An Interview with President Irizarry

You’ve held a variety of academic and administrative positions in higher ed and in denominational structures. You are an ordained Presbyterian minister, and your career and ministry have taken you from Puerto Rico to Perugia and from California to Chicago. And now you’re in Texas, of all places, as the president of Austin Seminary. Where have you seen God at work in your vocation?

Justo Gonzales once said that our best theology is done at the sunset. Which means once you have lived life, observed the interactions, the meaning of events, you can ask, How has God been present?

You begin by looking at the ways you have been nurtured by others to grow into certain roles. I think I’m a better president because of my work as an academic administrator at various educational institutions and at the Board of Pensions. This experience is different from the single institutional type other seminary presidents come from. At the end of the experience, you look back and say, Oh that’s why I learned this new skill, this is why God brought me to this place.

How has the reality of being a seminary president differed from your expectations?

Part of my work has been with seminaries in the accreditation processes, so I have been in a lot of conversations with presidents and seen plenty of documentation on processes, policies, and procedures. The only thing that has surprised me is what people think the role of the president is. They do that by asking a question. Do you like to raise money? Do you like to be in every single meeting?

Just to clarify, these are tasks you do, but it’s not at the center of the president’s role. The president is a storyteller. So the challenge is to immediately get to know what the institution is and to learn how to tell the story in ways that resonate with people and their questions and even concerns about the future of the church, the future of theological education, sometimes the future of the world and humanity.

What have you come to value about Austin Seminary?

We are an authentic community here and community is constituted by networks of belonging. One of the things that I like about Austin is that every person feels accountable for this place. That facilitates the work of the presi- dent because you have people who are committed, people who take initiative, people who really like what they do, and sometimes they work harder because they want to see the place flourish. That’s a gift.

The other thing that attracted me is the context of the city where the Seminary can really enact its theological and ethical commitments. We are in the midst of an academic environment and a very diverse community. There are places around us where you see concrete needs.

You are Austin Seminary’s first Latinx president. What might that mean for this community and the church?

It’s an important question, because people of color in these positions have increased exponentially in the last years. So one of the questions is, What is the institutional expectation for making this unprecedented appoint- ment? For me it means that I will bring a new set of values that are culturally centered. You have to bring values that are part of your own person and test those against the values of the community, because you cannot force your values.

One for me, for example, is the value of family. What does it mean to be with family, disagree with family, and then come together and try to find solutions? Another is that service is very important for Latino communities. We like to support each other. Even if you don’t have resources, you will share whatever you have of your resources.

Individualism is a value that has always permeated institutions of higher education. Even when we highlight the importance of community, I don’t think seminaries are exempt from gravitating toward individualism. Latino culture, as well as African American cultures, tend to emphasize the communitarian and relational aspects of social life. Therefore, the challenge of people of color in leadership is how to bring the gifts of one’s culture to bear on the reflective practices of institutional visioning and management.

You talk about deepening the stakes and stretching wide the tent. Who else needs to be here and why?

The first group that should be brought into the life of the Seminary is our neighbors. The other day I saw this young woman sitting under a tree with a book in hand and I thought it was a reflection of how welcoming our campus is. What happens if we start interacting with UT students, and in so doing make this a more dynamic community? It might mean our taking the initiative, being more transparent about who we are and who belongs.

Like the signs you had put around the perimeter of campus, “Come dine with us!”

Exactly. It will require some invitation, but that will be the first step to widening this place. We have to open this place to people who do not know yet the uniqueness of this institution, showing what we offer academically, in both our explicit and implicit curriculum, that’s not replicable in any other seminary.

And from my perspective it’s to create space where our students become Christian leaders who know how to live in the “in between.” In between a world that is beautiful and enchanting but that is slowly deteriorating. In the in-between of people who are progressive—as we identify ourselves—and people who do not speak about God or worship God the way we do. People who are able to work in the in-between of congregational ministry and society and those who can live in the in-between of large- or small- or rural-churches models of ministry.

I don’t think there’s an institution that has managed to create leaders flexible enough to be conversant in the in-between. And that’s without giving up who you are and what you believe. It’s about knowing how to work well in a world that is fluid.

There are many people who are not church professionals but who want to really use their faith as a source for developing a better professional persona. All the non-clergy members of our board of trustees are very interested in theological matters. Theology is a resource for every Christian who wants to serve in whatever capacity. And isn’t that what the world needs—professionals who are more ethical, who are engaged with the whole intellectual work of discovering what faith is supposed to do? It’s about having faith-based values that you use to interact with people, to respect people, to use your profession for the sake of serving and to be more human as you do this work. And as a consequence, I think people are more passionate about their profession because they don’t see it as just self-fulfillment but as something they’re doing while also connecting to the God they say they believe in.

How would you describe your leadership style and how do you build trust among the faculty and staff and with alumni and donors?

My leadership style is contextual and dynamic. It’s responsive and adaptive in many ways. I look at the context, always attentive to what’s next. I like to listen. I like to observe. A lot.

And collegial. I think the best decisions are made when people have open conversations with each other, when people feel free to share their opinions. (Where there are five people, there are always six opinions!) Ultimately I’m accountable for whatever decision is made; the president needs to be able to connect the dots to everything else that is happening.

