CommonCall: Christians have ‘Hearts4Kids’ in Valley

Members of The Crossing Church in Mesquite painted 10 homes in a colonia in the Rio Grande Valley, working in partnership with Jorge Zapata and Hearts4Kids. (Photo courtesy of Jorge Zapata)

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Jorge Zapata couldn’t help but notice the lack of resources in the Rio Grande Valley, but instead of looking for wealth to respond to the community, he thought creativity would be a better approach.

Zapata, founder of Hearts4Kids, was founding pastor of New Wine Church in La Feria, and he knew his congregation had to respond to needs. While poverty was important to address, the lack of churches responding to the needs of families also was alarming, he said.

While other organizations provided some of the resources the community needed, many families could not access them because they lacked transportation, Zapata said.

Although some churches were located near families’ homes, they were open only for worship and Bible study on Sundays.

“Churches did not have community centers, and community centers lacked the spiritual component,” Zapata said.  “Those churches had to be asked, ‘What do you do during the week?’”

Church-based community centers reach residents

Heart4Kids ministers both to the physical and spiritual needs of children and their families in the Rio Grande Valley. (Photo courtesy of Jorge Zapata)

Since he launched Hearts4Kids, Zapata helped start five churches with community centers that enabled the congregations to open their doors to other agencies to reach out to local residents.

“The church becomes the bridge between the community and the other organizations,” he explained.

As the churches interact more and more with the community, Zapata said, ministers become pastors to the community—not because people “become members of the church, but because those pastors are in their lives.”

A report released last year showed 68 percent of children in the Rio Grande Valley live in high-poverty neighborhoods. The Center for Public Policy Priorities’ study also reported children facing poverty in the Valley “often lack the most basic necessities for living (potable water, sewer systems, electricity, paved roads, safe housing, etc.)”


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“Poverty creates those living conditions,” Zapata said.

Even though communities are challenged by the lack of resources, Zapata noticed resilient residents manage to survive and cleverly find new sources of income.

“They are entrepreneurs,” he said. “They learn and start new opportunities.”

Emphasis on collaboration and cooperation

But as creative as a family may be, Zapata said, he knows it is difficult to move forward when the household income of the families he works with is between $7,000 and $13,000 a year.

Many of the houses in which these families live have dirt floors or no running water, he noted.

Most parents work between two and three jobs, he observed.

“Every aspect of the family is affected by this,” Zapata said.

Poverty is such a challenge, Zapata—now coordinator of missions and Hispanic ministries at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Texas—also has opened the door to collaborate with non-Baptist churches.

Through those partnerships, Zapata said, he has been able to find churches of other denominations that are willing to provide wheelchairs, medicine and school supplies to families.

“It is not about doctrine,” Zapata said. “It’s about providing help.”

Providing food to families in need

Those partnerships recently helped create food pantries in Hidalgo County. Iglesia Cantico Nuevo in Donna and Iglesia Vino Nuevo in San Carlos are the only food aid locations for many families in the area.

Iglesia Vino Nuevo in San Carlos began a food pantry in 2016 through Heart4Kids. (Photo courtesy of Jorge Zapata)

Zapata helped Vino Nuevo partner with Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas to become a food distribution center two years ago, with financial assistance made possible by the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering.

More recently, Cantico Nuevo also partnered with Park Cities to also become a food distribution center. The church began offering food to low-income families this summer.

Through those partnerships, Cantico Nuevo and Vino Nuevo are part of the more than 80 hunger ministries the Baptist General Convention of Texas helps fund across the state.

Ministries like community centers and food pantries exist in response to the poverty ministers have seen as they interact with the people in their neighborhoods, said Victor Ramirez, pastor of Vino Nuevo.

“We realized there was a high percentage of children who lived in extreme poverty here.” Ramirez said. “These children did not have access to food after school.”

But opening the door to these ministries brings large unforeseen costs to the churches.

“We are a small church, and we don’t have the funds to make a large investment,” said Manuel Gonzalez, the pastor of Cantico Nuevo.

‘We have seen the extreme need’

For Gonzalez, the partnerships and cooperation Cantico Nuevo has received through Hearts4Kids and Texas Baptists offers a reminder of the work God does through someone who is willing.

“Just like Jesus used five loaves and two fish to feed the 5,000, he is asking us for what it is we have right now,” Gonzalez said. “He says to us, ‘Put what you have in my hand, and I will multiply it.”

Gonzalez said Cantico Nuevo knows the expanded ministry will significantly increase the congregation’s utility bills, and everyone in the church will have to volunteer their time to serve.

“It will be a challenge to us,” he said. “But we have seen the extreme need around here, and we cannot ignore it.”

‘God is certainly working here’

Ramirez founded Vino Nuevo in 2011. Through the church, Zapata has been able to incorporate classrooms for the community, a basketball court, a playground, and the storage room for the food bank through partnerships with churches and other organizations.  The church and its partners currently are working to build a park for children in the community, Ramirez said.

Because of the facilities and the ministries the church has created, families attend Vino Nuevo throughout the week.

“Even though we are not preaching to them every time the children are at our playground or the parents come to the food bank, God is certainly working here,” Ramirez said. “We have taught the church that our worship to God is not just done through singing. Our worship to God has to be through service.”

Christians are required to commit their lives to service, Zapata said. While that commitment demands a lot of effort from the church, other churches with more resources are meant to help, he added.

“Churches that want to help need to be committed as well,” he said. While financial assistance is important, churches also need to visit the ministry locations and bring people to help there more than once a year, he insisted.

“Otherwise those churches will not see the transformation happening in the community,” Zapata said.

“It is when churches do this, that they become part of the community. They become part of a strong ministry in this way, and that is what responds to the big need we see in the Valley.”

Read more articles like this in CommonCall magazine. CommonCall explores issues important to Christians and features inspiring stories about disciples of Jesus living out their faith. An annual subscription is only $24 and comes with two free subscriptions to the Baptist Standard. To subscribe to CommonCallclick here.


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