A new face of pastors, religious workers

Alberto Domingos is originally from Angola and speaks in Spanish with a slight Portuguese accent.

Mr. Domingos, the pastor for the Hispanic mission of Orchard Park Seventh-day Adventist Church, came to Tennessee to study missionary work eight years ago and was soon drawn to serve here.

“I felt there was a lot of work to be done here in America, and I joined an African-American church,” said Mr. Domingos, who speaks Spanish, Portuguese, English and Slovak.

When his Seventh-day Adventist Church reached out to the Hispanic community two years ago, Mr. Domingos was transferred to a Spanish-speaking congregation. He now preaches every Saturday to a small congregation at the St. Andrews Center.

Mr. Domingos is an example of how the changing demographics of the region are reflected in the face of preachers, pastors and other religious workers serving in the area.

It was about 1998 when the Rev. Mike Feely of East Lake United Methodist Church started seeing local denominations bring in pastors from other countries.

In the mid-1990s, the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville also started requiring Spanish for all men going through seminary, at least so they could celebrate Mass with Hispanics, said the Rev. Pete Iorio, director of priestly life and ministry at the diocese.

“In recent years, the United States has had a smaller number of men interested in studying for the priesthood and, for a variety of reasons, men from other countries have been interested in being missionaries to serve the immigrant populations here in the United States and the church in general,” he said.

Mr. Iorio estimates that about 15 percent of the Catholic priests in East Tennessee were born abroad.

Mr. Feely says there are between 30 and 40 international pastors serving in the region for several denominations, not including Catholic priests. Dr. David Myers, director of missions for the Hamilton County Baptist Association, said there are four foreign-born Baptist pastors serving in Hamilton County: two from Ecuador, one from Korea and the other from the Philippines.

Some come with religious visas, others are immigrants — both legal and illegal — who live in the area and see the need of ministering to a particular community, local church leaders said.

Nonimmigrant religious workers are allowed to stay in the United States for a maximum of five years. Before applying for a new nonimmigrant R-1 visa, an applicant must have lived outside the United States for at least one year.

Jaime Betancourt, the Hispanic pastor at Red Bank Baptist Church, arrived in Chattanooga in 1999. Since then, his congregation has grown from 25 to 125 members, primarily from Latin America.

“This was a church that had a necessity,” said Mr. Betancourt, a native of Ecuador. “The previous pastor had died three years ago, and they hadn’t been able to fill the position.”

Mr. Domingos and Mr. Iorio say international pastors and priests are needed to meet the demands of the community.

“People who proclaim the Gospel and minister to the faithful need to make the good news of Jesus Christ relatable, relevant to the people that come from a specific culture, background, language so that it can resonate and grow within them,” said Mr. Iorio.