As a third-generation pastor, Inés shares her powerful journey of becoming the first female pastor in her family’s lineage, drawing deeply from her Nicaraguan roots and the spiritual heritage of her ancestors. She highlights how her father, a “prophetic disruptor,” played a crucial role in challenging traditional gender roles and encouraging her to lead.
Inés reflects on the profound impact of her cultural and familial background, emphasizing the importance of honoring those who came before her as she leads with the power of her ancestors. She also introduces the concept of mujerista theology, which centers on the experiences of Latina women and seeks to dismantle patriarchal and colonial structures within the church.
Throughout today’s conversation, Inés invites us to consider how we can “lead like a woman,” reclaiming our bodies, voices, and identities in spaces where women have often been marginalized.
We think you’ll want to listen more than once to fully absorb the wisdom shared in this episode!
Listener Resources:
- If you’re a woman in ministry, we’re here to support you! Explore our curated collection of resources and specialized offerings designed to empower you in your calling. Discover more at transformingengagement.org/womeninministry
- If you are a Christian leader or pastor seeking a space for support, growth, and transformation for yourself or for your team, we invite you to participate in one of our cohort programs, called a Circle. To learn more and to get on the waitlist to be notified when our next Circle is offered, visit transformingengagemeng.org/circles
- Each episode spotlights an organization making a positive impact. Inés calls our attention to The Center for Restorative Justice, which educates and equips individuals and communities to address the history of racial injustice and disrupt its ongoing impact by making the past present. We do this through experiential learning opportunities, educational cohorts, and embodied storytelling all grounded in spiritual practices. Learn more at: https://www.cfrjustice.org/
About our guest:
Inés Velásquez-McBryde is a pastor, preacher, reconciler and mujerista theologian. She is a lead pastor and founder of The Church We Hope For. She is originally from Nicaragua, third generation pastor, and the first pastora in her family.
Inés earned her MDiv at Fuller Theological Seminary where she served as a chaplain for 2 years. Inés has 23 years of combined ministry experience in church-planting and pastoral staff leadership in multiethnic churches. She has spoken in local church pulpits across the nation as well as at national and regional conferences, sharing her passion for multiethnic church planting, racial reconciliation, justice, and the full inclusion of women in pastoral leadership. Inés has also written as a Latina for SheLoves Magazine, dozens of devotionals, and as a contributing writer for She Is: Biblical Reflections on Vocation workbook for Fuller’s Max De Pree Center for Leadership.
Inés has been married to Rob for 19 years and loves being a soccer mom to their son, Nash. She loves telling stories over a good café con leche, especially if it involves encouraging women to find their God-given voice and walk in the fullness of their gifting.
Episode Transcript
Rose: Today, Jenni and I are very excited to welcome to the podcast Inés Velazquez McBride. She’s a pastor, preacher, reconciler and speaker. She’s co-lead pastor of the church we hope for a multi-ethnic church in Pasadena, California. Inés earned her master of divinity at Fuller. She was the recipient of the in Pitts Watson preaching Award at Fullish Seminary and has spoken in local church pulpits across the nation as well as at national and regional conferences, sharing her passion for multi-ethnic church planting, racial reconciliation, justice, and full inclusion of women in pastoral leadership. Inés is originally from Nicaragua, has lived in the United States for 20 years. She’s been married to Rob for 19 years and loves being a soccer mom to her son Nash. She loves telling us stories over a good cafe con leche, especially if it involves encouraging women to find their God-given voice and walk in the fullness of their gifting. Welcome to Transforming Engagement. Inés,
Jenni: We’re so glad you’re joining us in Inés. This is going to be a fun chat. We have lots of questions for you. Are you ready for this?
Inés: I think I’m ready. I’m always ready. Thank you, Rose. Thank you. Jenni.
Rose: Could you just tell us about your work in your own words to start with?
Inés: Thank you for asking for me to do it in my own words. I always like to honor the ancestors that came before me because I didn’t just arrive here to my work and I didn’t just plant this church in January of 2020. I want to honor who I am and where I come from that has been also spiritually formative. My name is Inés and I am Nicaraguan. I grew up in the Nicaraguan Church, the Nicaraguan soil as well as the Nicaraguan Church spiritually formed me, I am, my ancestors are with me in speaking through me in the soil that I stand on is that soil and the theology that I bring into my sermons, into the how and how and when I lead, I lead with the power of my ancestors, the power of abuelitas and tas who were leading the church long before they were ever giving titles.
