Latino Innovation Lab creates room to rethink how ministry takes shape
VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS 08/30/2026)—Pastor Christian Estrada Cora does not believe the church needs a new mission.
“The mission established by Christ is and always will remain the same,” said the associate youth pastor at Gethsemane Baptist Church in San Juan, Puerto Rico. What can change, he believes, is how the church carries out that mission among people whose lives and circumstances differ from those of previous generations.
“We must adapt our strategies, activities, and approaches to the current realities and conditions of our culture and communities,” Estrada Cora said.
That distinction—between what the church is called to do and how it goes about doing it—is central to many questions explored through American Baptist Home Mission Societies’ (ABHMS) new Latino Innovation Lab.
The first lab cohort consists of eight ministry leaders who are developing projects shaped by the communities they serve. Some face similar ministry challenges but have distinct projects, while others pursue projects arising from needs more specific to their particular setting. The lab gives these innovators room to develop their ideas, test them in practice, and learn from what follows.
Participating innovators gather at ABHMS’ Leadership and Mission Building for the first in-person meeting of the Latino Innovation Lab, part of the ABHMS Creciendo Juntos initiative.
The Latino Innovation Lab is part of Creciendo Juntos (Growing Together), a broader ABHMS initiative grounded in research with Latino leaders across the United States and Puerto Rico. Funded by an planning grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., the research included in-person gatherings, virtual focus groups, and surveys and questionnaires through which clergy, lay leaders, and emerging Latino voices shared their experiences and priorities.
What ABHMS learned helped shape Creciendo Juntos, which Lilly Endowment is supporting with a five-year, $1.5 million grant. The initiative combines efforts to strengthen ABHMS’ capacity to serve Latino constituencies with programs designed for Latino leaders and congregations.
The Latino Innovation Lab is one such program, according to Creciendo Juntos Program Director Rev. Abner Cotto-Bonilla, who also serves as the national coordinator for Latino Ministries at ABHMS. The lab is founded on two fundamental premises: Latino ministry leaders know their communities and the people they serve, and they need space to experiment to navigate change.
“The people closest to their communities understand the challenges they face,” Cotto-Bonilla explained. “The lab isn’t about ABHMS coming in with ready-made solutions.” As envisioned, it is structured around design thinking to help ministry practitioners work through complex problems by providing a framework for developing ideas, testing them in their own settings, and learning what works—and what may need to change.
The eight innovators gathered in early July at ABHMS’ Leadership and Mission Building in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, for the cohort’s first in-person gathering. They arrived with projects rooted in their own ministry settings and spent three days together developing those ideas alongside mentors and one another.
The meeting brought several kinds of expertise to the innovators’ work. Mentors were available to offer guidance on practical and pastoral theology, discernment and planning, fundraising and entrepreneurship, and administration and networking. Mentoring and coaching will also continue as participants develop their projects, with seed funding available to help move their ideas into practice.
The projects brought to King of Prussia reveal both common ground and considerable range. Several innovators are grappling with questions surrounding emerging generations, although the responses they envision differ markedly. Others are working from needs more particular to their own ministry settings.
An enduring mission, changing circumstances
For Estrada Cora, the setting is youth ministry in Puerto Rico. His project is developing a leadership and discipleship model for preteens, teenagers, and young adults in Baptist churches on the island. They will receive training and mentoring, along with opportunities to exercise leadership through camps, virtual gatherings, and other ministry experiences. The project ultimately aims to work with 30 congregations.
In asking how ministry should respond to a rising generation, Estrada Cora is not alone among innovators. Pastor Wilfredo Mercado, chaplain at Colegio Bautista de Caguas and associate pastor for emerging generations at Las Cruces Baptist Church, asserts, “The way we share the gospel must adapt to the realities of each new generation.” His project, THE LAB, addresses the question through digital media, using contemporary communication tools to reach young people where they already spend much of their time.
Mercado has described THE LAB as emerging from the recognition that young people consume information, build relationships, and form their identities in digital environments. He envisions a multimedia studio where students can produce videos, podcasts, interviews, and other digital content focused on Christian identity and spiritual formation.
