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good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sean Watkins. I serve as Associate Dean of Lifelong Learning here at Austin Seminary, and welcome to Cultivating Ideas, our webinar series offered here at Austin Seminary that features our best and brightest of the ideas. and scholarship of our faculty.

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And we are very excited to have Reverend, very soon to be Dr. Patricia Bonilla speaking with us today. The Reverend Patricia Bonilla has served in several roles in Hispanic Youth Leadership Academy and is currently the National Program Director. A native of Illinois, Reverend Bonilla is an ordained United Methodist deacon.

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She has served churches throughout Illinois since 2005. primarily in the area of Christian education and youth and family ministries. She has served as the chair of Hispanic or Latinx Ministries Committee of the Northern Illinois Conference of the UMC since 2019. She is finishing her PhD as we speak.

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She is concluding the last chapter of her dissertation, so the next time that she speaks in Cultivating Ideas, she will be Reverend Dr. Patricia Bonilla. She is completing her PhD in Christian Education and Congregational Studies from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. Her dissertation is on Anti-Colonial Latina Feminist Praxis Toward A Decolonial Reframework of Christian Religious Education with 4 Latinx Youth, a case study of Hispanic Youth Leadership Academy.

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Today, we have the distinct honor of hearing her talk about Latinas in ministerial leadership and theological education. changing the landscape. Super excited to be able to hear someone who both brings a theological perspective, but then also someone that has boots on the ground. And so very excited to hear from her, Reverend Bonilla, by all means.

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Take it away. Thank you so much for that introduction. Wow. I first want to start with maybe introductions.

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I mean, I know Sean, I know Dr. Carruthers, I know, but I don't know the other folks on the call. And if you're able to just kind of speak into the call and give your name, I would appreciate that. So we know who's on the call.

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Is that possible? We've got Lindsay still connecting her audio and then I think the other person may be driving because she just turned her screen off. Okay. Well, I'll say a little bit about how I want to do this conversation or have this conversation.

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I want to start with some like opening remarks and just kind of like frame the questions that I bring and really For me, I'm thinking about a decolonial stance for reframing religious education and how that is changing the landscape of how we do our theological work and how we do our ministries. And so I'll talk a little bit about that, set the framework. And then I have three examples of women and leadership that I want to highlight.

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And so I'll share a PowerPoint. And then after that, we can open it up for a conversation, just thoughts and learnings as I share. So I'll go ahead and and ask the question really that frames this presentation is, so why a decolonial stance for religious education?

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And I argue that too much of modern Christian theology and practice is shaped by a narrow definition of religion framed within a Eurocentric epistemology. So Eurocentrism advances an exclusionary and hierarchical framework that positions Europe and its epistemologies or ways of knowing and perceiving the world as universal and objective truths, which contributes to the narrowing of boundaries set for defining what religion is, and specifically for defining Christian religious faith formation and practice. Additionally, discourses of scientific discovery advanced during the Enlightenment period proposed

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developmental theories that connected religious adherence to human development and thus relegating embodied religious practices to the category of primitive religions, and therefore an understanding of those being lower in the developmental stage. And these then were in opposition to Euro-descended religions and practices that were tied to the written word and more aesthetically pious practices. So decolonial theorists point to the anti-colonial struggles and movements of resistance in the Global South as evidence of the incomplete or thwarted domination of Eurocentrism and Christian hegemony over the colonial world.

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Particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, the decolonial turn has produced an extensive diversity of literature, highlighting the collaborative efforts of intellectuals and activists and their anti-colonial struggles. So decolonial theorists reject the idea that Eurocentrism and its imperialist projects mainly colonialism and racial capitalism, are the only legitimate social, economic, political, religious, and epistemological systems operable in the world today. In a recent article referring to ongoing forms of emergent learnings, unlearnings, and relearnings in resistance,

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political solidarity, alliance, fissures, and struggles against colonialities that are all pervasive. Catherine Walsh asks questions that challenge my own perspective and my own positioning as a political, sorry, as a practical theologian and religious educator. And she asks this question that has really stuck with me. What does it mean to struggle against?