One of the reasons I wanted to have a meeting with the staff at the end of the first semester was to say, this is where we are institutionally. This is where we are financially. Here is where we want your opinion. With alumni and those who support the mission, you have to be transparent and communicative. You know, I’m not a snakeoil seller, I’m a storyteller—which means they will hear hopefulness in positive things that are happening, but they will also hear about our greatest challenges. Alumni are wonderful resources for the institution, so the more open you are with them about the challenges, the more open they will be about the challenges they’re also confronting.

What are the most significant challenges to theological education today? Where do you see God’s movement in these challenges and in the Seminary’s response?

The challenge for seminaries is that the church is facing—in some ways for the first time—an experience that many people have labeled as “dying,” when it is more accurately an experience of “dislocation.” By that, I mean that the church for centuries was accustomed to being functional to the society, to being an integral part of the social realm and acknowledged as such. And suddenly the church doesn’t have that social status anymore.

And the impact of that is that people now see their social loyalties attached to many things, with church being one, and for some people, not the top priority. This affects membership which affects the ability to promote faith in new generations which affects the ability to do mission because of lack of resources.

So that’s the first challenge, because according to our mission, we are here to support and serve that church that is having its issues of dislocation. Again, this is where a gift can come from communities whose daily life is experienced as dislocation. They have already developed resources of resilience because they have never been in a place where they can say they fully belong.

We are like the people of Israel in the wilderness trying to see where God is taking us and suffering the same things they suffered in the wilderness, which is lack of trust in the providence of God. We are here. We are thirsty. Where’s the water? Where’s the food? We don’t see it. And there’s a prophetic role I think seminaries should fulfill as they train people for ministry in saying, We don’t know, but what we are certain of is that God is leading us to wherever that next stage is. Hopefully seminaries are challenged to provide the intellectual impetus and the frameworks for reasoning to discern what is next for the church of Christ.

A challenge for seminaries is the lack of support for vocational discernment within the context of the church. How are people invited or how do we become that small voice that in some way channels God’s intent for certain people with gifts for ministry?

Another challenge is that the authenticity of what it means to be Christian is interrogated in the public sphere, and it’s not really about practices of compassion, about practices of care, about practices of justice. And as that authenticity is affected, the literacy of people about religious and theological matters is reduced. Religious discourse is naïve, and for a world where even young people know how to manage very complex technology, this devalues theology. So our challenge is to prepare people in our classrooms who are theologically informed and who can talk about religious matters in new ways to incentivize meaningful conversations about faith in public discourse.

Where do you find inspiration?

I get inspiration from generative dialogue with others that is not forced, not based on something we have to achieve, but just people trying to imagine how things can be better. For me, that’s important. It is a great source of motivation.

I’m moved by creativity. There’s a risk in creative people, of course. They are always looking to change everything! But I’ve learned to tame that creative urge so that not every creative thought moves into immediate, unreflective action.

The other inspiration for me is books. Probably because books are just ideas from people who have a proposition intended to teach you something.

What person, place, or event in your life has had the greatest impact on who you are today?

My maternal grandmother. I have a memory of her with my mom braiding her beautiful long hair. She was very majestic and she would sit in her rocking chair—which was her throne from my childhood perspective—to deliver her instructions.

I felt so protected when I was with her. I actually remember during one hurricane I decided to stay with her because she didn’t want to move to my house. She was very religious—she was a devout Roman Catholic. I accompanied her to church. She would put a beautiful mantilla on her head and we would go to this little church in a French-style monastery. And they have this chapel made of stone, and it was only the nuns with my grandmother in the back. Wow, now that I say that, I wonder if that’s why I love small churches so much! I would sit there quietly, amazed by the beautiful images of saints and the scents of the place. I think it impacted me more, even when I was very conscious I was an “other” to that religion. I knew we were Presbyterian, but I think that experience really deepened my spirituality.

Introduce us to your family.

My wife, Mildred, is a speech pathologist. My inspiration about the value of faith in professional life comes from seeing my wife as a servant in the work she does. Not because she’s my loving partner; she is the best at her profession and it’s because she’s grounded in faith. She is always getting letters and notes, and it is common for her to hear “you are a blessing to me.” We can be training people like her theologically!

I have three wonderful children, a daughter and two sons. My daughter, Yuyza, finished her master’s in clinical research in the field of neuroscience and she is seeking to pursue a PhD. My son Darien Farel does art restoration and conservation, and he’s a senior at Marist College and the Instituto Lorenzo de Medici in Florence; he’s going to pursue a master’s in arts management in London. The youngest, Abayomi, is in his first year at Westchester University.

Describe a perfect day.

In my imagined perfect day, it’s going to be raining (I love rain!), and I will be sitting on the balcony looking at the mountains in Puerto Rico with my coffee on one side and a good book on the other. That’s a perfect day. And then my wife, Mildred, will step onto the balcony and say, Are we doing something today? and I’ll say, I’m doing something, I’m having my day!

When you retire, what will have defined success in your career?

I will say what will define success is that I have left a mark in the lives of people. And that mark does not have to be big, it has to be just a sense of appreciation for the relationship. A student I taught twenty years ago sent me a note recently saying, “Today I was teaching a class and I remembered what you said.” I don’t need more than that. Those are the personal inscriptions that remain, and hopefully somebody who hears that will repeat it, even if they haven’t had a relationship with me. So it’s not really about legacies, it’s about whatever you have communicated that has been of value. What stays is not me or memories of me but what people have received through a meaningful relationship.