As pastor, I am a pastor, a third generation pastor. My grandfather was a pastor, my father is a pastor and he’s still alive and I am a third generation pastor, but the first female. And so to be the first one to break a genealogy of all male names, just like the five females in the genealogy of Jesus and Matthew one is a long road, so I didn’t get here by myself, and so I honor that work in me that enables me to lead from that place. And so Nicaraguan theology has shaped me. I came to the us. I’m a later arrival. I’m an older arrival as an immigrant. When I was 18 years old, it was in the United States that while I was in college, an undergrad that I heard a call to ministry. But because you can’t be what you can’t see, and I’m sure your listeners will understand this, I heard a call to ministry and that did not necessarily equate being a pastor because I did not have those models.
Even though in Nicaragua I only saw male pastors, if women didn’t show up to the church on Sunday, church wouldn’t happen. And even though my father was a pastor, I couldn’t imagine myself as being called into the ministry to be a pastor because I didn’t have those models. Additionally, I was living in the south in a predominantly white church in two states, both Texas and Arkansas that were historically racist states and so more conservative theology both socially and theologically. Again, I was in places where the church helped me to be confused about my calling, be it the Nicaraguan Church because I can critique it. I came out of it or the predominantly white church in the South. And so for me to hear my calling and for it to take five years for me to accept the name of Pastor is a long walk in the wilderness. And I think many women struggle with hearing a calling. If you are being called to senior leadership and women in ministry, there are many of us who take a long time just going around and around that wilderness of calling until someone calls it out of you. And so I think that’s important to mention for our hearers that it takes a long time.
Rose: No, I love that you said that. I do. As you know, the Center for Transforming Engagement, maybe you don’t know, it’s housed in The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and for many years I taught leadership to the MDiv. It’s a graduate school, right. And early on, so many young women that would come in and of course we’re talking about leadership being at the school is the first time in their life just what you’re saying. They sensed a call into the ministry, but they had no idea they could be a pastor because of their way that they grew up in the south, mostly in Southern Baptist churches. They had no imagination that they literally could step into being a pastor. So I love that you brought that. Yes,
Inés: Yes. And there’s the intersectionality of me being a female and a woman of color in the South, that intersectionality holds us back. It puts us back many years. And so the church in North America, I will say, because that’s where I’ve lived for the past 27 years now, has suffered from an anemic imagination and from half the church not being led to fully be empowered to lead at their full potential. And that’s the travesty and that’s the sadness, and that’s a grief that I’m trying to correct in the embodiment of who I’m and how I lead and in the ecosystem of this church, of The Church We Hope For.
Jenni: Yeah, what’s crazy is as a Chinese American and I grew up in the immigrant church and now I’m working in a white church being born or raised in Seattle, Washington and then moving to the south when I lived in Texas for a while, man, girl, when you say it’s racist and it’s sexist is a big thing, I remember we were doing some mission work and one of our friendly abuelitos actually would pull me aside and try and pull me back to be with my kids. And my husband was there to hang out with my kids. My husband is not a pastor, and he’s like, you need to be with your children. And I’m leading a huge team of people and I’m thinking we got this right. But there’s a little bit of that mixture in there. So I’m curious, as someone that’s coming from a very ingrained Hispanic culture, what does that feel like to Yeah, you came from third generation, you’re the third generation pastor, but there’s so much that’s different. What shifted that for you when you were living your life as a child, as a teen to go, yes, I want to be in ministry. What was that part of your story? We’d love to hear? I love
Inés: That you say that. I want to thank my father officially always thanking him because he was a prophetic disruptor. My father, his name is Ali Velazquez and I love to say his name because I am Ali’s daughter. My father is a lion. And somehow because he grew up with a single mother with a strong voice in the church, he saw his mother’s struggle of leading in the church. He saw his mother struggle being a single parent on Nicaragua, and somehow some way he disrupted that lineage of toxic machismo. And he always put me in front of people. And the first time that he put me in front of the pulpit, I was 14 years old and years where racism and sexism come to the surface and then someone in history disrupts it. And so I invite us to always look around for those who are prophetic disruptors.
