A Disciple Making Disciples

Training churches to engage Spanish subcultures

The Lord blessed their surrender as Ricardo and Evelyn Sanchez pioneered video conferencing environments in the 1990s through their multi-platform construction and engineering company. They expanded their business and ministry to outfit and train Hispanic churches to stream content in the Americas. In the years to follow, Ricardo and Evelyn continued to work among Hispanic churches to train interpreters and stream rich theological teaching around the world in multiple languages.

While working with multi-lingual interpreters, Ricardo became burdened to train interpreters in biblical doctrine and communication skills. “We need to train multilingual and international believers to be effective interpreters,” Ricardo urged. “Because if they return to their native countries or serve in multilingual contexts, they will be the natural interpreters.” Ricardo began to pray about where he could be educated to develop a training program for interpreters and for minority leaders, especially Hispanic church leaders.

God led him to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS). “When I first visited Southeastern,” Ricardo narrated, “I looked up and saw the banner ‘Every classroom, a Great Commission classroom.’ I walked a little further and saw ‘Equipping students to serve the Church and fulfill the Great Commission.’ It was love at first sight.” SEBTS challenged Ricardo to surrender his life further to Great Commission ministry. “Southeastern did not meet my expectations for a theological classroom. It rewrote my expectations for a theological classroom,” Ricardo recalled. “They taught me to be in love with God’s word and summon people to my loves.”

Ricardo has a passion for inviting people to love God’s word because God dramatically reordered his loves as a young businessman. Growing up in a devout Catholic family in the Dominican Republic, Ricardo became disenchanted by traditional Catholicism and disheartened by his feelings of spiritual emptiness. “When I was nineteen, I began my quest to fill the void in my heart that the Catholic church could not supply,” Ricardo recounted. Sampling Buddhism, Hinduism, shamanism, acupuncture, New Age metaphysics, and Dianetics, Ricardo tried whatever promised lasting peace.

Ricardo first truly encountered the transforming gospel of Christ in an unlikely messenger. Ricardo remembers his trips to collect payment from a frequent customer, Gerardo, an older Christian businessman in town: “Gerardo believed he had a duty as a Christian businessman to spread the gospel. And so, every time I went to collect, he would give me a thirty-minute Bible talk.” These Bible talks continued for months, and as their friendship grew, Gerardo would visit Ricardo and his wife, Evelyn, in their home every Tuesday.

Through Gerardo’s testimony, friendship, and business, God converted Ricardo and Evelyn in their living room during one of Gerardo’s Tuesday visits. “Having tried other paths to peace, I knew I had nothing to look for elsewhere,” Ricardo narrated. “My heart had a hole the size of God in the shape of the cross, and it was not until he came in and called for my death that I experienced peace — the peace of Christ.”

Ricardo, Evelyn, and their discipler, Gerardo

Gerardo became Ricardo’s model of godly entrepreneurship and intentional discipleship. “Gerardo was the one who took me to all my creditors and met with us; he cut my credit cards himself,” Ricardo recalled. “He was my discipler — my Paul — and I his Timothy.” Like Gerardo, Ricardo and Evelyn started Bible studies for their company and persevered even when officials antagonized them. Through their marketplace ministry, God drew employees, customers, and investors to faith in Christ.

I had avoided the thought of being a pastor, but the Lord answered all my questions that day. The only thing I could do was cry in surrender.

Once Ricardo came to Southeastern, God reignited his passion for equipping the Church for Great Commission ministry. “I remember being asked to read Scripture in Spanish for chapel one fall,” Ricardo narrated. “The Lord sat me on the front row, and I listened to the preacher address the call to the office of overseer in 1 Timothy 3. I had avoided the thought of being a pastor, but the Lord answered all my questions that day. The only thing I could do was cry in surrender.” Responding to this moment of conviction and calling, Ricardo pursued a leadership role in the Hispanic ministry of their local church, Richland Creek Community Church in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Ricardo has now served for five years in Richland Creek's Hispanic ministry and for the last three years as the Hispanic Ministry Director. “God gave me a fire in my heart to reach my culture, which is healing from so many spiritual diseases,” Ricardo shared. “The prosperity gospel, animistic Catholicism, and works-based religion have long troubled many in the Hispanic community. My desire is to biblically disciple my brothers and sisters out from under these influences.” Ricardo continues to witness God fulfill these desires through Ricardo’s development of discipleship curriculum and ministry among Hispanic believers and church leaders.

Ricardo and family: son, Samuel; wife, Evelyn; Ricardo; and daughter, Abigail

Ricardo centers his discipleship on intentional relationships that train others to read the Bible for intimacy with Christ. “Lasting faith consists of pursuing intimacy with Christ,” Ricardo emphasized. “That is what gives us the capacity to not give up.” This Christ-centered focus on Bible-based relationships has been a constant joy. “The opportunity of making disciples that are making disciples is awesome,” Ricardo marveled. “One of my disciples is now leading Bible study groups with people in Peru. He’s just doing the same thing I did with him: handwriting the book of Ephesians and seeking to understand it verse by verse.”

As an overflow of his passion for training Hispanic pastors, Ricardo devoted his EdD dissertation at SEBTS to integrating discipleship and technology in Hispanic churches. “I’m writing on how Hispanic pastors use technology to develop community and disciple people in their local churches,” Ricardo explained. “I desire to design curricula for interpreters and for local church leaders to grow in the knowledge of grace and to outfit and train local churches to receive biblical doctrine.” “How aware is the American Church of the urgency and need of the gospel in Spanish for the people in their communities?” asked Ricardo. In the last decade, Hispanic population growth has accounted for more than half of the overall population growth in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census, the Hispanic population was 62.1 million in 2020, up 23 percent since 2010, while the non-Hispanic population was only up 4.3 percent during the same ten-year period.

“This means that first-generation immigrants need to be discipled in their mother tongue,” Ricardo observed. “Churches cannot become a language institute that requires immigrants and minorities to adopt majority culture and language to hear the gospel and grow in their faith.” Engaging Hispanics with the gospel should not mean that only Hispanics who know English can benefit from American church ministries. At the same time, “the solution is not to create some sort of separate entity of Hispanic ministry 'over there,'” Ricardo noted. “Instead, we should equip and train Hispanic leaders to not only serve in the Hispanic ministry but also in the main, active ministry of the Church.”

For Ricardo, the question is not whether to engage Hispanic subcultures in our communities, but rather “how much are we training the hearts of the Church to love subcultures?” Whether by learning the languages or customs of subcultures in the community or by training minority believers in positions of leadership within the Church, every church can participate. As Ricardo reminds the Church, “It is urgent for disciple-making churches to be willing to get uncomfortable in loving other cultures.”