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| Eliza Cortes Bast |
Eliza is a fierce and honest follower of Jesus. She is a pastor, and denominational executive, dedicated to helping churches think missionally. She lives into her passion by connecting people, advocating for the community, and helping organizations think strategically so they can be healthy, vibrant, and sustainable. Eliza lives in Michigan with her husband EJ, and their two boys. Her loves include her home country Puerto Rico, her interracial marriage, a good steak, salsa dancing, writing, and empowering emerging leaders.
Maybe we could begin by telling us a bit about your personal background. Are you from Michigan? What was your spiritual formation like? Are you a member of the Reformed Church in America (RCA)? How long have you worked for the RCA?
I am Puerto Rican by heritage, but was born and mostly raised in Michigan. I served as a member of a pastoral team and an executive director of a community center as part of a Reformed Church for 7 years. I have been on staff with the denominational offices as an executive in my two coordinator roles - Local Missional Engagement and Special Projects. I have been on staff at the RCA for four years.
I absolutely love the local church. I have been a part of the Churches of God, the RCA, and the non-denominational church movements. I owe my spiritual formation to each of these spaces, as well as being in a home with a mom who fervently prayed. She actively worked to make our townhouse a place where kids in our Section 8 housing complex felt known, felt safe, and felt cared for.
You are the Coordinator for Local Missional Engagement and Special Projects. Could you give us some examples of what Local Missional Engagement and Special Projects may be working on?
Right now, we are actively producing resources on how to be missional in spaces where we are physically disconnected. For the first time, we have a narrative that is the same for our churches regardless of the context - rural, suburban, and urban. People are separated, they are fearful, and are anxious. Providing resources on how to be missional in this current cultural moment has been priority one.
In my work with Special Projects, we largely pursue opportunities that are helping the local church, and the denomination, "see around the corner". How can be more nimble, agile, and responsive, to how the Spirit of God is moving and how our culture is shifting and adapting? Right now, I'm steering work around innovation, and creating adaptive environments for the 21st Century church.
What attracts you to this type of work?
I believe in the power of God expressed through ordinary individuals. And this is the local church. It's everyday people going about their lives, with the rich deposit of good news inside of them. What does it look like for that person's gifts to be valued and affirmed? What does it look like to walk alongside of that person as they experience healing and wholeness? What does it look like to invest in that person and call out their purpose in such ways that they feel empowered and equipped to do whatever God has designed them to do? And then imagine doing that for a community, for a neighborhood. The church can stand as a mediator for that - a hands-on, high touch, sharing of life that helps a person or community experience the liberating justice of living into their God-given purpose.
You recently spoke at a Civil Righteousness Conference in Kalamazoo, MI., with a co-worker (Eduardo Rodriguez) about the Browning of America. What motivated you to speak at this Conference?
The hosting organization, Jesus Loves Kzoo, is close to my heart. Part of their DNA is the unity of the church around race and ethnicity. The Civil Righteousness movement, and its call to a church that is representative of the racial and ethnic diversity that I believe is God's heart, is important work. However, in many of these Christian spaces, the conversation around race tends to centralize around African American and Caucasian tensions. Those are valid. Yet the conversation around Hispanics, Latinos, and Latinas in America is coming to the church's doorstep, regardless of what they believe about immigration, refugess, etc. The US is becoming more "brown" - particularly with the advent of second and third generation Hispanics born in the US, American citizens. Many of our church communities were not ready, or are struggling to see what a gift this is to the church.
According to the Pew Research Center, from 2008 to 2018 Latinos accounted for 52% of all the population growth within the US. What are the ramifications of this growth for RCA and for the church in America, in general?
I can't speak for the entire RCA. What I can say, for churches in general, is that we have to start re-thinking what it means to share pews and share community work with our Latin brothers and sisters. There are a lot of assumptions out there that are potentially harmful to Latin communities. The assumption that we are uneducated, especially theologically, is especially harmful. That somehow if we were better educated we would conform to a very anglicized way of doing church is antithetical to the gospel. Or, we may be invited into spaces where deeply seeded prejudices exist, and we're asked to be spiritually and personally vulnerable with a church community that does not really know or love us.
The Brookings Institute reported on the US Census in January 2019 stating that for the first time, according to the US Census figures, non-whites under the age of 15 made up less than half (49.4%) of the U.S. population for this age group. What does this say about the future of growth for the RCA, and the church in America?
For every church community, it means re-thinking the way we approach ministry and mission. It means creating resources in dual languages. It means youth group leaders can't just send home resources in English to parents. It means that we have to become cultural anthropologists, students of Generation Z. They will expect, maybe even demand, a less homogenized experience than what most of us experience on a Sunday morning. Or at coffee hour. They will scrutinize the relationships of leaders, even the makeup of the leadership teams, to see if they reflect the current reality of their own experience. If we give ourselves a pass, and don't do the deep work of building multi-racial and multi-ethnic friendships and networks, we will be dismissed.
If there were one piece of advice you'd like to pass along regarding how mission engagement and special programs are changing, what would it be?
The world is so fluid. Everything is changing so quickly. In light of that, the one thing that I see appreciated across every generation group is consistency. What do you actually believe? And are you practicing that? In my office, I often repeat the mantra that "Clarity is kindness". Our treasured, historic institutions have been crumbling under the weight of a rapidly changing world. People will self select whether they want to be part of your tribe. They cannot do that if you are unclear.
What's the most important part of your work? What excites you?
I am excited when people are experiencing pure joy. In my work, that manifests when teams pull together to pull off what felt like an outlandish idea. It feels like the person who felt they had zero gifts to bring to the table, gets to the mic and delivers the instructions for a food drive and closes in prayer. It looks like diversity sitting at the table and laughing together over a meal, and then stopping to pray together, hands held. It also looks like the hungry being fed, the lonely being connected, and the poor finding what they need. It looks like healing, wholeness, wild imagination, and stories restored.
I know I've done my work when people realize that they have a creative God who has blessed them with something to give and bless others with. That can be imagination, humor, wisdom, compassion, strength. It brings me to tears with gratitude.
I will always be excited about people. And people discovering that God loves them, and made them.
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