I was 14 years old. I love that a white southern Baptist pastor from the US was coming to Nicaragua, a missionary, and he was coming to preach at my father’s search and he wanted my father to be his translator. And my father told him that I was going to be translating his sermon that day. And that man thought that that was a bad idea. And I agreed with him. I thought, this is not good. I don’t want to do this. But my father said, no, you’re going to translate for this gentleman, for this pastor. And he felt that my English was better than his, and I disagreed with that. But seeing how visibly upset this white male southern pastor, bless his heart, was because he did not want me a 14-year-old with braces and a woman translating for him. He kept Pastor Ali, I really want you to translate for me because he doesn’t believe that women should be at the pulpit and that I should have been wearing a skirt and I was wearing long shorts, let’s just say long shorts that look like a skirt. And my father said, either my daughter translates for you today or you don’t preach in my church today. That putting
Jenni: What an incredible advocate,
Inés: Absolutely that putting his foot down and disrupting the narrative, the historical machismo, historical US patriarchy, it’s both racism and sexism intertwined and intergenerational as well. I have to honor that. And he was throwing me there into the world. That was the first time that I did not hear a call. It took me 10 years in order for me to hear that call after that incident, that 14 years old. But in that moment, that was the first time that I felt the infilling of the Holy Spirit. I literally felt like a fire go through my body. Well, first of all, I went and threw up in the toilet before I translated. And then once I was up there, something took over me and it was a Holy Spirit and I was so free that afterwards that pastor said, I’ve never had an interpreter do what you did today.
And in fact later he wanted me to go to Cuba with him and on his next missions trip and my father said, no, I’m not letting my down go with you to another country. But what I want to say is that we have to find those prophetic disruptors in history. They can be male or female. And for me in my life, it was my father. He always, because of his mother’s struggle, he always saw how the women were struggling in the church and not giving their proper place. And he never wanted gender to stop me from becoming who I wanted to be or who God might be calling me to be. So it took years. It took years for me to untangle from that. That was not the first time that I heard a calling. Like I said, it took me 10 years because the church helped me be confused about my calling, but my father was always putting me in front there, taking risks, putting me before I was even ready to lead, in order to lead. And that’s how I learned through stumbling and through someone else believing in me, seeing something in me and calling out the calling in me. I don’t think my father said, I think she’s going to be a pastor. He just wanted me to be there and lead and see what happens when you let the young people lead. You will be surprised, the gifts that are hidden there.
Jenni: That is so great. I love that it’s such a good reminder for us living today. How can we release the dreams of the people we see right in front of us and how can we push that forward and encourage them and be their advocate? So wow, that’s an incredible story and I wish I had that story in my back pocket for myself, but man, I’m so glad you had it. I think it’s in your Instagram profile. I want people to understand what this is. You wrote that you are a mujerista. I know what that is, but a lot of our listeners don’t and there is something beautiful about that. Can you explain what that means?
Inés: Thank you for asking that, Jenni. Just like we have womanist theologians in our African-American tradition that speak from their ground, from their place, from their struggle and use that lens to interpret scripture. And I also in that same vein, I come to that title, to that name to describe something very specifically about my theology. So liberation theology is a theology that permeates Latin America, but even liberation theologians and liberation theology did not live up to the liberation of their Latina counterparts and their Latina sisters. And so in Nicaragua especially, I have read back journals of feminism in Nicaragua and looking at our Nicaragua feminist foremothers to learn from them and what was the work that they were doing in the eighties, for example. And what I saw is that women mujerista women in Nicaragua eventually got tired of being objects of study in history and theology and theology and they wanted to become subjects that generated history and theology.
And they couldn’t even find that in liberation theology. So many of those women started saying, you brothers, I love y’all, but I’m coming here, abuelito. I’m coming here tío, hermano, compañero, and you don’t really see me as a full equal. There’s no place for me here. There’s some place y’all are saying that we’re equals, but in praxis it’s not happening. So we have to remove ourselves and create spaces that are made by us and for us. So as mujeres, as women, I sit and study theology with other mujeres, and say from our vantage point, what did the Samaritan story mean to us? What might it look like? If we look at it from the lens of Latin American mujer, what has our historical struggle been and how does that historical machismo impact how we interpret scriptures? And how has a Nicaraguan one and the Latino and Latina American church been affected by a toxic machismo that’s very particular to our soil?
