First Christian Church of Ramona: a season of Jesus’ teachings delivering packages for Amazon

First Christian Church of Ramona

• Contact: 1970 Vermont St., Ramona 760-789-2371 www.fccoframona.org
• Membership: 45-50
• Pastor: Johnny Diaz
• Age: 38
• Born: Santa Ana
• Formation: Vanguard University, Costa Mesa
• Years Ordained: 5

San Diego Reader: How long do you spend preparing your sermon?

Pastor Johnny Diaz: My sermons lean more on the exegetical side, and I take roughly three or four days compiling them.

SDR: What’s your favorite subject on which to preach?

PD: Anything from the Gospel of Mark. I had a professor who was really into that gospel, and he opened up a lot of information on the gospel for me, so I gravitated in that direction. I particularly love Mark’s style of writing, which is very much to the point, with no fluff. He reveals a very human side of Jesus—he gets frustrated or angry, he has compassion and gets overwhelmed by the people suffering in front of him.

SDR: Why nondenominational?

PD: Our church has its roots in the Christian Church Movement which was trying to unify the church. No more denominations – let’s just be one giant body. My coming to this church was due to being in a position where I wanted to see what God wanted next in my life. I was working previously in a church as a pastoral assistant. This was the door that opened for me and as soon as I jumped in I looked at the church’s history and thought it was an awesome movement.

SDR: What is the mission of your church?

PD: To make disciples of Jesus, and I clarify that by saying “resilient disciples.” Normally when a church says they’re making disciples, it means they want people to believe in Jesus. But we’re trying to teach people to read the Bible on their own, pray, and hear and obey God’s voice on their own, to work out the struggles of faith and doubts wherever they’re at. So, it’s not a dependency on a pastor or a church. You are following Jesus on your own two feet. We are right now going through a season of Jesus’ teachings and how he expects us to interact with the kingdom of God on a daily basis. We also offer Bible studies where we focus more on the ins and outs of practical living as a Christian. It’s wonderful to know information about the Bible, but another thing to apply it. We want people to have the applicable side of the Bible in their hands so they can know how they can live out the faith every day of their lives.

SDR: Where’s the strangest place you found God?

PD: Delivering packages for Amazon. It was during a time in my life when I had gone through a divorce, and I thought God was done with me being a pastor. I embraced that idea, but it was a lie. I started experiencing people who weren’t believers, regular people working with me at Amazon. They started asking me about Jesus, prayer, and what the Bible says about this or that. So, God wasn’t done with me — he was showing me he wasn’t done with me.

SDR: Where do you go when you die?

PD: Where you go after you die is determined by whom you trust. If you trust that Jesus’ sacrifice was enough for you and his love for you is real and true, then you spend eternity in heaven. If you have chosen to trust anything other than Jesus, then your eternity is spent in hell, in which everyone will live forever — but not happily ever after.