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And Possibly more crucially, she asks, how do we create and construct? How do we plant and cultivate possibilities of a decolonial 4, especially in these present times? So asking at the same time about the seeds, the sense, the horizon, the hopes, the thoughts, the dreams, and about the concrete practices,

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So what does it look like to do ministry or religious education or theological reflection from the perspective of a decolonial 4? She continues, Catherine Walsh explains that decoloniality is not the absence or the overcoming of coloniality. Rather for her, as with other scholars associated with the modernity coloniality project, The term decoloniality references and marks the postures, positions, horizons, projects, and practices of being, of thinking, of sensing, and of doing that resist and re-exist, that transgress and interrupt the colonial matrix of power, and that resurge and insurge from the borders

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and margins. And what she refers to today as the fissures and cracks. This is where building possibilities of what we have come to understand as a decolonial otherwise emerge. So again,

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Catherine Walsh explains that a turn towards a decolonial 4 then must push for situated practice and praxis from concrete subjectivities and locations of resistance. And so following Walsh's logic of a decolonial 4, I highlight Latinas in ministerial leadership and theological education, and their concrete work from a perspective of a decolonial four, as they lead from their situated locations at the margins and with marginalized populations. The absence, I argue, of narratives that highlight the leadership and work of Latinas in ministry and education is a mechanism and a consequence

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of the continued legacy of colonial relations of power, including patriarchy. The evident lacuna of histories of non-white church leaders, especially women of color, reinforces colonial, racial, and gender hierarchies and maintains stereotypes of perceived incompetence and deficiency. And so retrieving and documenting histories, theories, theologies, and practices of Latinas in leadership is 1 important way to begin to piece together a more comprehensive narrative of Christianity in the United States in general, and of Latinas in religious leadership in particular. So specifically, I point to the leadership of Latinas in religious education, and I want to highlight the work of three women,

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Elizabeth Conde Fraser, Deborah Yunker, and Christian de la Rosa. So I'll begin with, let me see if I can share this. I'll share my PowerPoint. So I hope you can see this.

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I'll begin with Reverend Dr. Elizabeth Conde Fraser. who emphasizes the potential of religious education for generating hope. She argues that faith formation practices can facilitate a process of self.

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awareness and self-identity that lead to empowerment and transformation. And so she describes the process in the following way. Quote, To be self-defining requires agency. Agency is the capacity to exert power, to operate in the world with command to achieve an end, and I would say to even determine the end to be achieved.

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It's sovereignty over one's life. Agency is when we believe in ourselves and each other, end quote. So she points to the imperative of naming oneself and to insert oneself in the historical processes that are still unfolding. According to Conde Fraser, pedagogy must impress in us an imperative of authentic caring, which she embodies in her work,

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in her work as Dean Esperanza College. So she's no longer the dean there, but did a lot of work there. And so she says that in her book, which is titled Listen to the Children, she writes about the dehumanizing experience of migration for Latin American communities. So many people are forced to migrate for a variety of reasons, she says.

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Parents make the difficult decision to leave their children behind and go in search of work in the US. And so she writes about how Christian education can be a form of re-humanizing, right, the experience, and argues that faith communities must think critically about how they will respond to the needs of these families by centering dialogue and the difficult experiences that these families undergo. She argues that faith communities must think about how to help families when they must separate and also when the families are able to reunite.

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So there's a lot of trauma in these migration stories. and often we don't address it in the church, right? So these are very difficult conversations, she says, and the faith communities can offer spiritual support in those difficult times. Immigrant families face the difficulty of adjusting to a new society, navigating new social cultural settings, generational tension, language barriers, and many, many other obstacles.

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So the faith community can be in partnership and help families have agency and voice. Conde Frazier also writes about being in partnership with activist churches that demand change in their communities. So in an article entitled Participant Action Research, she highlights how religious education can be used to help communities discern what changes they want to see in their community and how to go about making those changes.

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So she highlights how to have agency and how to discern next steps together and how the religious education can be a partner in that process. The next person I want to highlight is Dr. Deborah Yunker. Dr.

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Yunker's work is an important addition to the conversation as she points to the involvement of children and adolescents trapped in the violence of armed conflicts across the globe. Yunker analyzes the multi-layered systems of oppression that lead to the cruelty of children, becoming victims as well as perpetrators in armed conflict. She also emphasizes the imperative that Latina theologians, as herself, must struggle against death-dealing systems in engaging with these discourses.

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So she follows Paulo Freire's liberating pedagogical praxis. and centers imagination and creativity as powerful tools in advocating for education as a practice of freedom. Junker reflects on the work of biblical scholar Osvaldo Vena, who writes about the theological significance of poems and drawings produced by children from Palestine, Israel, and Argentina. And so she quotes

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One of his reflections on this work, he says that like the prophet in the Judeo-Christian tradition, these children intrepidly declare how they see no justification for war, and they also announce their hope and dreams for a world of peace. In some ways, they share the same plight of the children in the Gospel of Mark, who experienced and the unsettled context of wartime, complicated by religion and cultural disputes. In Mark's perspective, Jesus' engagement with children displays not only his concern and identification with their socioeconomic and cultural vulnerability, but also seeks to reveal that the children as active participants of the kingdom of God.

