Returning home
Preacher moves back to his native Puerto Rico to fulfill God’s calling
After weeping over the 2017 news reports of Hurricane Maria, an Oklahoma City minister eagerly boarded a plane to join relief efforts in his native Puerto Rico.
The Rev. Felix Cabrera made the same trip days ago, but this time, he won’t be coming back to Oklahoma anytime soon.
Cabrera, 39, has returned to his native island for the foreseeable future as the new executive director of the Convention of Southern Baptist Churches in Puerto Rico.
The preacher said the decision to move was difficult.
“It’s tough. It’s hard. If the Lord doesn’t call me to go back to the island, I wouldn’t go,” he said. “The only reason we are leaving is because it’s God’s will.”
His last Sunday at Iglesia Bautista Central, the Hispanic church he started in northwest Oklahoma City, was in December.
“It’s a bittersweet feeling because I love my brothers and sisters in Oklahoma but I’m excited to return to serve Puerto Rico.”
Island revival
Cabrera said when he left Puerto Rico in 2007 to plant churches in the U.S. mainland, he missed seeing many of his family members every day. He missed eating foods like mofongo and chuletas. He missed walking Dorado Beach and Balneario Cerro Gordo beach in Vega Alta.
However, he soon became busy with efforts to spread the Gospel through the planting of Hispanic churches. In Oklahoma, he helped start Iglesia Bautista Central in 2011 with Quail Springs Baptist Church. The Hispanic ministry began with about 20 members and by the time it became an autonomous church in 2015, more than 200 people were attending worship there.
Over the years, Cabrera’s church welcomed Spanish speakers from many different places including Central America, South America and the Caribbean. At one time, he attributed the church’s growth to a growing Hispanic presence in the north metro area.
He said he will miss his congregation.
“I will miss everything about my church in Oklahoma City, not in the liturgical way, the most important thing in a church — my people,” he said during a recent interview. “I planted the church, and I loved the community. I discipled these people and baptized these people.”
The preacher said the seeds of his Puerto Rican homecoming were sown when he and his wife, Denisse, and their daughters Andrea, 15, and Adriana, 11, spent time in Puerto Rico working with Southern Baptist disaster relief agencies in the initial aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
“At that time, my wife and daughters felt that God was calling us to return to the island,” he said. “I think that the Lord showed them there is an opportunity after the
crisis and we are a missions family. We will be obedient in whatever He calls us to do.”
Cabrera said his family has always had a special connection to Puerto Rico because it was where he was born and reared and his wife is of Puerto Rican descent and has many relatives there. Cabrera said both his daughters were born in Puerto Rico.
Cabrera said his job will be to lead about 80 Southern Baptist congregations on the island. The preacher said positive momentum has been building from the ongoing efforts to help Puerto Rico recover from the devastation wrought by the 2017 storm.
Cabrera said helped host a pastors’ retreat in Puerto Rico over the summer with Southern Baptist leaders from Oklahoma, and a women’s conference that drew more than 1,000 women, as well. The pastor said he also worked in the summer months to help prepare four families from his Oklahoma City church to go to Puerto Rico with him as part of a core group to plant a church and help with broader evangelistic efforts. He said this team will work to establish a Baptist Student Ministry at a college in San Juan, among other things.
“The economy is moving and it is growing. I think we are in a good momentum to see what the Lord wants to do and people are open and ready to receive the Gospel,” Cabrera said.
“I think we are in the beginning of a revival on the island.”
Cabrera has been an up-and-coming preacher in the Southern Baptist world so his is a name that is known beyond Oklahoma.
Most notably, he was elected second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention during the annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in June in Dallas.
He is also the cofounder of the Hispanic Baptist Pastors Alliance and founder of the Red 1:8 church planting network which has helped start more than 30 multiethnic and multilingual churches over the past several years in Puerto Rico, North America, Latin America and Spain.
The Rev. Hance Dilbeck worked closely with Cabrera when Quail Springs Baptist started Iglesia Bautista Central. Dilbeck was senior pastor of Quail Springs Baptist at the time.
Currently the executive director-treasurer of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, Dilbeck expressed enthusiasm for Cabrera’s latest mission in Puerto Rico. He said Cabrera has a “burden for that island and for its churches.”
“The Lord has used Felix Cabrera to do a great work in Oklahoma City and I am excited to see what He will do with Felix in Puerto Rico,” Dilbeck said.
“It is good for Oklahoma Baptists to have this strong connection in a place where we have already been working. Our relationship with Felix makes this an even more important field for us.”