Paletero (Popsicles &) Shepherding

Pastoreando como paletero in communities on the move

By Anna E. Portillo

Originally published by the Hispanic Leadership Initiative on April 9, 2024. Republished by Shechem House Publishing with light editorial revisions.

Anyone who has spent much time in Latin America—or in a community with a large Hispanic immigrant presence—knows los paleteros.

Especially on hot days, paleteros push their carts down streets and through neighborhoods, their campanitas ringing as they offer refreshing paletas to those passing by. To succeed, paleteros must work hard. They must be persistent. They must know their community and, in turn, become known by it.

The people in the neighborhood learn to listen for the afternoon bells, anticipating a small and sweet relief from the heat and labor of the day.

In many ways, ministry within Hispanic immigrant communities must resemble the work of a paletero.

Many established churches and ministries flourish by offering programs and services designed to draw people into a building. But pastors serving Hispanic immigrant communities often have their greatest impact through a willingness to go out: to be present, to become known, and to serve people who are in desperate need of gospel refreshment—even when they remain for only a season.

From the outside, paletero ministry can be difficult to understand.

The impact may not be immediately visible in Sunday attendance. The numbers may remain small. Some people will return for more, while others will receive one meaningful encounter with the pastoral paletero before moving on.

Going out into the community may sometimes feel like an interruption to the pastor’s calling. Yet for those shepherding communities in constant motion, a heart for ministry “on the go” is essential.

Paletero Shepherding in the Gospels

Paletero shepherding may not resemble the structure of many established churches, but one need only glance at the ministry of Jesus to see that this model is both biblical and necessary—particularly in communities that are unreached, hurting, diverse, and transient.

El Buen Pastor knew his community and was known by it.

Jesus walked through towns and villages. People from every social class gathered to see him, hear him, and know him. Although his three years of public ministry appear remarkably brief by most of our standards, his approach to people was unhurried and compassionate.

He had time to interact with children.

He listened to widows.

He healed lepers.

He welcomed outcasts.

He entered into ongoing conversations with Pharisees, religious leaders, and skeptics.

When engaging Hispanic communities in the United States, it is especially important to pay attention to the way Jesus ministered.

Like many of the people who were drawn to Jesus, Hispanic Americans—particularly immigrants, but also many second- and third-generation Hispanics—may find themselves living on the outskirts of the majority culture.

They work hard to make ends meet. They carry stories of leaving homes, relatives, communities, and familiar ways of life. They labor to establish themselves within a new culture. Their lives may be marked by instability, disorientation, or even chaos.

Burdened by the daily work of simply getting by, they may have little time or energy to attend one more program or activity.

When a crisis comes, they will often seek the person who has proven to be a stable, reliable, and trustworthy source of help.

They will listen for the bells of someone who has consistently walked their streets.

Welcoming the Interruptions

Stopping to help the person who calls or appears at the church door in crisis can feel like an interruption to ministry.

It may feel like an interruption to help the unemployed Muslim immigrant who knocks on the church doors searching for food and clothing.

It may feel like an interruption to sit down once again with a family seeking housing, helping them consider their options even though they have shown little interest in attending the church.

It may feel like an interruption to invite an awkward and hungry young man to sit down over café y pan and tell his story while the pastor is already meeting with a growing church member.

But a paletero understands that such interruptions are essential to his work.

After carefully planning his route, the most fruitful part of his day may come when a young boy runs to find him and invites him away from his usual path to serve a group of friends waiting down the street.

More importantly, Jesus welcomed interruptions as part of the beautiful unfolding of his mission.

The healing of Jairus’s daughter offers a powerful example. As Jesus traveled toward the home of a desperate father, he stopped to speak with and heal a woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years.

To Jairus and the surrounding crowd, this must have seemed like an enormous interruption. From their perspective, Jesus was wasting precious time. He was allowing himself to be delayed by a socially unclean woman while the daughter of a respected synagogue ruler was dying.

When word arrived that the child had died, Jesus’s decision to stop may have appeared not merely inconvenient but disastrous.

Yet Jesus valued the life of this suffering woman as much as he valued the life of Jairus’s daughter. Her approach was not an interruption to his ministry. It was an opportunity to reveal the reach and power of his healing grace.

The impact of the interruption extended even further.

Because Jesus stopped, Jairus did not merely see him heal his daughter. He saw Jesus raise her from the dead.

Through the interruption, Jairus came to understand that Jesus was more powerful than he had imagined. The watching crowd saw that Jesus’s compassion extended across social classes and that no suffering person was beneath his attention.

Like biting into a frozen paleta on a hot afternoon, welcoming gospel interruptions can bring an initial shock.

Sharing Jesus with the community requires surrendering our schedules, expectations, and definitions of success to the Lord. Yet the reward is seeing God accomplish something greater through the interruptions than we could have accomplished through our plans.

Welcoming the Stranger

A successful paletero does more than welcome interruptions. He welcomes anyone who desires what he offers.

Some people may already understand the value of a refreshing paleta. Others may be encountering one for the first time. But the paletero is prepared to serve them all.

Children and adults, regardless of nationality, language, or social status, learn to rejoice when they hear the approaching campanitas. The paletero does not drive them away. He gladly serves an ever-widening community, knowing that those who receive his goods may later invite their friends.

The transforming truth of the gospel is for people from every nation, tribe, people, and language.

Although this truth is foundational for every ministry, it is especially important when serving Hispanic and Hispanic immigrant communities.

The term “Hispanic community” encompasses people from more than twenty nations and countless cultures. They may be newly arrived immigrants or members of families who have lived in the United States for generations. They possess different language abilities, economic circumstances, educational experiences, religious backgrounds, and levels of exposure to the gospel.

