Date: December 12, 2025
Today is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I’ve been blessed to have been in ministry for decades with Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Chicanes. My spiritual life and practices have been enlarged by their spiritualities and theologies. They were faithful Roman Catholics and Episcopalians who welcomed me and taught me how to serve them well. During this Advent season I am missing the practices of prayer, song, pilgrimage, and fellowship that punctuated this time for me for over 20 years: Las Mañanitas, Las Posadas, los villancicos, los tamales, el champurrado, y la piñata. What I learned and loved has influenced my priesthood, my teaching, and my scholarship.
While on sabbatical I will be meeting, interviewing, and learning from leaders of different minoritized communities in complex urban contexts. Places where the history of the place is a contested story of colonization and waves of migration. I want to learn from these leaders how their cultures and the histories of their cities influence and inform their ministries, especially in predominantly white/Eurocentric denominations. As my project progresses, I will look for themes that can inform the way we all do ministry in our different cultural contexts, noting their similarities and differences to popular leadership and organizational theories utilized by churches. I know that in this time of rapid change and challenging ministry contexts all church leaders can learn a great deal from these leaders’ experience, spirituality, and practices.
I am prayerful and grateful for the time and wisdom that they will share with me and eventually with a wider audience through my writing. Thank you to the Native Hawaiians and other Episcopalians in Oahu, HI, working on leadership formation for the next generations; to the African Americans and Native Americans in Minneapolis, MN, who have forged deep relationships to work on reparations together and ecumenically; to the Episcopal and community leaders in Miami, FL, Houston, TX, Philadelphia, PA, who will teach me about the challenges of serving the various Caribbean communities, many different language groups (most of any city); and African Diasporic communities in their respective cities. I won’t get to do all this research in one semester, but I will get a good start and I am excited.
I look forward to sharing what I am learning with you as I know it will impact the way I serve among you as scholar, teacher, prophet, and priest.
The Rev. Altagracia Perez-Bullard, PhD
Associate Professor of Practical Theology and
Associate Dean of Multicultural Ministries
Virginia Theological Seminary