Finding The Torch of United Methodist Hispanic Ministry in Texas and New Mexico

Abstract

ABSTRACT At their 1971 annual meeting, the Rio Grande Conference (RGC) celebrated the centennial anniversary of the ordination of the first native Spanish speaking Methodist minister—Alejo Hernandez. To commemorate the event, Rev. Alfredo Náñez, D.D., gave a series of lectures tracing the Methodist church’s work amongst Hispanics in Texas and New Mexico. He charged the annual conference to carry forward the torch that spiritual ancestors such as Hernandez have passed to them. This article takes up the torch Náñez claimed in 1971, following the history of the RGC through to its churches’ mergers with other annual conferences. Tracing this history via membership statistics from 1971 to the present, this article shows that torch has dimmed over the last 50 years, despite the hard work of Rio Grande Conference clergy and to the detriment of the United Methodist Church’s ministry in Texas and New Mexico.