On Fire for God

Alex Diaz ’17 likes plans. He likes organization. And he has an affinity for seeing a need and jumping in to help.

As a kid, he knew he wanted to be a firefighter. But then, as Alex admits, “What 6-year-old boy doesn't want to be a firefighter?”

Born into a Catholic family in Puerto Rico, Alex grew up in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago. At one time, he had considered becoming a priest. His high school, Quigley North, had a prep program for the priesthood. Alex didn’t mull over the priesthood very long before he considered something else: engineering.

In the fall of 1987, Alex enrolled at Lewis University, a Catholic college located about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. Though his studies were on track, his life was derailing.

“I made a mess of my life in college,” he says. “I wasn't going to church. I really didn't have any faith. At that point, I rejected all faith. I was just living really recklessly.”

Coming to Christ

Alex worked for the Chicago Board of Elections until 1992. He continued taking some college courses, and in one class, he gained a life perspective along with his studies.  “My calculus teacher used to say, ‘Time never stands still, so keep working until you get done.’ That was my first lesson in perseverance,” Alex says.

An EMT program at Wright College helped Alex take the first steps toward becoming a firefighter. It also gave him valuable experience inside an ambulance. That experience opened the door to an EMT-paramedic program at Malcolm X College in 1997.

Two years later, as he was completing the program, Alex should have been preoccupied with the excitement of earning his associate degree in paramedic sciences and pursuing the next phase in his career. But instead, he says, “Around winter of 1999, I was dealing with difficulties in life. I was living in sin, and the weight of sin was bearing down on me.

“During a traumatic overdose moment that a friend was enduring, I met my friend’s brother. He shared the gospel and pointed me to Christ. I was floored by it. I knew I wanted that joy and peace that he had. About a week later, I visited this man’s church and found myself praying at the stairs of the pulpit.”

Alex began attending a Pentecostal church in 2000 and was later ordained through a ministry there. But in the first few years after trusting Christ for his salvation, he experienced consequences and deep traumas from his past choices. He was married with two children, but the marriage ended in divorce.

Firefighting and a new family

In 2004, Alex became a full-fledged firefighter. “I was able to do what we call ‘crossing over’ to become a fireman,” he says. “That meant going back to the academy to do all that training.”

In time, Alex met a young woman named Maria. She was a single mom and a member of Alex’s church. Alex and Maria began dating and married in 2011. “We blended our families of four kids, Maria’s two and my two.”

After a series of negative and confusing events, Alex and Maria left their church in 2012 and began visiting a new church.

Pursuing a new vocational calling

“That's where I started to grow and heal,” Alex says, “and at that point, I knew I wanted to go to school. I knew God had called me to ministry, and I knew I needed to educate myself, to get a good understanding of the Scriptures in order to be a good pastor and lead people well. That's why I wanted to go to Bible school.”

Choosing which Bible college to attend wasn’t difficult. “Moody was in our backyard growing up!” Alex says. Shawn Proctor, a good friend and a Moody graduate, encouraged him to apply.

In the fall of 2014, Alex started classes at Moody’s Chicago undergraduate campus. Alex was excited about the opportunity to focus his time and energy on the Word of God.

Alex knew he was called to be a pastor, but his first pastoral job after completing his bachelor’s at Moody in 2017 turned out to be quite a challenge. “I began the revitalization of a church in Chicago in 2018,” Alex says. “The pastor abandoned the church. I was there with an elder in the church, and we began (to rebuild). I reached out to Dr. (Bill) Patterson (one of Alex’s professors at Moody), and he was a great help. We still talk.”

Surprise diagnosis

In the summer of 2017, Alex registered to continue his studies at Moody Theological Seminary. At about that time, he began experiencing a nagging pain. “I was swimming a lot, doing training, running triathlons, and I started complaining to my wife that my shoulder hurt. Eventually she said, ‘Go to the doctor!’ And that was the worst, weirdest doctor visit of my entire life.”