It is patriarchy, but it’s particular to our soil. And in order to excavate that, you have to excavate the conquest. You have to excavate colonization, Spanish colonization of the Americas. You have to excavate that they stole land and they stole women’s bodies. And we were objects to bear children and hypersexualized and hyper objectified. And so we have to look at the colonial wound and also the colonial womb and how it wounded us. And so we have to divest from that toxic machismo and divest from that colonial wound and imagine a post-colonial mujerista theology. And I have to do that in conversation with you with my Chinese-American sisters, Black and African-American sisters because the rhyme of the oppression sounds similar, but the poetry looks different in every community of women. But the rhyme at the core, it sounds very similar. And I bet if you and I were to sit down, Jenni or you and I were to sit down Rose, we would hear echoes of that rhyme of that toxic patriarchy. It echoes throughout history among us. But I speak from that particular mujerista theology and I do theology from Nicaraguan soil, from the Latina soil. And I cannot speak for all Latina women. I can’t even speak for all Nicaraguan women. I can only speak for myself and the things that have malformed me that I’m trying to unlearn and relearn and create new mujerista theology.
Jenni: I think, I’m sorry, Rose, I think this is so important to you because it’s just for us to hear this other side through proximity, through talking to you. Right? Rose and I have talked about this before where when we’re looking at the imago de, when we’re looking at the triune God in community with each other, how we see the other is so important and then we can’t see the other if we don’t know their story, which is why it’s so important for people to know language to understand what these things mean. And so yeah, it’s not first time they’re hearing it. Maybe it is the first time I’m hearing, but I don’t want it to be the first time in the future. I want ’em to understand not only are these theologies important, but it’s how people see themselves and see them in the kingdom of God. So thank you for sharing that. That’s beautiful.
Rose: I love this. I was going to say the same exact thing. Story is so important. I love that you started with your ancestral story. And so for our listeners and women that are either in the ministry or being discerning, coming into pastoral, any of it, understanding our own story, like our ancestral story, how did we get here? What is that story I think is so important and informs because we are formed by it. And so the whole idea of story work. So knowing your ancestral roots, I’ve often said I’m a combination because my dad, my maiden name is Madrid, my mom was second generation from Italy, so her parents were immigrants. But understanding the context of how I was formed in the faith of my ancestors is so informative to me today, so informative. And so I just think for our listeners, understanding their story, the story of their ancestors, it doesn’t start with me. It started way before me. And also the fact that most of us in the American church were raised on white European scholarship. So what you are saying about the particularity of your own context and what it all means is just so important. So Inés, thank you.
Inés: You are welcome. Yes. We have to look towards our back to our biblical foremothers and look for the prophetic disruptors there, but also situated in our social locations. We have to look to our Nicaraguan mothers and abuelitas. And they may not be theologians as we imagine them or as we know them today, or our Chinese theologians and foremothers, but they are there. They may have been mothers, they may have been washing dishes, ironing clothes. That was my mother, my grandmother washing clothes for rich people, ironing, cooking. But they are there. They’re the poets, they’re activists, they’re rising up. And so we have to excavate them just like in the biblical story and our stories too, because we are their hope realized. And so we all are going to be ancestors. The question is what kind of ancestors will we be? But we gain strength from looking back and also looking forward.
Jenni: And I wonder also if, yeah, we are vocational theologians, we’re pastors, we studied, we’re in a seminary, we have our masters, all of that stuff. Some of us are doctorates, but the reality is our ancestors were theologians because every single person is one. We have our own theology of God. And so when you think of it this way, and my question to you and is every woman is a theologian and we all have unique challenges. All of us are very different. You said earlier you’re not even speaking for just all of your people. This is my experience. So for all women that are finding their voice and calling today, what do you see are some of those unique challenges for them?
Inés: So many challenges that I’ve experienced in the past 20 years, taking up space is a challenge. Our bodies have been policed. Your body was policed at the beginning of the story and you were saying, you need to be over here. Here’s the boundaries of your limitations, your existence, what you can or cannot be. Taking up space is a beginning in our bodies, beginning with our bodies, reconnecting with our bodies, reconnecting with our dreams, visions and desires has been something that the North American church, especially the white church has diminished. Don’t listen to your body, don’t be aware of your feelings. Everything is just so theoretical. It’s sinful. It’s sinful. Exactly. So taking up space and seeing our bodies through a lens of original goodness, that’s something theological there. I believe we’re originally good. Come on, God made us originally good and I should be able to trust my body.
Obviously all of us have a tendency towards a proclivity towards being sinful and acting out of alignment with Christlikeness, right? But originally God made us good and gave us gifts as women as an equal counterpart to Adam for up space, which begins with our body is important and a challenge I’ve learned to negotiate my body in certain rooms, how I dress, how much curvature I show, what color lipstick I wear, how short or long is my skirt, how tight my jeans are if I’m speaking or preaching. All of that is things that we have to unlearn. A good theology of body and a good theology of women requires intense inner reflection as well as excavation of women were made originally good in Genesis one and two. And we have to lead from a good theology of a God who created and a God who loves women.