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they must share with adults in the struggle to resist, or the struggle and resistance. Actually, Professor Osvaldo Vena started a band called Just A Dream, or Still A Dream, and he would do fundraising for an organization that worked specifically with Argentinian children in underprivileged communities and also worked with children in Palestine and Israel in the Palestine-Israel area to bring them together and do storytelling. And I've used some of his work in my own ministry with children and to think about like, how do we create bonds of solidarity between our own churches and our own

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church children's ministries to learn to be empathetic and to begin to dream of new possibilities for healing and resisting violence together. So I highlight Yunker's work as a reminder that lives are at stake when religious educators stay silent to the cruelties that affect marginalized and oppressed communities, especially the most vulnerable, which are children. And the last person I want to highlight is the work of Reverend Dr.

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Cristian de la Rosa. as a leading scholar in contextual theological education and faith formation. In her role as professor of Boston University School of Theology, she coordinates a program called the Hispanic Youth Leadership Academy. and provides a new framework for theological education and ministry leadership focused on the next generation of Latinx youth and young adult faith leaders.

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So the La Rosa defines the ministry of Haila as an epistemological retrieval effort modeled after what Paulo Freire outlined in his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a collaborative knowledge production process that facilitates a critical consciousness building effort or consientisacion, which is how Freyde referred to it, as well as a reclaiming of one's humanity in the process. So for her, the work of Haila is a faith formation initiative for Latinx youth, which was conceptualized almost 20 years ago. And it's really about accompanying young

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Latinx youth in their own claiming of their own voice, retrieving of their own stories, stepping into their own leadership, and helping them dream of possibilities for their future when often those dreams are truncated by discrimination and marginalization. So the issue, she says, HILA emerges as a response to the visible absence of Latinx representation in the leadership of particularly the United Methodist denomination, which is where the program began. And the issue was raised by Latina pastors, as well as some denominational leaders, because of the lack of intentional mentorship and leadership training for Latinx youth to be trained and supported into a pathway to ordained ministry.

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And so she talks about how those limited options thwart our possibilities for dreaming about and discerning our futures. I recall an instance where I was gathered with a group of students for the Hispanic Youth Leadership Academy, and we were at a national agency of our denomination, and we were talking about leadership, and one of the youth, high school student, asked, so what is the church doing to support and encourage Latinos into leadership, and the response. was, well, that is something that the Hispanic caucus needs to deal with.

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And the young man replied back, resisted that response and said, well, this is an issue of the whole church. It's not an issue of just the Hispanic caucus to deal with. And so it's a reframing of leadership formation for populations or communities that have often been relegated to the margins.

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So she argues that the history of Christian missions to the Americas and the Caribbean is inextricably intertwined with Europe's colonial project, the consequences of which continue to impact the lives of black and brown bodies in what Dr. De La Rosa calls the unfinished business of colonialism, which continues to be operative in our churches. And so she argues that racism and sexism are embedded in the institutional process of theological education and ministerial leadership formation, pointing specifically

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You know, in her scholarship, she points to the Valladolid debates. So back to, you know, conversations about slavery. And she argues that the Valladolid debates that discussed the humanity of indigenous populations and the transatlantic slave trade that questioned the humanity of enslaved enslaved persons in the United States are two traumatic events that illustrate the church's complicity in denying dignity to all human beings.

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So in light of these legacies, the La Rosa argues, those in ministry, as well as leaders in theological education, must fashion new methodologies and practices for the formation and training of religious leaders. As such, the La Rosa spotlights a companionment and mentorship as central educational practices where intergenerational, intercultural, and relational learning spaces are curated and where youth and young adults are respected, invited, and intentionally accompanied into leadership. So in the process, she says, leaders and participants find ways to recognize,

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points of reference that are vital for the framing and reframing of their own identities, knowledge, and practices. So I leave it there and I open it up for, conversation or questions as we continue to think about, what, how do we choose a decolonial 4? What does that look like in our own practices? Where do we create spaces for relearning?

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And often also spaces where we need to unlearn those colonial practices and legacies. I am going to say, as we do in the black church, Dr. Bonilla, thank you very much for a very helpful presentation. That was most insightful.