More than 3,000 miles from Puerto Rico, Dr. Elias Gabriel is approaching the challenges of generational change in a different way. The associate pastor of First Baptist Church of South Gate in California is developing a leadership pathway for second- and third-generation Latino believers. His project addresses the gap between leadership potential and leadership preparation, with particular attention to the multicultural and bilingual realities of emerging Latino leaders.
The three projects differ substantially: Estrada Cora distinguishes between mission and method. Mercado looks to the digital environments where young people already form relationships and identities. Gabriel asks how churches can prepare emerging leaders whose cultural experiences may differ from those of earlier generations. Yet they share a common thread: how to pass on faith and prepare leaders as the cultural context for that work evolves.
Questions surrounding emerging generations connect several of the projects. Elsewhere in the cohort, different ministry concerns are prompting other forms of experimentation.
“We must ask what questions the community needs answered and what needs must be addressed for us to remain relevant,” said Rev. Dr. Daniel Rivera Rosado, an ordained minister in Puerto Rico. True to his background as an educator, he sees his challenge as transforming how the church approaches the educational mission for ministry professionals and religious leaders. His project, Missio Paideia, would accomplish this through workshops, retreats, mentoring, and spiritual guidance on topics including vocational discernment, educational and ministerial leadership, and the design of bilingual educational experiences.
Connections beyond the projects
For Pastora Mariela Rodríguez of First Baptist Church of Río Piedras in Puerto Rico, the lab provides essential information and mentorship as she develops her project, which aims to equip community members—including immigrants, women, and young people—with skills that could lead to small businesses and greater economic self-sufficiency. “But more importantly, the lab allows us to form relationships and connections that strengthen us as we create projects to bless our communities,” she said.
In Massachusetts, Rev. Dr. Mar Imsong, executive director of Massachusetts Baptist Multicultural Ministries and the ACE Center for New Americans, works with Latino congregations grappling with questions about worship space, recognition of pastoral ordination, and connection to American Baptist denominational life. His project, the Shared Space, Shared Mission Initiative, uses a partnership between New Life in Jesus Christ Church and First Baptist Church of Arlington as a pilot for covenant-based partnerships centered on shared ministry. For Imsong, cultivating partnerships is central to the work.
“The most important thing for me is developing networks and partnerships so we can learn and continue growing together,” Imsong said.
Although the innovator’s projects may be rooted in different communities, the learning can extend beyond them. Through relationships formed in the lab, an idea or experience from one ministry setting may inform the work of another.
Learning from what happens next
Participants entered the lab with proposals, and much work remains to bridge the gap between the idea and a fully functioning project. For these innovators, the lab will continue through mentoring and coaching, implementation, and consultant-assisted evaluation. Some projects may emerge from the lab largely as their creators envisioned them; others may be reshaped considerably by the process.
Creciendo Juntos also calls for lessons and strategies emerging from the Innovation Lab to be shared more broadly. “We want these projects to make a difference where they begin, but we also want to learn from them,” said Cotto-Bonilla. “An idea developed in Puerto Rico may raise a question that is useful to a congregation in Massachusetts, even if the answer looks different there. The goal isn’t to duplicate programs. It’s to learn from what leaders discover as they do the work.”
Alondra David Pérez Menéndez of Baptist Church of the Redeemer in Puerto Rico entered the Latino Innovation Lab with a project focused on agriculture and missions. She hopes her experience will bring greater clarity to her journey and help others understand what she believes God has placed in her life. She describes the lab as providing tools “to help turn the dream God has placed in our hearts into a reality.”
The Latino Innovation Lab is a continuing process of discovery, designed to give ministry leaders room to experiment and achieve outcomes that better serve communities whose circumstances continue to change.
Estrada Cora’s distinction offers a fitting frame for that work. The church’s mission remains. Determining how best to move it forward requires ongoing discernment.
About ABHMS
American Baptist Home Mission Societies partners with American Baptists to promote Christian faith, cultivate Christ-centered leaders and disciples, and bring healing and transformation to communities across the United States and Puerto Rico.