“I don’t want to give some Cracker Jack box message and say, ‘Based on what I know, this is how I interpret this.’ There has to be more than that.’’

Sammy Ortiz is proud of his small, diverse church in downtown Tampa and believes he found his calling when he became a born-again Christian while serving in the US military. But the 39-year-old pastor believes he could be a better minister and role model to young Latinos if he reached for something more: a divinity school education.

Ortiz is just the kind of prospective student that Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an evangelical Christian seminary based in South Hamilton, hopes to attract to a new graduate degree program for Hispanic pastors in Florida and South Texas, where Hispanic congregations are experiencing explosive growth but clergy often lack graduate-level theological training.

Leaders at Gordon-Conwell, whose Center for Urban Ministerial Education in Roxbury is nationally recognized for its work in minority clergy education, say the effort is a response to powerful demographic trends in American Christianity.

Hispanics are overwhelmingly Christian and increasingly evangelical, and they are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the country — the Hispanic population is expected to grow from 45 million today to about 130 million in 2050. But Hispanics remain underrepresented in US theological schools; in 2009, only about 4 percent of students in accredited divinity schools in the United States and Puerto Rico were Hispanic.