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Thank you so much for your wisdom and expertise there. I'll take a moment to pause and to engage with the folks that are participating with us, as always. If you have a question but are unable to verbally ask it, I ask you to go ahead and put that in the chat at this particular time, and we'll make sure we get access to those. If you're in a place where you can turn your camera on and verbally ask your question, I'd ask you to do both of those.

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As we are recording, we want to make sure that we both can see the person who is asking the questions as well as recording your audio. And as you get ready to generate those questions, I think my first one, Patricio, goes to you in terms of Yeah, we kind of see what's happening, I think, in the United States right now, the current presidential administration, their visceral allergy to all things related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our places of education and government. And so much like you, as a person of color whose research and scholarship centers around people of color, I loved your framework about examining colonial practices that have really shaped

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education and culture and the necessity of decolonizing practices or decolonial practices in our research and scholarship. What thoughts would you give to kind of this up-and-coming generation that sees our generation telling them this is of a necessity? In order for you to understand and navigate the world, this has to be a part of the lenses that you need. but to also see leadership also in this current timeframe viscerally rejecting that response.

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So it's not the 1800s or the turn of the 20th century where it was illegal. It's legal to talk about these things now by law, but it's culturally, it's been viscerally rejected. So what advice would you give to up and coming Latinas that have to live in that tension of two realities as all of us do? Yeah.

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So an interesting thing about one of the programs that I help coordinate is that it does actually operate like in the margins of the church because for a number of reasons. One is to create spaces that are in a sense our own so that we can have a safe space to have these conversations from our own perspectives. and continue to kind of struggle with the nuances of what that means, right? To be working within institutions that often do not validate our ways of practicing, our ways of knowing, our ways of even our spiritual understandings, right?

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And so, like, navigating and negotiating that tension of being in both the institutional church, but then also creating spaces where we can have these conversations and do the work that needs to be done of retrieving histories, of retelling our stories, and even of engaging in resistance and survival strategies that often need to happen outside of the purview of the institutional church, right? So I think that having, learning how to navigate those spaces and creating those alternative spaces for resistance.

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That makes perfect sense. I agree with you completely. Navigating those spaces, I think, for resistance is crucial. I've talked to a couple of the elders across the various diasporas, and all of them have almost unilaterally said that exact same thing, that the word for us right now is resistance, not retreat, accepting the fact that we're not going to make any forward progress.

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But what does it mean for us to resist in a way in which whenever the culture shifts or the climate changes again, we haven't lost the momentum and the progress that we've made so far. I think it's fascinating for, I think as you talk about your research and even in your response there, I think for all of us, I will not mention the dime frame in which we live and how old we all are, but the fact that we are in kind of that same proximity with each other. I think we've always been forward-looking in terms of how to help both understand our world and pass on information to the next generation.

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And it seems like Not to make it ages at all, but I think previous generations or older cultures, right? Older folks, we've had to lead in both directions. We're both leading down, leading across, but then also leading up as well too, or leading back to previous generations.

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And it's been one of the hiccups I think that we're experiencing right now. So just very grateful for that. One person put in the chat as well too. we're experiencing this type of norms at every level in their particular organization.

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She said, I find myself that in the lack of funding for Latino programs hinders our outreach and creating those spaces. So definitely economic disenfranchisement that's there without question. Yeah, and I think that highlights the need for cross-cultural solidarity, cross-cultural partnerships and collaborations, and just continuing to think about how, who are our partners, right?

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Outside of the traditional partners that we usually think about for church ministry, right? Where are other possibilities for partnerships? Yeah, absolutely, 100%, absolutely. Yeah.

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Are there other questions that folks want to be able to ask at this particular time? Yeah, Dr. Bonilla, first of all, thank you. Wonderful presentation.

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Very, very informative. I have a couple of questions. So the first one, I'm going back to the final person, Dela Rosa, that you referenced. And you talked about how she

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has a number of ideas theories about mentorship for youth and how certain things, how certain mechanisms can be set up, it sounded like, within the United Methodist Church to help youth. So the question I have is one, are you aware of what specific structures, I'm curious, I thought it was a really good approach. So what types of structures have been set up that you might be aware of And then what do you think of them?

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Do you think that these are relatively effective? Or do you have some ideas on what things could also be added to them to improve in order for the youth to be more accepted and trained for leadership in ministry, if I'm understanding your way? Yeah, so if we think, thank you for that. that question.

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If we think about youth events, right, and many of us have either planned them at some point or have participated in them, usually there's an event and the youth are invited, and then the event happens, and then they go home. And that's the end, right? They're invited to a moment of entertainment or information or whatever it might be. And so what Dr.

