it's not that don't do it, it's do it in a posture of learner, let's be learners. So, somebody ask me, "Well, how do you Latinos plant churches with..." our average external giving for a Latino church plant in the United States is $12,000, compared to $48,000, I think, is what's the average. And so, he said, "How do you guys do that, man?" I says, "Yeah, it is about time you asked us for us to teach you. We can teach you some things," right?

Brandon O’Brien: Yeah.

Robert Guerrero: So, how do we have a cohort of shared learning? We haven't had to fight our way into get the content and the richness that is developed in dominant culture, but what we bring to the table is not there. So, one of the things we're doing in City to City, committed, hardcore committed, and the Latino initiative and City to City in New York, is that story and narrative has to be brought in and reshape how we think about church planting and city renewal and church renewal and all that kind of thing. It's exciting. It's not easy. It's not easy.

Brandon O’Brien: So, make this concrete for us, tell me a story, give me an example of a ministry expression, from your point of view, from the point of view of marginalized communities, is a huge success that from maybe the point of view of the dominant narrative about church planting and sustainability and et cetera, by those metrics, by those standards, wouldn't be considered a successful church planting story.

Robert Guerrero: Well, my favorite church in New York, one of my favorite churches is a young Latino, Dominican leader, who the guy, bivocational, doing his master's degree and plants a church in the Bronx. and his relational universe is not on a universe that supports church planting financially or anything like that. So, God calls him to plant a church in the Bronx. He's from Washington Heights. Incredibly sharp guy. Knows how to build teams, has a passion for his community. He activates leaders. And the guy, I introduce him to a particular denomination, because he's orphaned. So, there's alignment in beliefs and mission and that stuff. And the level of success and impact that this ministry has had in a matter of four years, going to five, it's phenomenal. And growth, baptisms, impact in the neighborhood, leadership development and everything like that.

When you peek into the financial support that that denomination has given, and compared to what I know, because I know these organizations, what they give some white guy that just moved into New York City and gives a nice talk and knows how to articulate the language of the church planting world, play that game and gets all this money with no hesitation. And my brother, Dominican, native New Yorker, brown, planting Hispanic bilingual just gets crumbs. And he is neglected within that world. And processing with him, like, man, stay in the game. We got to change realities. We can't change it from the outside, change the game. But it's like, why this? Why am I treated this way? And yet it is one of our most successful bivocational church plants in my 10 years of New York City, that we've had in New York City. Yet, why, even with that level of success, he's sidelined, neglected, he's not even highlighted? And the other guys from that tribe, COVID hit and they split.

He stayed. He's from New York. His church is growing in the midst of COVID. So, that kind of story, I hear it many times.

Another story is one of my heroes of Washington Heights, church planter, he's no longer there, but this guy, indigenous, and he knew how to enter the church planting world and acquire the language and humbly submit to a very gifted guy leader. And when we were able to look back at his years doing church planting, the toll it took on him to be in that world, playing the game and submitting to the structures and all these aim positions that were happening, it took such a toll on him that he couldn't take it anymore. And it's just, you hear those stories of actual church plants in New York City, it's painful. It's just painful to hear.

Now, myself. Now, I entered that world, Church of the Heights and I didn't want to be soloed and siloed. And it originally was part of a tribe. And the language, the way of going about, Washington Heights was an anomaly for that. But it was always trying to fit what I was doing in the Heights to this dominant narrative that wasn't shaped with the story of the Heights in mind. Now, I'm a rebel. So, I didn't submit to that. But it was, why do I have to have this fight all the time? And my other brother who was African American, the other only African American within that tribe, who loved that tribe, the fellowship was beautiful, these were friends, they became my friends, but when it came to our ecclesiology, to hear the cry of feeling neglected, oppressed, imposed upon, it was constantly happening.

So, sometimes I'm like, "I'm done with that. I'm going to do my thing with Latinos and bye-bye." But we can't do that because we're a family, we got to stick together. And one more thing in the Hispanic world is that the Hispanic spirituality is so rich. And our theology from Latin America is so rich. Yet because of this way of doing ecclesiology and mission is a form of colonialism. So, we don't express the churches that are planted in Hispanic world that enter this world of church planting. Suddenly they don't sound Hispanic. They're not addressing the issues of the Hispanic community. They're not appealing to our rich heritage, of our spiritual rich heritage. And you feel like you were colonized to be legitimized. And that's painful too. So, those are the things we're trying to confront in our journey.

Brandon O’Brien: Practically, what needs to happen to get those people who are isolated on the margins, into the center of the conversation and what does it take to do that? And happens when that conversation shifts? What's the good that comes when these stories that are on the peripheral become a part of the story in the center?

Robert Guerrero: Well, for that to happen, first of all, there has to be a metanoia repentance moment from the center. It's not like, oh, let's correct and now let's invite. No, there's got to be repentance. There's got to be a moment of, man, this is actually so anti-Jesus. Jesus was like Galilee. He's our hero. Our leader is from the margins. And he died outside the gate, in the most marginalized place in Golgotha, the garbage zone. Our faith is shaped there. So, a repentance that, how do we dare go about ministry and shape our theology and our mission without the narrative of the margin, when the origins of our faith are there? So, that repentance needs to happen. And I think that posture repentance leads to, when we do connect, when we too try to build bridges, that opens the doors for reconciliation, for being able to talk about the pain that that has caused. And my experience is that that open conversation has led to being in the room as equals.

