Graduate Profile: Jose Fernandez (BDiv)

My name is Jose Fernandez, and I currently serve as one of the pastors of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Coconut Creek, FL. I was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba and immigrated to the USA when I was four years old. It seems as though only yesterday I began my theological studies at RBS. I still recall one of the very first required readings assigned to incoming students: B. B. Warfield’s The Religious Life of Theological Students. In the closing paragraph, Warfield draws from Cotton Mather’s small work Manductio ad Ministerium, which bears the striking subtitle, The Angels Preparing to Sound the Trumpets.

That is what Cotton Mather calls you, students for the ministry: the angels, preparing to sound the trumpets! Take the name to yourselves, and live up to it. Give your days and nights to living up to it! And then, perhaps, when you come to sound the trumpets, the note will be pure and clear and strong, and perchance may pierce even to the grave and wake the dead.

By the grace of God, I can say with a clear conscience that I have sought to give myself day and night to sounding the trumpet of the gospel. My years at RBS have only deepened my conviction that faithful ministry must be rooted in a life devoted to Christ, grounded in the Scriptures, and carried out within the context of the local church.

I am profoundly thankful for the ministry of RBS as an institution committed to preparing men for God’s work in God’s way. As someone who wrestled with a call to ministry from my early teenage years, the prospect of attending seminary once seemed far beyond reach. Yet the Lord, in His kindness, provided a path through RBS.

As a member of Emmanuel Baptist Church, I have had the privilege of receiving both a rigorous theological education and a deeply pastoral one. Over the last four years, I have sat under the instruction of men who were not only my professors, but also my pastors and shepherds. I have witnessed firsthand the beauty of theological training that is inseparably connected to the life and ministry of the church.

Throughout my studies, the Lord has continued to confirm and refine my calling to gospel ministry. Whether through preaching opportunities, shepherding responsibilities, theological study, or the ordinary means of grace within the church, He has impressed upon me the immense privilege and solemn responsibility of heralding Christ crucified to a dying world.

My desire moving forward is simple: to spend my life faithfully preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ, shepherding His people with tenderness and conviction, and equipping the saints for the work of ministry. I remain deeply grateful to the faculty and pastors who have invested in me throughout this journey. Whatever fruit may come from my ministry in the years ahead will, under God, owe much to the faithful labors of those who have helped prepare me to sound the trumpet clearly.

To Jeff Smith and Nicholas Kennicott, thank you for showing me what it means to be a faithful undershepherd of Jesus Christ. I have received from your ministry the aroma and sweetness of Christ through the faithful proclamation of the Gospel. I am forever grateful.

To my sweet wife, Gianella, thank you for your unceasing, faithful support throughout these last four years. I could not have done it without you. The LORD knows your sacrifices, and He will reward you on that great day when everything hidden is brought to light.

Men, sound the trumpet! And may God be pleased to give life to the dead through our ministry.

SDG.