For Pablo Rosales, New York City was more than a bustling backdrop for his life story; the city was a main character. His father immigrated to the U.S. from Puerto Rico, and his mother was from Guatemala. Rosales grew up in a multicultural Harlem neighborhood.
He grew up near Christian culture but not in a Christian home. As he entered young adulthood, two events stirred his moral imagination.
During Rosales’ senior year of high school, a close friend died. She had been a devoted Seventh Day Adventist and regularly evangelized in New York City subway stations. At her wake, Rosales heard a fiery sermon about all the deeds that would send a person to hell. Rosales observed that he was indeed guilty of many of the transgressions on the preacher’s damnation list, and he resolved to be a better person.
Rosales does not consider this encounter to be saving faith, but he calls it a “religious experience.”
After high school, Rosales attended Nyack College in New York to study social work. Then Sept. 11 happened, and Rosales’ community was shaken to its core. His stepfather had three children who were police officers, and their stories deeply impacted him.
“I listened to their stories and wanted to be part of that,” he said. “I saw the videos of firefighters and law enforcement coming alongside people and had that desire to want to help.”
In order to join the New York Police Department, Rosales needed military service or 60 college credits. As soon as Rosales had earned 60 credits from Nyack, he dropped out of college to join the police force.
Policing is a brutal job, especially in New York City after Sept. 11. Rosales said everything was always on high alert. He regularly policed near venerated institutions like the United Nations headquarters. Seeing the darkness of man’s heart took its toll.
“After two years of policing and seeing some of the worst of humanity, I was questioning God,” he said. “We had had our first child, and I was worried about what kind of morals she would have.”
After a few years on the force, Rosales reconnected with a former roommate who had joined the military and became a Christian during a tour of duty in Iraq. The friend wanted to study the Bible and listen to sermons with Rosales. Rosales agreed, and they began listening to sermons by John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C. Sproul.
Hearing Scripture and the gospel clearly explained opened Rosales’ eyes. He understood his sinfulness, his need for grace, and Jesus’ sacrifice on his behalf.
“That changed everything for me,” he said. “It changed my marriage. It changed how I police; it was no longer just a job for me. I was learning about people being made in God’s image, and it changed the way I looked at criminals and victims. I saw my job as a ministry.”
Rosales stayed on the police force, but he saw himself as a conduit of God’s grace to broken people. He kept coats in his police cruiser to offer to the homeless. When he was called to a domestic dispute, he asked the parents if he could give their children copies of “The Jesus Storybook Bible.” He volunteered to transport prisoners to Central Booking so he could talk with them about spiritual matters.
Having come to faith by listening to preachers like R.C. Sproul, the Rosaleses eventually found a home at a small PCA church in New York and heard the gospel of grace preached in real time rather than on a recorded sermon. The pastor came alongside Rosales and helped him think about policing as a Christian.
The more he learned about theology, the more excited he became for the church history in his neighborhood. Growing up on 125th Street, he regularly played basketball in the basement of The Riverside Church, where in 1922 Henry Emerson Fosdick had preached the sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” And Rosales regularly walked past the building where Dietrich Bonhoeffer had lived while attending Union Seminary from 1930-1931.
Rosales loved learning about the church history all around him. With his pastor’s guidance, he began to think about attending seminary.
In 2011, Rosales was sitting in his parked police cruiser when the cruiser was hit by a drunk driver. Rosales’ thumb was pinched by the steering wheel, and he suffered nerve damage. The injury was the beginning of the end of his policing. Eventually, he took a year of medical leave, during which he finished his undergraduate classes and earned a degree in sociology. When he was medically discharged from the police force, Rosales was ready to attend seminary.
In 2016, Rosales enrolled at Covenant Theological Seminary. In 2021, he became the associate pastor of mission and outreach at Trinity Church Kirkwood (PCA) in St. Louis’ Kirkwood suburb.
Looking back on his years as a cop, Rosales sees parallels between policing and pastoring. In both roles, he has seen “people going through some of the hardest things humanity has to face in this fallen world,” he said.
But while a cop’s job is to handle the situation and move on to the next crisis, a pastor walks with people in their grief and sorrow.
He thinks of a police shift when he was called to the scene of a stabbing. Rosales prayed with the young man while he and medical personnel tried to save him.
“He said he wanted Jesus to forgive him and save him. And I prayed for him as a dying man,” Rosales said. “Like the thief on the cross. Sadly, he passed away shortly after. But even then, I had to move on to the next job. No time to meet with and talk with family and pray for them.”
On the other hand, an advantage to police work is a partner who works the shift with you and experiences the same events. Ministry can be lonely, Rosales observed, and he misses the close relationship with his former partner.
The police officer who carried extra coats and children’s Bibles is now the pastor encouraging his congregation to care for its neighbors in need. The church cares for the elderly, widows, refugees, and immigrants through various St. Louis ministries.
Trinity began stocking a food pantry for children who attend the local elementary school. The school handles the food distribution during the school year but doesn’t have the funding or manpower to keep it open during the summer. Rosales worried how families that depended on the food pantry would fare through the summer months, so Trinity stepped into the gap, providing the food and the volunteers to keep the pantry open.
“It was an incredible experience for people who came to get food,” Rosales said. “We talked with them and visited. And for us as members of Trinity to recognize there is so much need out there and always more to do.”
The school welcomes Trinity’s involvement, too. The elementary school social worker has asked Trinity to provide the food pantry in future summers, and the church is happy to continue the partnership. Rosales said an elder recently asked him, “We’re doing this every year, right?”
But it’s the growing heart for missions among Trinity Church’s youth that gets Rosales particularly excited.
“The most rewarding thing I’ve seen over the last few years is the desire of the next generation to be involved in mission work,” Rosales said.
For the past two years the teenagers from Trinity have traveled to Puerto Rico to serve alongside Hunger Corp in its relational outreach work. Rosales said the ministry works with just a few people at a time to help them flourish.
“You can kiss our American idea of efficiency goodbye, but with that goes the transactional approach to evangelism and missions,” he said. “It’s very intentional in a God’s timeline kind of way.”
Rosales is encouraged to hear the church’s teenagers express a desire not only to return to Puerto Rico, but to intern with Hunger Corp.
“Since I’ve been here, there’s been a huge transformation to be not for ourselves,” Rosales said of the church.