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De La Rosa talks about in terms of a companionment, a mentorship that is a companionment methodology is that not just in planning the event, but even deciding if we want to have an event, right? How we are, what we're going to do, what is important to us, what themes are important, who we need to invite, having youth at the table at every single juncture of making decisions. But not just inviting them to the table, I mean walking alongside with them so that they learn how to lead, how to voice their opinions, how to validate the questions and the concerns and the perspectives that they bring, and then how to translate those into actionable next steps.

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right? And so a companion mentorship is walking alongside with them as they step into leadership and inviting them and respecting their opinions, even if they're not the same as yours. Even if they push back against some of those more traditional ways of doing things that, you know, some of us are stuck in. So really listening and taking their concerns and perspectives seriously.

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Thank you. And just a quick follow-up. Thank you for that. Is the leadership, all of this, would it be for the local church?

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in particular, or is it kind of leadership skills broadly that they're being trained for? Yeah, it's interesting because one of the things that I'm finding in my own research is that many of the youth that have participated, you know, in this kind of leadership model, they exercise their leadership first within the church. kind of getting their feet wet and, especially in spaces where they feel supported and validated. And then they, feel comfortable enough and capable to lead in other spaces.

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And so it's really, learning leadership skills for leadership in the church and beyond. Such a helpful framework. Great question, Dr. Groth.

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This is such a helpful framework. I think Dr. Berni as well was reminded of a laugh when you were responding to having a kid dominated or a kid centered form of leadership, because I think so many churches look at the youth and see them as, in many ways, wet cement, right? They're very moldable, but also not giving them the agency to be able to lead.

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And so when they have churches that trust the youth to be able to shape kind of their own services, their own content, that creates a safe and a brave space for them to ask the questions that they are asking and to get answers for those is monumental and a game changer. The 13 years that I spent as a college pastor with an evangelical nonprofit, most of those students years ago, they weren't coming from churches where there was a space in place. They were always talked at, precisely like you were saying.

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And exactly like you mentioned, they got the opportunity to develop leadership skills, how to lead small groups, how to lead these organizations as students. And then they would go back home to their churches. And now they're not teenagers, they're in their 20s, right? Some of them are married, some of them are starting their own families, but they're still perceived as youth.

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And so that loss of agency just was not there. And so to your point, when we do have churches and communities that give our Latinas Latinx sisters and brothers, agency and authority to be able to lead, it's a game changer. You see this multi-denominational form of leadership.

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You see something that's theologically sound, but practically lived. It's an excellent, excellent, excellent framework. Thank you for that so very much. Any other questions for the future, Dr.

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Bonilla, as well, too, before we get ready to wrap up? If there are not any other questions, I did have two other quick ones. Yeah, of course. Are we okay?

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Go for it, Ryan. You're good. You got time. You're good.

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All right. The other question, you just, you had it up on the slide. I hadn't seen it before. So I was just curious.

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What is, I think you had it connected to Yonker. What is Kid Dog? Yes. So.

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Thank you for that question, Dr. Fruthers. She coins the term kiddom because we often overlook the agency of children. And so she really centers the words of, or the ministry of Jesus of inviting the children, right?

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Have the children come to me. And what that means is like when, especially like, her work with child soldiering, children who are impacted by conflict, by war especially, or instability and that causes any kind of violence. She says that children are the most vulnerable and overlooked.

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And so what does it mean to center their needs and their agency in our own ministries, not as just victims that need charity, but as full persons that can also participate in the bringing of the kingdom, ushering in the kingdom of God. So, she draws from the work of Ada Maria Isasi Diaz, who coins the term kingdom. So like, you know, creating partnerships and kinships

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to usher in the kingdom of God. This is also important, especially with migrant children, to center the needs of, think about the, taking away the resources of unaccompanied minors, right, and what that means for them. Like now they have to advocate for themselves as as adults, and don't have the supports, financial supports, legal supports that children need.

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What does that do for their social emotional learning? What does that do for, their development? So really the concept of kiddom is centering the the full humanness, right?

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Re-humanizing the needs of especially vulnerable children in these times. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, my goodness.

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Just a helpful conversation, especially again, not just the scholarship and understanding, kind of the cultural core concerns, But I think our Latinas, as they navigate education at every level, both elementary, middle, and high, and higher education as well, too. Then also, again, the climate in which we live right now, it seems like it's of utmost importance to understand the cultural core concerns of different diasporas. And so just immensely grateful for your voice, Dr.