And taking up space in our rightful place in the kingdom includes our bodies and we don’t live disembodied, theologies. So our bodies and our relationship to them is one challenge. The trauma that we are storing our bodies is another challenge. Violence has rendered our voices in articulate. So when we talk about finding your voice, find your voice. It’s not as easy as going to find something that was lost. The first thing that we did as babies when we were born is cry. The first thing that we did is hear our own voice. We may not remember it, but finding your way back to our God-given voice. But our voices have been strangled by abuse. Our voices have been strangled by patriarchy and machismo. Our voices have been strangled by limited interpretations of scripture. Can women preach? Should women preach is a whole theology based on three verses in the entire Bible, three verses maybe four, when we have a full witness of scripture from Old Testament to new, from Miriam to Deborah to Mary Magdalene to junior of women who are using their rightful God-given voice to edify the church throughout history.
So finding your voice has been a challenge. And who says you have a voice and how will we use it? And violence has rendered our voices inarticulate, and you have to find those voices, those people, men or women that will help you find your voice. As we say, that takes a long time because literally we have somatic responses in our bodies. When we’re in a room, when we’re in a room with all women, our bodies react differently when we’re in a room with all men and we have to speak and lead, our bodies react differently when we’re in a room with men who don’t believe that you are an equal counterpart, our bodies suffer from stereotype threat, which means that there’s scientific evidence that says that women under produce and underperform, qualified, credentialed women have a psychological trauma that when there are among men who don’t believe they’re equals, you underperform.
You can’t even put sentences together. And you feel that weight of like, I’m not seen as an equal. I don’t belong. Right? My identity is not welcome. My voice is not welcome and you underperform. That too is a theology of body that we have to unlearn. So finding your voice. Another thing that I have found is that if and when you have had the privilege and the gift and the luck, I say the luck that you have been mentored by someone to lead and you’ve made it to the top, you probably have had male leaders as models. And so the third challenge is not leading a man and leading a woman. Well, what does that look like? Because even when we have female leaders, what I have found is that misogyny has been internalized. Patriarchy has been internalized. And I also have been wounded by female sisters, and hermanas who are acting like a white male or a wounded man of color because whiteness has hurt all of us.
And so finding the feminine divine in my body and leading from my mujerista theology and leading a woman has been a work that needs to be done in community with other hermanas that are doing it well. And leading a woman to me is collaborative. It’s like a lioness tribe, lioness. They lead in community, they lead like comadres. Here’s a mujerista term for you. Lead like a comadres in Spanish is literally a term that your mom calls your auntie or her best friend that she’s like an auntie but not biological auntie. And you just grow up with all these tias who are not really your biological tias. And you’re like, how many do I have? How many? She’s my co mother. And it literally is a term that says you co mother in community, just like lionesses in a tribe. This is your tia that can also call you out if you’re not acting right, she can call you out and say, you need to act like you’ve been taught.
Right? I see so many examples and scriptures like Ruth and Naomi, they lead like a comadre and it’s not a romantic relationship. They are leading like a comadre and women lead like a comadres. But our male models are to lead like a single superstar, narcissistic solo leader. We are not aware of how machismo has malformed us. Women can also lead like a single superstar, narcissistic, toxic solo leader. So we have to divest from that and find new models. And leading like a comadres lean collaboratively is a strength that I have excavated from how my tias would lead, how my abuelita would lead, and how other hermanas and sisters alongside me lead healthy women that have done the hard inner work to not lead, to not lead like a toxic male. That’s also a work of the body, of the heart, of the mind leading from the feminine divine, finding those spiritual guides in scripture as well that lead differently than men. And that’s just a few of the challenges, but I feel like those are the strongholds, those are the strongholds for the church in order to flourish, to not lead it like a man.
Rose: It says you lead a multi-ethnic staff. Is that true? Do you lead a multi-ethnic staff?
Inés: I dunno that it says that on my bio. I lead a multi-ethnic church. I do hope to have
Rose: Oh, staff leadership. I’m sorry. Staff leadership in a multi-ethnic church. Yes. Okay. I want to know if you can tell us what that is like for you as a woman to be leading a staff in a multi-ethnic church.
