Caminando Juntos: A Panel on Pastoral Wellbeing, Support, and Sustainability

Pastors of H/L communities face great challenges every day, dealing with multiple issues and wearing multiple hats. In addition to the expectations associated with wearing “multiple hats,” the pastoral minister serving H/L communities in the U.S. embraces and celebrates all that the community is including its challenges of a lack of resources, life and trauma, loneliness, divided families, job and health care insecurity, language limitations, lack of access to higher education, among others. Moreover, the same pastoral individual may themselves face these challenges in his or her experience as a community member. All these social factors lead to several emergency situations that cause the pastor to be continually exposed to compassion fatigue.

Learning objetives:

1. Understand the background that highlights the need for this program.
2. Identify the components of the Caminando Juntos program.
3. Address the challenges faced by spiritual leaders serving H/L communities.
4. Gain insights into the lessons learned throughout the program.

This event will be conducted in English, with simultaneous interpretation available in Spanish.

GUEST SPEAKERS:

Rev. Aracelis Vázquez

Rev. Aracelis Vázquez Haye is an ordained American Baptist minister, educator, certified transformational life coach, and grief educator with a passion for cultivating healthy leaders and thriving communities. She currently serves as Director of Caminando Juntos at Urban Strategies, where she supports the holistic well-being and sustainability of H/L a pastors and ministry leaders. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, Aracelis brings more than two decades of experience in ministry, higher education, community engagement, and leadership formation. As a preacher and speaker, she is passionate about creating spaces where faith, healing, belonging, and purpose intersect, empowering others to lead and live from a place of wholeness.

Dr. Leo Ayala

Leo Ayala was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Throughout his journey, he has served as a missionary in Spain and as a pastor for more than twenty years, accompanying families, children, and congregations, eventually serving as a senior pastor in San Juan.

Several years ago, a profound experience of physical, emotional, and spiritual burnout transformed his life and his understanding of ministry. Since then, he has embarked on a journey of recovery, healing, and formation that has led him to discover the value of living with healthier rhythms and cultivating a more embodied spirituality.

As part of this journey, he completed four years of formation at the Transforming Center in Chicago and earned a Doctor of Ministry from Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, where his research explored how spiritual practices can sustain us through seasons of disorientation and the dark night of the soul.

Today, he dedicates much of his ministry to accompanying pastors and Christian leaders in spiritual formation, discernment, and holistic well-being. He serves as the Formation Pastor for the Caminando Juntos program, where he walks alongside men and women in ministry who desire to cultivate healthier lives, become more attentive to the presence of God, and live more faithfully into their calling.

Dr. Eric Hernández

Eric A. Hernández López is a husband, father, Methodist pastor, psychologist, and educator. His life and vocation have been shaped by a desire to accompany people through their journeys of growth, faith, discernment, and transformation. He holds a Doctorate in Church Leadership, a Master of Divinity, and a Master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, and is currently pursuing a certification in spiritual accompaniment.

After more than twenty years of pastoral ministry, he continues to discover new ways of integrating spirituality, psychology, teaching, and accompaniment. He is especially interested in a spirituality that creates space for vulnerability, rest, authenticity, and care for one’s inner life. His own journey has taught him to value not only what a person does, but also who they are becoming.

His family holds a central place in his life. He enjoys reading, writing, teaching, singing, playing the piano, traveling, walking in nature, spending time with friends, and contemplating the sea. He continues learning to recognize the presence of God not only in ministry and work, but also in rest, relationships, beauty, laughter, and the simple moments of life.