Alex discovered he had stage four prostate cancer, a terminal diagnosis. “If I could show you a picture of what it looked like,” Alex says, “almost every bone had signs of tumors growing because (the cancer) had spread.”

Alex put his studies on hold and focused on his treatment. After long rounds of chemotherapy, the cancer went into remission and his health started to stabilize.

Answering a ‘crazy’ new calling

City Lights, the church Alex was pastoring in Chicago’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood, began to flourish. Alex and Maria were committed to the City Lights congregation and were looking forward to great plans with the church when an unexpected opportunity arose. A growing church in Arizona was considering a new multicultural church plant. In 2021, Alex and Maria moved to Arizona to work with King of Kings Church in Goodyear, about 20 miles west of Phoenix.

“This was the craziest calling my wife and I ever experienced, to leave everything behind and to come to the desert,” Alex says. “And when I say everything, I mean a thriving church where I was part of the revitalization, I was the lead pastor, our family, our grandkids—everything. We came to Arizona because we knew God called us to be here.”

Alex and his family endured a difficult transition, to say the least. “It was actually the hardest couple of years of our lives,” he says. “It was the depth of loneliness, to be alone and not connected with people. I thought, ‘God, why did You bring us here?’”

Eventually, doors that once seemed closed began to open. Plans began to come together for a new multicultural church called The King’s Well to begin serving the Avondale community.

“I have a deep heart to see Revelation 7 happen in front of us,” Alex says. “You know . . . every nation, tongue, and tribe worshiping together. The church plant community is diverse already, so there's really no excuse not to be intentional to reach a community that's diverse.”

Church planting success

Josh Harp, senior pastor of King of Kings Church, says the journey of planting the new church has been deliberately cautious and has been bathed in prayer.

“The process of planting begins with prayer,” Josh says, “people petitioning God to establish a new work in a new area and to bring the right man to be the minister of this congregation.”

“Once a minister is identified,” Pastor Josh continues, “in (the Presbyterian) denomination, that minister needs to be thoroughly examined to show evidence that he has the capabilities to do this particular work. This examination is very thorough and includes time with the minister, his wife (if married), and many others from our denomination to assess the potential to plant within the minister. Alex and Maria were thoroughly assessed and came through with flying colors.”

Another round of health issues

But the good news of progress on the new church plant has recently been tempered with bad health news. “Recently my blood marker numbers went up, and they wanted to get ahead of it,” Alex says. “So I’m back on chemo now. I just finished round five.”

The man whose life theme could have been “Plan and Organize” has had to find a new theme. “I'm an intense individual,” Alex says. “I can work from sunup to sundown doing ministry. I will plan everything in my head and start forcing things to happen rather than waiting for the Spirit to lead me into these things.”

Pastor Josh has seen firsthand Alex’s drive and determination. “My dear friend Alex was not installed with an ‘off’ switch, and he is a force to be reckoned with, by God’s grace,” Josh says.

But Josh has also seen Alex yield himself to God’s hand and God’s plan. “Alex clearly has been shaped by Christ and is being shaped day by day as the work of Christ is applied to him by the Holy Spirit,” he says. “He is enthusiastic about this work and has added to this process in the way that he diligently plans and communicates. He is always thinking one step ahead but with the constant reminder that his steps are ordered by the Lord.”

New perspective

Alex says his leadership of the church plant has been fueled by a desperation in his heart to plant churches so that others will see the goodness of God.

“But it was really forced out of the idea that I have cancer. I don't know how much time I have. I gotta do this. I have to do this. I have to,” Alex says. “In this season of my life, through God's providence, He taught me how to truly rest in Him. That’s what I've learned about God’s nature, how kind and how good He is in our lives, even through cancer. Only the Lord can take something so scary and crazy and be glorified by it. Now my heart is not set on ‘I have to,’ but my posture is ‘I am called to church plant, and by His grace I get to.’”