Inés: So one way that I lead as a woman in a multi-ethnic church setting is that I say that there’s no presence of women without power. Because also the multi-ethnic mega church has not lived up to the liberating power of the gospel where it looks on the outside like there’s performative diversity, but women and people of color, and especially women of color, they have no power over budgets and they have no power over decisions, but it looks diverse on the outside. And so we say no presence without power because I have been in megachurch places that look diverse and it feels like a multi-ethnic church plantation. Someone calls us shots from the top because it’s hierarchical, right? And let me tell you something. The men that have hurt me the most are not white men. It’s men of color. Men of color who have digested this internalized system of whiteness and men of color who have gained a little bit of power.
And the first thing that they do is they don’t know how to lead alongside women of color that have equal strength, equal vision, and equal power. And so to be able to unlearn a multi-ethnic church plantation complex for women is an uphill battle. And so one of the ways that we decentralize that is by sharing leadership in our church. So I’m the co-lead pastor of The Church We Hope For, and that is intentional. And we base that out of Genesis. Genesis, the Trinitarian leadership, the Trinity doesn’t lead in isolation. There is no single and superstar leader in the Trinity, it’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the way that they lead is in oneness. So our co-leadership model begins to decenter power following Trinitarian leadership. It’s already in the literature. You can find theologians and scholars who are doing that work and they call it shared leadership, redistributed leadership, flat leadership.
Find your preferred title, stick with it, try it out and see what works for your congregation. My desire is for one day to have a third pastor because apparently also in research, it shows that three is a better balance than just two. Because what we have had is moral failures of single solo superstar leaders. And that’s how you get Mars Hilll podcasts. And I as a woman have no desire to repeat that. But racism and sexism are, and not self-correcting. So they have to be interrupted. And at the root of racism and sexism, those are not the things that keep me from flourishing or keep women from flourishing is a grasp for power. And anyone can be tempted by that. Both women and men, both women and men, and on a love for power that dominates. And so that theology of domination of Adam dominating Eve is applicable also to women.
So we correct that by having a system of co-lead pastor, and it has trickled down to all ministries. Many of our ministries naturally without me saying I need two people to lead, people have said, oh, two is better than one. Two brings deeper vision, deeper and wider reach of people because even I as a woman, a woman of color, I can’t speak for all women and I can’t speak for all multi-ethnic church settings. And I found that the hard way when the Atlanta spa shootings happen, just because I’m a woman of color, I couldn’t be the woman leading a safe space for my Asian American and Asian descent sisters. It couldn’t be me even though I look like this. And so that attentiveness to the spirit of a local expression of church, me as a multi-ethnic pastor, I have to be an ongoing learner and see that I too have power in some places. So how I do share leadership and then how I also invite other voices, we need a collective of voices. Leading the priesthood of believers is one way that I lead differently as a woman in our multi-ethnic church plant.
Rose: All of this is so good. I mean, I think we could talk to you for hours.
Jenni: Oh, absolutely.
Rose: So many things I want to ask you. You have a lot that you hold and you’re about how do you avoid burnout?
Inés: Oh my goodness, I saw that question. I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. Rose. I work hard because probably the immigrant ethic, but also my father and mother were hard workers and just always said, always work with excellence and integrity and let your yes bs let your know me know. But my greatest strengths are also my greatest liabilities as a woman because I am called upon often to serve and lead and provide and do things, and I work hard, but also I sabbath hard and I play hard. And it wasn’t until I got to seminary that I found out how bad it is to not Sabbath. I was overwhelmed by the quarter system at Fuller. Yes. I don’t have a problem telling them that the quarter system at Fuller was too fast, too much, too quick. And I didn’t have time to stop.
Jenni: I don’t know. I liked it. I dunno. I’ll say right now I’m at Fuller too. And I loved it because I was like, it’s 10 weeks. Go quick.
