LAKE PLACID — Less than two weeks after delegates to the Oct. 5 special session of the Florida Annual Conference approved allocating $125,000 of the conference’s 2001 budget to the Comprehensive Plan for Hispanic Ministry, a team of 15 leaders met here Oct. 14 to begin formally implementing the plan in the conference.

One of the group’s first steps is restructuring the conference’s Hispanic leadership.

For 25 years, much of the conference’s Hispanic ministry was led by the Florida Conference Hispanic Committee on Ministries, which is part of the Conference Council on Ministries’ (CCOM) Missions ministry, according to the Rev. William Jones, a retired pastor and coordinator of the conference’s Comprehensive Plan. That committee, however, does not fit within the structure of the plan, so it is being reorganized and renamed the Hispanic Assembly.

"The Hispanic Assembly is the old Hispanic committee, but with a new name and a new sense of responsibility," Jones said. "So many good things were happening in the old team, we decided to keep it, but…more like a group to receive reports and provide input."

The Comprehensive Plan calls for a Hispanic Ministry Team that is a part of the CCOM. That team will consist of the Hispanic Assembly’s eight-member executive committee and representatives from the conference’s 14 districts.

Jones said part of the $125,000 would be used to fund a salary for a full-time conference coordinator for the team. He said a search committee is forming to find a qualified person.

The Comprehensive Plan for Hispanic Ministry is designed to reach Hispanic and non-Hispanic people through faith communities, establish community ministries and engage in congregational ministries, according to the description of the plan passed at the Dare to Share Jesus 2000 Florida Annual Conference Event May 29-June 2. The plan provides training for Hispanic and non-Hispanic lay missioners and pastor-mentors on working together in those ministries.

The Hispanic Committee has been unofficially working on aspects of the plan for several years. The leadership-training component has been in place "unofficially and with volunteer teachers," Jones said, but the committee is now formalizing it as the Hispanic Institute.

"We do have a mobile faculty…to train lay missioners to train and serve," he said. "Our meeting was a brainstorming session on guidelines to formalize the institute. I don’t anticipate it to be another theological seminary, but the philosophy is to provide contextualized education and offering workshops in different areas."

The Rev. Magali Borbon, pastor of Lakeview Hispanic United Methodist Church in Miami and president of the Hispanic Committee on Ministries, said the Institute is a major part of the comprehensive plan and that it needs to begin operating during the first two months of 2001.

Asbury Theological Seminary in Orlando and South Florida Community for Theological Studies have agreed to work with the Hispanic Ministry Team in training clergy and laity.

Borbon said she is "very happy" about the work being done in the Florida Conference with the comprehensive plan. "Our conference is one of the most advanced in the country in its work with Hispanic ministries," she said.