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Bernia. Thank you. I also want to reiterate, you know, going back to the resistance that one of the youth had that, when he was told that this is a Hispanic caucus concern, the needs of the marginalized and vulnerable populations is not just for them or us to navigate and to respond to, right?

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It is the need of all of us. And so my call is to the church, right? How is the church going to be step into its prophetic witness? How will it step into and be a voice, a prophetic voice for so many communities that are marginalized and becoming even more vulnerable with every passing day?

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Could I add? Thank you for thank you for all the information and elaborating. I had a I was fortunate to be at the HILA conference they had at the Austin Seminary this past year and met Dr. De La Rosa and it was it was very brute brute and in that she was very straightforward in asking for

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everyone's input, everyone's opinion, right? And, being brown, growing up here in the US, I didn't know what agency was. And a lot of us don't know what agency was. We don't know what that is.

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I didn't even know what that word was. until my late 20s maybe, and what it meant. And so seeing it, how she worked with it was great. And likewise, I worked in immigration centers for youth here in the US.

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And you could see that the, my opinion from my experience was that the youth who were tied to their religious faith, had a lot more of that agency and would speak up for themselves more and would have a lot more, be more vocal, which under the Health and Human Services Commission of the US federal agencies, they look for that type of input, but it's already a very precarious situation in these type of detention centers. And so I recall seeing South Asian children who were very strong with their Sikh faith or with their Hindu faith, and they were very vocal.

00:45:03.840 - 00:45:27.200

There were other ones who were very Catholic, and they were very, they were professed A lot, and I could tell they were very vocal as well, and they had that agency. So they had this concept, right, which otherwise, which is not, I wouldn't see it too much in that way with other folks, including myself when I was growing up. So thanks for speaking on this. Yeah, thank you.

00:45:27.200 - 00:45:59.520

I mean, I think that just, highlights how important it is for our work in the church to educate for agency, for, especially to educate for prophetic witness, right? If our young people see us stepping into that role, they will more likely know how to do it as well. Absolutely.

00:45:59.680 - 00:46:21.600

I think, Maria, to your point as well, it goes back to what Dr. Manillo was saying, in terms of having decolonial practices, I think because Christianity has been such a colonizing religion and it's eviscerated cultures that are not Eurocentric, she's spot on, right? I think the Sikh and South Asian And some of the Catholic folks that you referenced as well, too, right?

00:46:21.600 - 00:46:36.720

There are these cultural nuances that are present throughout their theological or spiritual formation, or religious formation, rather. And so that agency and voice is present. But one of the things that's been summarily lost in Christianity in the West is that loss of agency. And so as Dr.

00:46:36.720 - 00:46:47.440

Bonilla was saying, the necessity of having to look at decolonial practices. As you mentioned, Mario, I feel it when I was growing up to be in my 40s now, that agency was not there. Same thing.

00:46:47.440 - 00:47:02.320

I learned a better word in my 20s. And so we just all know there's been a loss of time and a loss of culture and the ways in which those things have been severed from our own spiritual and theological formation. So I think to Dr. Bonilla's point, which is a great way to be able to close,

00:47:03.080 - 00:47:15.680

What will the church do? Where will the church stand in the gap for that prophetic witness for this up and coming generation is absolutely seminal. I'll give final words and comments to Dr. Bonilla if she'd like to be able to share anything else and then we'll conclude.

00:47:17.360 - 00:47:49.760

Just that churches are already doing this. There are already emerging places of decolonial practice. Of prophetic witness of caring for and ministering to the most vulnerable, and... Often those stories are not highlighted, right?

00:47:49.760 - 00:48:05.840

And it's important to retrieve those stories, to shine a spotlight on them so that we can all learn how to continue to create new possibilities. Absolutely wonderful. It's a great place to be able to land. Dr.

00:48:05.840 - 00:48:28.400

Bonilla, thank you immensely as always for sharing your experience, strength, hope, and expertise with us. here at Cultivating Ideas. Grateful for you, for your voice, your scholarship, and all the things that will continue to come from your leadership, both at Austin Seminary and in the lives of your friends, which I count myself a part of that group. So join us next week on March 6th when Reverend Dr.

00:48:28.400 - 00:48:39.200

Crystal Silva McCormick will be sharing on property ownership and Christian witness. So hope you have a fantastic day and a week, everyone. Take care, God bless, and we will see you next week. Bye, everyone.

00:48:39.520 - 00:48:42.080

Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.