Every Friday, Baptist Women in Ministry introduces a remarkable minister. This Friday we are pleased to introduce Bicri Hernandez. Bicri IS what a minister looks like!
Bicri, tell us about your ministry journey and the places and ways you have served and are serving.
I like to describe my ministry as bridge—between borders, a ministry in the margins. At the age of ten, my family from Mexico immigrated to South Texas due to my father’s call to pastor a Mexican-American Baptist Church. My own calling to ministry became palpable when I volunteered for summer mission projects with the River Ministry (Baptist General Convention of Texas). During my college years, serving as a small group leader within InterVarsity taught me how to facilitate small group Bible studies. I also served as a summer missionary to the Dominican Republic through the Baptist Student Ministries. After struggling with my call to ministry for two years, the time came to attend seminary and complete my Master of Divinity degree.
My significant ministerial experiences in seminary revolved around new church plants among Spanish-speaking congregations. I worked for Catholic Charities as an adult English as a Second Language teacher for refugees. Before I graduated from seminary, I received an invitation to minister through teaching at Seminario Teológico Bautista Mexicano (Mexican Baptist Theological Seminary) near Mexico City. This was the time when all of the American missionaries were being pulled out of the seminaries in order for the Southern Baptist missionaries to focus on church planting. This left a vacuum in theological education across Latin American seminaries. As a native of Mexico and a Spanish speaker, this full-time ministry experience blessed me and expanded my role as a minister and as an educator. The areas of my expertise focused mainly on Old Testament subjects, Philosophy of Religion, and Chronological Bible Storying. Part of my responsibility as an instructor included scheduling our seminary chapel preachers. The seminary director told me that it was the expectation for all professors and all fourth year students to preach during the weekly chapel service (regardless of gender). These opportunities in Mexico helped me embrace my ministerial identity.
I returned to Texas a bit spent, having given everything that I knew how to give. I sought relief back home in Texas, and after a summer break I began my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) training in Harlingen, Texas at Valley Baptist Medical Center. CPE came as a refreshment and respite. Even though the experience was strenuous, I felt that my roots received nourishment and my ministry found fertile soil as I journeyed with people during their times of distress. It was during this year that my home church, Iglesia Bautista Peniel in Eagle Pass, Texas, ordained me to the ministry. My pulpit ministry expanded as I served in interims to small Presbyterian and Methodist churches in the Rio Grande Valley.
I moved to the North Texas area for second year CPE residency at the VA hospital in Dallas. I felt encouraged by my educators and mentors to consider becoming a CPE Educator, thereby joining my pastoral ministry with my experience in adult education. Thereafter, I joined Baylor Scott and White Health, where I currently serve in the role of ACPE Certified Educator. For the past eight years, my ministry focus has been to educate and empower seminarians, lay leaders, and local pastors to provide pastoral care ministry to patients, families, and staff in the hospital and their congregations. I also continue to serve in my local church in pastoral roles as needed.
What have been your greatest sources of joy in ministry?
My greatest joy in ministry has been bearing witness to the presence of Christ among God’s people. Sometimes that has occurred immediately in quiet conversations and small prayers. Other times, I have witnessed God’s grace years after, when alumni or church members contact me to update me on their faith and life journey. Sometimes I am surprised at how God lets Godself be known, such as the parable of the Good Samaritan–our help in time of trouble comes from the stranger, the foreigner, and the least likely person is the one who God uses to bless us and encourage us. As a woman, I encounter people who are surprised by my ministry also. Therefore, being a woman has also been a source of joy. Along those same lines, another joy has been becoming a mother of three boys. As a minister, motherhood helps me connect with the challenges and joys many parents face day and day out.
What have been the greatest challenges you have encountered in ministry?
The greatest challenge in ministry has been my gender. I attended a seminary where the roles of women in ministry were being questioned. There was a visible shift by the time I graduated with my M.Div. Going from seeing women as professors and in PhD tracts to seeing women silently dismissed from those roles felt disheartening. I sometimes felt invisible in my classes where some men saw through me, as if I did not exist—and where the unspoken message was clear—that I should not be there. Women were discouraged to preach from the pulpit.
What is the best ministry advice you have received?
One of the best advice given to me by a fellow CPE educator, who gave me an invitation to recover from terminal uniqueness. I certainly had a severe case of the disease of terminal uniqueness. I felt like I was the only one who had experienced marginalization due to my gender, ethnic background, and language. My case of terminal uniqueness isolated me from community. The best cure for this terminal uniqueness has been a huge dose of vulnerability. The more I encounter people in ministry, I realize that if I am willing to share my vulnerability they feel connected to me—they identify with their own suffering. I have shared the experiences that have caused me greatest pain, and at times shame, and I have found community. It is in community where God’s healing presence is experienced in surprising ways. Instead of marginalization, we are able to bridge the margins when we connect in our common humanity. I appreciate the opportunity to share my journey because whenever I start getting another case of terminal uniqueness, this forum, Baptist Women in Ministry blog, helps me shake it off! Reading the journeys of other women in ministry is certainly the best antidote to terminal uniqueness.
One more memorable piece of ministerial advice given to me were the words of Dr. John Newport, who was my seminary professor. During my student years, he said to me—“value your bilingual and bicultural heritage.” He said that to me often, reminding me of the richness that my culture and heritage would bring to my ministry. In a context where being “other” seems to be looked at with suspicion—Dr. Newport helped me redeem my bicultural identity early on in my seminary years.