Inés: Yes, but I realized that I was studying seven days a week. That is not stopping. That’s true. I didn’t know how to stop because I was also a mother and a wife. I went to seminary at a later stage in life, and so I was trying to get an A in everything, and one of my mentors says, Inés, you’re not going to be able to get an A in everything. And I said, lemme show you how I can get an A in parenting an A and B and a wife and A and B and a student. I was an A student and I quickly found out that when I don’t Sabbath, my body started breaking down. I lost 20 pounds in the first quarter, which is 10 weeks. Jenni, as you know, I woke up one day, on Thanksgiving day actually. And I could not get out of bed and I had to call psychological services and say, I need to make an appointment because I was studying seven days a week up until 3:00 AM because I was trying to get an A and everything. And so I quickly found out that I’m really proud of my B papers in seminary because it meant that I got an A as a mom. It could have been a better paper, come on. But at what cost to myself. And that’s also a challenge in women in leadership, at what cost to myself do we become all things to all people. And so perfectionism was working against me. My immigrant work ethic was working against me wanting to be the best because of the pressure we have. I was like, I’m the first here. I’m the first there. And not knowing how to rest, my ancestors were saying, rest, rest. Get a B. That means badass. It doesn’t mean bad.
Rose: Yeah, there you go. Come on.
Inés: I had to craft a rule of life. And so I’ve had several rule of life for every season. I’m recrafting one right now for this season. And a rule of life will sustain your calling, and that includes Sabbathing hard. And for me, playing hard, doing the things that bring me joy, finding beauty, going to flamenco festivals or to concerts, I have to put that into Sabbath. Otherwise it comes at a cost to my body. And for women, I think it’s worse because how we carry pastoral weight of leadership, how we care for others, how my therapist says that I absorb other people’s pain is a liability to me. And so I have to sabbath hard. I like to play hard and I go to therapy and spiritual direction, and that’s part of my spiritual formation. We normalize at our church that their pastor goes to therapy.
I hit a burnout level back in December. A lot of it was circumstantial. We had a lot of move in our church and a lot of transition in our church. We had to find a new building. And so I do the best I can to not burn out, but also realized that there’ll be seasons that are harder. And so in December I had to have an emergency sabbatical for a month and I came back refreshed and restored. And here again, having to relearn, okay, for this season I need new rhythms, rhythms of rest, rhythms of play, rhythms of work because I know I’m going to work hard, but I can’t be all things for all people at all times. It would come at a cost to my body and my mental health.
Rose: This is so important for women in ministry. And I know that we have women listening that are in a season of life where they are on staff pastoring at a church and have young children. So they’re married, they have their vocational work, they have their married life and they have small children and they don’t know how to sabbath. I don’t even know when I would Sabbath. So what do you say to that season? You clearly have lived through a season with a small child while you were pastoring and doing it all. What do you say to them? Women listening on staff feel like they can’t even craft out time to Sabbath. What would you say?
Inés: Sabbath will look different in all those different seasons? So also to divest from any romantic ideas of like, I’m going to take 24 hours off because that’s just not realistic. The realistic Sabbath is in this season, if I have a baby, we all know that’s going to be a different Sabbath routine. It might be like 15 minutes in the morning or it might be while you’re nursing that baby, you’re not trying to multitask. You’re just going to be, and that baby’s going to be your
Rose: Spiritual director.
Inés: You’re going to hold him or her as he holds him or you, her or you. And so depending on the age group, there might be different realistic expectations. I would say take out any ideas that it’s going to be 24 hours or that it’s going to be a full day by yourself. That may not happen in seminary. I used the time that my child was in school and crafted half day. I couldn’t do more because guess what? School pickup happens at 2:30 PM and then that time I had to go home and help my child with homework. It wasn’t realistic to take a full day, but even a half day would work depending on the season. Being creative with other moms. I was away from my family in seminary, and so I would do communal childcare with other moms and say, Hey, can you take my child just for two hours and then I can babysit your children for two hours and help each other out that way too.
To have those moments where maybe those are the only two hours in one week, you get to go just do whatever you want. Do you want to go to the beach? Do you want to go to a coffee shop and people watch? Do you want to go read at a quiet garden? Do you want to go exercise? I don’t know. But depending on who you are, you craft your rule of life and there’s a rule of life for every season. And don’t underestimate the power of, I have daily rhythms, weekly rhythms and monthly rhythms and those things that are tiny, they add up, they add up, they do. Right now I’m cultivating caterpillars in my garden and in the morning right after my son goes, walks to school, I sit for 30 minutes. I’m counting caterpillars because I have central American milkweed in my garden. I’m trying to learn from indigenous storytellers and teachers right now trying to connect with creation. And those 30 minutes are the best part of my day. And I’m not reading the Bible per se, but it is teaching me something. These are tiny teachers. So again, whatever the season, whatever the age group, whoever you’re being a caregiver to, you might be caring for parents that are like children. Aging parents is another season of life. While you are doing ministry, craft those moments that meet, that fit for you, that meet your temperaments, that mother you back. I am a spiritual mother in my church and for our church, and so I have to be mothered differently. And so therefore my rhythms have to be mothered differently. I will love to write a chapter in my book one day in Jesus’ name. I’ll write a book one day of how birthing a church has been like birthing a child means that I went postpartum depression for it and nobody cared for me.
