Called at 22
I never planned to be a pastor. I grew up watching my father lead City Wide Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and I assumed that was his calling, not mine. Then, at 22, my father passed away. The grief was immediate and overwhelming. So was the responsibility that followed.
At 22 years old, I stepped into the pulpit as Senior Pastor of a congregation that had grown thin under the weight of transition. Twenty-five people remained. I remember standing before them on my first Sunday thinking that every one of those faces represented a family, a story, a reason to stay faithful. That morning shaped everything that followed.
What looked like an ending was the beginning of the most defining season of my life. I did not choose this assignment so much as I received it. And receiving it changed me in ways I could not have anticipated.
Growing the Church
The early years were a school I did not enroll in. I had to learn leadership, pastoral care, preaching, administration, and team building all at once, often by failing and trying again. What I lacked in experience I tried to make up for in hunger. I prayed. I studied. I stayed close to older pastors who were willing to speak honestly into my life.
Slowly, steadily, the church grew. Five became fifty. Fifty became two hundred. We outgrew our first building and moved into a larger facility better suited to the community we were trying to reach. Along the way, we made a significant decision that would define our identity: City Wide Church would become a fully bilingual congregation, ministering in both English and Spanish with equal intentionality.
That choice was not just practical. It was theological. Bridgeport is a city of immigrants, of working families, of people who deserve to encounter God in the language of their hearts. Building a bilingual church meant building two cultures under one roof and finding the unity beneath the difference. It was hard and it was holy.
Today City Wide Church worships with more than 900 people each week. The number matters less to me than the stories behind it. Marriages restored. Addictions broken. Young men and women finding their calling. That is what keeps me going.
The Seminary Journey
Even as the church grew, I knew I needed to keep growing. Ministry can expand faster than the person leading it, and that gap always catches up with you. I enrolled at Pentecostal Theological Seminary and earned my Master of Arts in Church Ministry with a focus on Leadership and Discipleship.
Seminary gave me language for things I had already been doing intuitively and, more importantly, it corrected things I had been doing wrong. Studying church history, biblical theology, and pastoral ethics alongside peers from different backgrounds stretched my thinking in ways that still shape how I preach and lead.
I am grateful to have received the Pentecostal Ministry Award from Pentecostal Theological Seminary. That recognition means more to me as an acknowledgment of a community than as a personal achievement. Everything I have done, I have done with people around me who believed when I did not.
BGEA and Citywide Ministry
Several years ago I had the privilege of joining the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as a Regional Mobilizer. That role took everything I had learned about local church ministry and multiplied it across a region. My assignment was to equip pastors and churches to prioritize evangelism, not as a seasonal program but as a year-round culture.
One of the most meaningful initiatives I helped lead was 10 Days of Prayer, a city-wide effort to gather believers across denominational lines for unified intercession. When churches that rarely spoke to each other filled the same room and prayed with one voice, something shifted in the spiritual atmosphere of the city. I believe prayer is not preparation for ministry. Prayer is the ministry.
The Park City Initiative brought that same conviction into direct outreach. We mobilized volunteers across multiple congregations to serve their city together, and we watched God do what no single church could have done alone. Those seasons reminded me that the Kingdom is bigger than any one congregation and pastors who collaborate accomplish far more than those who compete.
Family and Heritage
My wife Yesenia is my closest partner in everything. She has led worship, raised our children, counseled women in the church, and held me together on the hardest days. We have four children who are growing up in the middle of this mission, watching their parents try to be faithful to what God has put in their hands. I hope they see more than a busy father. I hope they see a man who loves Jesus and loves people.
I carry my Puerto Rican heritage as a gift. The culture I grew up in taught me warmth, loyalty, resilience, and a theology that believes God is present and active. The Pentecostal tradition I was raised in taught me to expect the Holy Spirit to show up, not just in church history books but in the room where you are standing.
That heritage shapes our bilingual mission. It is not enough to offer translation. We want every person in our building to feel fully seen, fully welcomed, and fully equipped to grow. That means Spanish-speaking families get as much investment as English-speaking families. Same vision. Same standard. Two languages.
Theological Convictions
I stand in the Wesleyan Pentecostal stream. That means I believe in the new birth, entire sanctification, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the continuing gifts of the Spirit for today. It means I preach a God who heals, delivers, and fills people with power for witness and service.
I often say that doctrine determines direction. What you believe about God determines how you lead a church. If you believe in a God who moves, you build a church that makes room for Him to move. If you believe in a God who speaks, you create cultures where people learn to listen. Theology is not academic. It is architectural. Your beliefs build the structure you live inside.
I have spent years studying revival history, not out of nostalgia but out of conviction. The patterns that preceded great movements of God are not accidental. They are reproducible. Prayer, unity, surrender, and bold proclamation of the gospel have preceded every genuine awakening on record. I believe we are not waiting for God to move. He is waiting for His people to get ready.
That conviction drives everything I do, whether I am in the pulpit, in a consulting session with a pastor, on a platform at a conference, or around the dinner table with my family. I want to spend my one life helping the church be what Jesus meant it to be.