Leadership and Youth Development in Local Congregations

podcastOPTalks
Written By Open Plaza

Dr. Elizabeth Tamez Méndez, Dr. Matilde Moros, and Dr. Daniel Ramírez share their testimonios

Photo: Ian Schneider

Photo: Ian Schneider

 
 

Leadership development is a life-long process, and churches have proved to be the perfect training ground for young people to develop leadership skills. In this Open Plaza podcast, three scholars --Dr. Daniel Ramirez, Dr. Mati Moros, and Dr. Elizabeth Tamez -- share their testimonios and explore what growing up in the church has meant to them. They discuss their early opportunities to exercise leadership (hands-on experiences/agency) and how this has impacted their leadership work now as adults and even influenced their commitment to theology/church.

“This episode brought me back to my teen years growing up in my local church and the important role my church community played in developing my faith as well as my leadership capacities. Every week, we would gather, whether in a church home or church basement, to have conversations about faith and our role within the church and community. At these gatherings, we asked questions about scripture and faith while also being encouraged by our church mentors to develop our talents and gifts as leaders of the church.”

—Suzette Aloyo, HTI Office Coordinator (Journeys Newsletter, February 2020)

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Elizabeth Tamez Méndez

Dr. Elizabeth Tamez Méndez is Founder and Executive Director of New Gereration3, an international organization dedicated to training leaders, conducting research, and providing consulting services. She is a specialist in multicultural youth development and strategic planning, has 25 years of diverse ministerial experience, is ordained in the Baptist church, and holds a PhD in Leadership. Part of her work includes teaching youth development courses at various universities and seminaries, fulfilling speaking commitments, and publishing in articles, blogs, and edited books. She was awarded Emory University's "Nuestra Herencia Honorary Recognition" award for paving the way in the work with the Hispanic/Latinx community and the church. Originally from Mexico, she is passionate about developing young leaders! Contact her at elizabeth.tamez@ng3web.org.

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Matilde Moros

Dr. Matilde Moros is Assistant Professor of Gender Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a theological social ethicist working in the field of gender, sexuality and women's studies. The ethics of resistance and subversion of hegemonic world-views and narratives of power lead her teaching and learning toward a counter-narrative method of decolonial, transnational feminist ethics. Feminist social ethics must respond to sexual and gender violence and the multiple intersections of which race and its various social constructions has led to the exclusion from centers of power of many peoples, including Latin-American and Latinx communities. Dr. Moros conducts research on the communal and historical effects of organized resistance to gendered and sexual violence has led her to an approach to liberation ethics in which recovery of resistance methods has become the primary focus.

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Daniel Ramírez

Dr. Daniel Ramírez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion, School of Arts and Humanities, Claremont Graduate University. He received his BA in Political Science at Yale College before going on to receive his MA and PhD from Duke University in American Religious History. His research interests lie primarily in American religious history and Latinx American religious history both within and outside the United States. Ramírez has taught a vast range of courses within these broad fields, including American Evangelicalisms and Fundamentalisms; Religion, Migration, and Transnationalism; History of the Hispanic Heterodox: Latina/o Religious History; Religious Pathways of the Borderlands; and Film and Religious History, among others. During Ramírez’s career, he has published numerous book chapters and articles, most often on Latin American religious history, traditions, and challenges. His book, Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century (UNC Press, 2015), begins in Los Angeles in 1906 with the eruption of the Azusa Street Revival and follows the trajectory of the Pentecostal phenomenon in the United States and Mexico throughout the century.

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Hermeneutics in the Latinx Context, Episodes 1-3
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Millennial Latinxs Reconnect with Ancestral Wisdom