Like we need a midwife to midwife us. And so the support there for a female church planters or for females in leadership, it’s scarce. Find your midwives. Find your midwives. They may be your abuelitas, they may be your friends. They may be the lady at the street fair who always calls me mija. When I go to her, sometimes I just walk around her store. I want to hear her calling me mija, a term of endearment that reminds me that I’m beloved and all I do is buy earrings from her. Find those midwives. Find the community of lionesses that are co-mothering with you. And for those with little children, remember, especially with babies and toddlers, oh, who test our patients. It won’t always be like, this was my daily affirmation. It won’t always be like this. I will sleep again one day. But guess what? Mothering a church is very similar, and I have to remind myself, even though I have a teenager now who can wipe himself I have to say to myself on some hard spiritually mothering days, it won’t always feel like this. This is a season, but I lean into my rule of life to catch me. A rule of life is like a trellis that lifts up the grapevine so that you have room and space and air and breath to breathe, craft that trellis in your life and it will change every time. What worked last year ain’t going to work this year.
Rose: I love this. This is really, really good. And I love that you craft a rule of life for different seasons because doing it one time, whatever season you’re in, I mean six months later, you could be in a very different place. So I love that so much. And for our listeners that if you’ve never really heard about crafting a rule of life, you literally could Google it and read about how to do that. At the school, we have an online course at the school that’s not for credit, it’s just a course if you’re interested. It’s called Way of Life that walks you through how to craft a rule of life. But I love that so much because we need, okay, once again, Jenni is going to be so tired of me saying this, but I have to say it again because the work that we’ve done at the Center, the research has shown for wellbeing of clergy, we need streams of resilience that are people. You said that Inés, who are the comadres? Who are the therapists, the spiritual directors, the midwives, all of that. What are our practices? Crafting this rule of life where you have rhythms and practices that you are doing and then purpose. Every season you could have a different purpose that God is inviting you to be about. So, so important to be mindful of those things and to be intentional about our lives. I have so enjoyed this time with you and I want you to write that book.
Jenni: Yes, please write that book. I will pre-order it.
Rose: We’ll have you back on to talk about the book. You let us know. You let us know. But as we come to the end, we so appreciate your time and we’d like to close by giving you space to shout out to an organization that you see doing good work. We’ll make a donation. We’ll put it in the episode notes and encourage our listeners too as well.
Inés: Thank you for asking that question. I loved it. One of our community partners as a church is the Center for Restorative Justice, and it is led by my friend, whom I love and respect. He is a lawyer and he’s been doing the work of racial reconciliation since Dr. John Perkins started doing this around here in Pasadena. And his name is John Williams and the Center for Restorative Justice. I’ve been working with him. The name has changed. It was the Center for Racial Reconciliation, now it’s the Center for Restorative Justice. They’re doing the work of excavating how a systemic racism happens in a city and including all the voices in the city. So I recently went to a tour of Pasadena to understand about the indigenous peoples that used to live here about Asian-Americans and the diversity of Asian-American, the Pan-Asian community that lived here, and then systems like housing and redlining. And Pasadena was the last school district to be integrated in the late fifties and sixties. Understanding how systemic racism works in the city and then how clergy can join in that work. So choose the foster care system or choose immigration or choose the housing justice. And John Williams and his team are doing incredible work. I happen to be under board and our church happened to, I don’t say yes to a lot of things, and I say no a lot,
Jenni: And when you do, it matters. It
Inés: Is the only board I said yes to because the work is deeply, is deep, and it’s generational and it’s about repair. And so the Center for Restorative Justice, John Williams and his team are doing incredible work and our church is being mobilized by them, and we’re joining in that work, and we are ongoing learners here in the city of Pasadena, but I know that this work needs to be happening elsewhere as well. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Jenni: We have had such a good time.
Inés: Thank you. I know. I feel like we need Cafecito after this and go hang out and chat more.
Jenni: I know. We could just have the after hours of this. Yes, yes. Well, thanks for coming on and we’re just so grateful for you and your work that you do.
Inés: Thank you for the invitation. Truly, it is a privilege.