And then when we're in the room as equals dealing with the themes of mission and the city, it's beautiful to see how the people in the margins and their experience and expertise and grit is shaping the guys that came in from privilege and power, and seeing that change happening in them when they hear those stories. So, the beautiful thing is, when you get them in the room and they start as equals, it's not getting them in the room so you can learn my way. But it's getting them in room and I need to learn from you and you need to learn from me. And they become friends there, the way the churches that are in places of majority culture that are planted, now they're planted very aware of this other reality and the need to partner with that reality and the way they shape their church. So, I think repentance, a posture of repentance, reconciliation, acknowledging that process, and then together generating a conversation around the room of what is a new paradigm that comes out of this repentance.

So, if it's repentance and now we go back to whatever it is that we went back to, that's not it. It's repentance towards a new paradigm. And then the new paradigm is, let's think how we can build this together. I think that that, in practice for us has been our training cohorts. We are very intentional to have both worlds intersect as we reflect on theology and mission, as we think about ministry, the practical aspect of ministry, the missional tools and expressions of our theology and then the contextualization and all that, to do it together in the room, we've seen it's dynamite. When we see the African Americans from their heritage, with Presbyterian and a Pentecostal Latino together in the rooms, thinking about their city.

I'm thinking here, Jersey City. And what comes out of that, the richness. And then as a facilitator, we're there like, oh my gosh, every day is we go in the room to learn as well, because we weren't hearing those voices. We weren't facilitating the space for that. And it's really beautiful. It's messy. It's messy. If you don't want mess, don't go this route. But yeah, that's what we've experienced and learning. We're learning.

Brandon O’Brien: There's a way of talking about diversity in church planting, especially in cities, that's really practical. Meaning, we know the city is big and diverse and no one kind of church or no one denomination can reach everything just practically speaking. And so, it's logistically a good idea to get a bunch of different networks involved so that you can reach the whole city. But you're not describing a logistical upside, you're not saying, "You go do it the way you've always done it and you go do it, but we'll do it together," You're saying there's something that changes all of us and should change the paradigm for all of us when we're doing this as a real collaboration.

Robert Guerrero: Yes, yes. Yeah. That's really good, what you're saying. It's not like we should all not be the same anymore out of that interaction. And it doesn't mean I abandon my tradition, it enriches my tradition and what I bring to the table, because now I'm interaction with this other story, that I grew up in my tradition, neglecting it or resenting it or demonizing it or whatever, suddenly, because I opened myself to that to learn, in the city, in the city we got to learn together. I go back to my world as reformatic, I'm a reformed charismatic, and it enriches me. For example, my experience with the Wesleyans in New York City, my experience with the Wesleyans in the way I planted church lives, it just gave me a different perspective, it enriched my mission. So, those are things that we need to cultivate.

Brandon O’Brien: You've articulated very clearly that for a lot of people who minister and serve outside of the majority culture expectations or systems, feel like they have to adapt to those systems to be legitimized and to get the resources they need. So, with that in mind, I've heard you say in a couple of contexts that someone told you sometime that the gospel should make you more Dominican and not make you less Dominican.

Robert Guerrero: Oh, yeah.

Brandon O’Brien: What does that mean to you? What does that do for you? And what can that way of thinking do for the people who are listening?

Robert Guerrero: That was a very personal moment for me, very liberating. When Theo Visser, he's a very veteran in intercultural church in the Netherlands and he came for City to City event, and we connected with this idea of diversity, diversity of cultures and oneness, that the mystery of the gospel is, the dividing walls is done, we're one people. But does that oneness mean that we lose our cultural identity? No, this new oneness is the richness of these cultural identities mixed there. And then he said, "Do you know, Robert that the gospel makes you more Dominican? If it doesn't make you more Dominican, it's something else. When he said that, it was like, oh my God, it touched a nerve for me, because my original journey in the gospel made me less Dominican. My first song that I learned to express my love for God and singing, it was a European song and they called it sacred, and my music, they called it folklore and or worldly.

So, I was conditioned in my faith, the way I read scripture and interacted by dissecting it in categories and points, rather than just story. And my culture is stories about storytelling. But I suddenly I'm conditioned to read the scripture as a theological treaties that I dissect. So, it stripped me from the richness of my culture that I am as a Dominican, to become Christian. And I think the gospel redeems cultures and brings the beauty of the diversity of who God is and his richness, is expressed through the different cultures and languages. So, we got a better picture of God, when the gospel touches you and you bring the fullness of your culture, redeem now to enrich the beauty of what the gospel is in the gospel beloved community. And I really think my identity is in Jesus. But I'm Dominican. And that's very important for me and for God, who made me Dominican. So, if growing in the gospel makes me less than this, there's something wrong about that gospel.

It's a gospel that has been couched in a idolatrous way in a culture, that made that culture superior to others in the standard by which other cultures are legitimized, which means then that we present the gospel in an idolatrous way that strips people from their identity. So, part of being gospel centered is acknowledging the danger of that and helping people discover Jesus within the language and the culture and the smell and the music and the sound and the environment in which God formed them, encountering the Jesus there. And I think that just brings a more beautiful picture of what Jesus is to the cities of this world.

Brandon O’Brien: Thank you so much for being with us.

Robert Guerrero: Yeah, thanks, it was great. Thank you for the opportunity.

Brandon O’Brien: Tune in next week for a great conversation with Nilza Oyola about the community-based model of church planting, the unique contributions of women in church planting, and the importance of drawing from your own cultural and spiritual heritage in ministry.

How to Reach the West Again is a production of Redeemer City to City. This episode was produced, written and hosted by Brandon O’Brien.

Our associate producer is Braeden Gregg.

The interview was recorded at Roosevelt Community Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and edited by Lee Jerkins.

RCTC is a non-profit organization co-founded by Tim Keller and supported by generous people like you. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform, leave a review, and consider making a gift to support the work at www.redeemercitytocity.com/give.