Who is Missio Dei?
I never wanted to plant a church. Well, that's not completely true. I thought about it, often even, but it never felt like the right time. Some might call it fear, others might call it prudence, but it took about 6 years to finally feel "ready".
I use the term ready loosely.
If you're reading this (kudos), you're probably interested in Missio Dei or, more likely, the author of this blog post sent you this link and begged you to read it. If you're the former, then this blog is primarily for you, a place for you to get to know who I am, what Missio Dei is, and why we have decided to plant this church in the first place.
My name is Ryan Diaz. I am a native New Yorker, diehard Mets fan, proud Puerto Rican, and Pastor. I like to think I am a writer but I'll let you decide. I've been in Christian ministry some 13 odd years, ministering in various contexts and churches in NYC. I am married to Janiece Diaz and together we have a son named Damian. But all that you could read in my bio. What concerns us here is who I am to Missio Dei, or at the very least, who do I imagine myself to be in relation to Missio Dei?
It's a fair question. One I'm still trying to answer. On paper, Missio Dei is my brainchild. In reality, I'm the poor sap God roped into planting a church. Like most things born of the Spirit, Missio Dei began not as a church but as a conviction. In 2020, like many of us, I was lost. I had questions no one could answer, and my isolation had done a number on my faith. I was tired of Christianity. Not big C Christianity but the tinsel wrapped Christianity of my youth. As I watched the world descend into chaos, watched the wounds of racism spill out into the streets, and migrant neighbors in fear, the Christianity of my childhood had little or nothing to say to this new reality. Lost, I forgot how to pray. My Pentecostal fire was all but a sputtering wick. Desperate to feel something of God, I took up a friend's recommendation and picked up a Book of Common Prayer. With stutters and stops I eventually made my way through the morning liturgy and never looked back. I wasn't Anglican by any stretch of the imagination but in the BCP I found a lifeline and slowly but surely I found my sense of self restored.
With this came a deep desire to live out the way of Jesus in a real and tangible way. Up until this point I had only known Jesus as a distant reality, real to be sure, but somewhat ethereal, like heaven or the soul, something I believed in but couldn't touch or feel. It was reading Gustavo Gutiérrez that I was smacked in the face with the real Jesus, Jesus, the Messiah from the margins. This Jesus wasn't ethereal; he was earthy and real. He proclaimed liberation of souls but also bodies. He inhabited a brown body, protested empire, and proclaimed the kingdom of heaven belonged to the weak and downtrodden not the well-to-do and connected. From that moment on I knew I wanted to be a pastor who preached about that Jesus. I still want to be that pastor. I'll always want to be that pastor.
I share all this because my own journey has in turn shaped this church God is birthing in Ridgewood, Queens. Missio Dei is a church where sacrament nourishes the soul and service calls us to move beyond ourselves and our own soul seeking to serve and love our neighbors. Sacrament and Service are the pillars of this nascent community. They are how we practice being the people God is calling us to be. We are first, people rooted in sign, symbol, and story, and as a result deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and vulnerable, because in them we recognize a God who cares chiefly for the margins.
Of course, all that’s just sentiment. But it is the kind of church I pray we will become. It is the kind of pastor I often try and fail to be, even on my best day. In this life, there is no arrival. Failure is a part of the process. That is why we need grace. It is why we need the Spirit. Missio Dei hopes to be these things, but it will only ever be them in part. What I can do, what you can do, is try our best to live into that reality, expecting failure, knowing full well that even in our failure God's strength is made perfect.
If that is a kind of church you find compelling, then please join us—the more the merrier.
Oh, the name!
Missio Dei is Latin for the mission of God. It’s his mission. It’s his church. The Messiah from the margins calls the shots. All we can do is respond. At the end of the day, that's what this church is — a response, a conviction. But it is not mine or yours; it is God's, and by his Spirit in the name of his Son, we respond: "Here we are, send us."
I hope you join us for the ride.
— Ryan Diaz