To plant or care for a “Hispanic church”—whether English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, or bilingual—is therefore far more complex than the name suggests.

This work requires more than welcoming people into a room. It requires a willingness to serve anyone who desires to “taste and see” the goodness of the Lord.

It means investing in people whose stories may be very different from our own.

As a paletero shepherd becomes known within the community, the work may expand beyond the population the church initially intended to reach. Immigrants and neighbors from other racial, national, and linguistic backgrounds may also be drawn to the caring and peaceful presence of a faithful shepherd.

Again, we need only look at the Gospels.

When the disciples attempted to push children away, considering them an unnecessary demand on Jesus’s time, he welcomed them with open arms.

While dining with Pharisees, Jesus received the woman of ill repute who washed his feet with her tears.

He spoke with religious leaders and rulers, but he also welcomed tax collectors, Samaritans, lepers, and those whom respectable society called sinners.

It may be tempting to dismiss people who do not fit our preferred picture of the church. Yet Jesus’s ministry within a diverse community demonstrates that his servants must be willing to receive all whom he draws near.

Focusing on the Kingdom

Welcoming interruptions and remaining available to care for strangers is not easy. Nor does this kind of ministry always produce visible or immediate results.

To serve a community in constant motion without becoming exhausted, the paletero shepherd cannot make the building of his own church or ministry the ultimate goal. His focus must be the kingdom of God.

Without a kingdom focus, many acts of pastoral care can appear frustrating or wasteful:

A conversation with migrant workers who will remain in the area for only one season.

A day spent preparing a birthday celebration for a child whose father has been deported.

The energy required to communicate with an immigrant who speaks neither English nor Spanish and does not belong to the church’s intended demographic.

All these encounters can feel burdensome when success is measured primarily by institutional growth.

The paletero, however, understands that his daily work serves a larger purpose. Despite his planning and strategizing, he willingly responds to those outside his normal route because his eyes are fixed not merely on the inconvenience of the moment but on the purpose of his labor.

On a far greater scale, this must be the mindset of gospel ministry—particularly within Hispanic and immigrant communities.

A transient community is constantly changing. People are adapting to a new culture, learning a new language, navigating unfamiliar workplaces, and rebuilding their social networks.

Applying the same measurements of success used by a stable, majority-culture congregation may be both detrimental to the mission and unsustainable for the pastor.

As Jesus served the diverse people around him, he called his followers to something greater than the growth of their individual ministries. He called them to seek the kingdom of God.

Speaking to Jewish leaders who assumed they represented the primary boundaries of God’s covenant people, Jesus declared that, as the Good Shepherd, he possessed other sheep who were not yet of that fold. He would bring them also, and they would listen to his voice.

Jesus stopped to heal the bleeding woman.

He stooped to welcome children.

He ate with tax collectors and sinners.

He permitted a disgraced woman to anoint his feet with perfume and tears.

Through these encounters, Jesus demonstrated that his mission was not confined to the respectable, established, or socially secure. His compassion and healing were offered to all who recognized their sickness and need for cleansing.

This ministry led to Jesus being misunderstood, mocked, rejected, and ultimately nailed to a cross. Yet he welcomed the cost with humility and prayer because he trusted the Father’s purpose and desired the coming of the Father’s kingdom.

A kingdom focus allows paletero shepherds to welcome whomever the Lord draws into their path.

It frees them to walk through their neighborhoods, learn the stories of their communities, and love the places where God has sent them without surrendering to the pressure of unrealistic standards.

It allows pastors serving Hispanic and immigrant communities to pray, “Hágase tu voluntad”—“Your will be done”—as they practice ministry on the go.

They can trust that, as they remain faithful to their calling, the Lord is accomplishing purposes greater than anything immediately visible.

The Reward of Paletero Shepherding

The result of paletero shepherding will not necessarily be more people sitting in church seats on Sunday morning.

It does not guarantee a dependable salary.

It does not prevent observers from questioning how the pastor has used his time and resources.

But paletero shepherding trusts the wisdom of God. It goes into the community and cares for the people God brings—whether they remain for many years or only a few weeks.

Paletero shepherding opens doors through which Christ may grow his church and extend his kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”

It happens when shepherds are willing to offer the cool refreshment of compassion and the life-giving truth of the gospel to people in need.

Its goal and reward are not found in personal advancement, institutional recognition, or numerical growth. The shepherd’s eyes remain fixed on the kingdom and on the words of Christ:

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me… Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”—Matthew 25:35, 40

May the Lord encourage those who are faithfully serving the diverse communities around them.

May he continue raising shepherds who are willing to minister amid the unforeseen movements and disruptions of the Hispanic immigrant experience and beyond.

May the bells of their faithful presence be heard in neighborhoods where people are thirsty for compassion, dignity, stability, and truth.

And may all their labor serve the growth of Christ’s kingdom and la gloria de Dios.

¡A Dios sea la gloria!

Join Us in Prayer

Pray that leaders serving communities in flux would receive the strength and encouragement necessary to welcome interruptions and strangers.

Pray that churches and individuals supporting pastors in Hispanic and immigrant communities would grow in patience and understanding, learning to measure success according to kingdom-centered faithfulness.

Pray that God would give his people a growing desire to minister to whomever he brings—even when doing so is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or difficult.

Pray that the church in the United States would develop a wider vision for kingdom ministry, especially as it welcomes and serves the growing Hispanic and immigrant communities living in its neighborhoods.

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This essay first appeared as part of the ministry reflections of the Hispanic Leadership Initiative, which served Hispanic pastors and leaders from 2010 to 2026. It is preserved and republished by Shechem House Publishing so that the lessons, stories, and faithful labor of that season may continue serving the church.