Longtime pastor, Ezequiel J. Ortiz, remembered as a pillar of Sonoma County’s Latino community

A longtime pastor and founder of the first Spanish-speaking, non-Catholic church in Sonoma County, Ezequiel “Zeke” Ortiz firmly believed that if one prioritized three things in order, that person would live a happy life.

The first was God, the second was family and the third was community.

It was these principles that guided him to spread his religious beliefs and live a happy life, his daughter Priscilla Contreras said.

Ortiz died May 16 in Santa Rosa from health complications caused by diabetes and kidney disease, Contreras said. He was 81.

Remembered fondly by friends, family and members of his congregations, he was revered as a pillar of Sonoma County’s Latino community for his creation of Spanish-speaking evangelical churches around the county, including Centro Cristiano Evangelistico Iglesia on Hampton Way in Roseland.

“With all the pride and honor for God, my dad brought a new way of thinking for the community,” his son, Ezequiel “Zeke” Ortiz III, added.

Man of faith

Ortiz was born Jan. 20, 1941, in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.** He moved to the United States when he was 13 years old. As he got older, he felt a calling to teach others, said Narcissa M. Ortiz, 79, his wife of 59 years.

Ortiz met Narcissa in 1961 when his family visited the church where her dad was a pastor.

Narcissa, 16 at the time, said she immediately saw a quality in him that she admired and enjoyed.

“My mom asked me why I liked him so much,” she said. “I said, I don’t know, he reminded me of my dad, I loved the way he treats people.”

They married in 1963** in San Diego, the same year he was appointed as a pastor in Fresno where he remained for eight years.

The couple eventually moved to Sacramento with a dream of starting an evangelical church. While he wasn’t preaching, Ortiz had a job as a mover for Mayflower.

After a few years of leading services at their home because they didn’t have a building, the Ortiz family got word that a mission ran by Twin Hill Ranch, owned by Darrel Hurst, was looking to hold religious services for their predominantly Spanish-speaking workforce in Sebastopol.

The ranch that employed the apple orchard workers struck a deal with workers to provide them with transportation so they could do their laundry and grocery shopping, and in return the workers would attend an hours-long church service each weekend.

Ortiz and his family agreed to travel from Sacramento every weekend to host the church service in Sebastopol.

The service grew so popular that “we would all pack in like sardines,” Ortiz III said.

Eventually, though, the Ortizes grew tired of the commute. So, in 1980, they moved to Sebastopol and officially founded the Iglesia de Dios de Profecia.

As the church grew, the elder Ortiz eventually decided to expand and opened other branches of the church across Sonoma County, including in Roseland. Ortiz would ultimately lead this particular branch for three decades until he retired in 2008.

As all the branches began to increase in membership, their repertoire of musicians and bands who played during the services, which changed with Latino culture and grew more contemporary, also grew, Narcissa Ortiz said.

“We wanted them to feel like they were at home,” she said of those who attended their services. “People were coming because of the music, and then they ended up staying. And later, they're still here.”

'To God be the glory’

The popularity of the Spanish-speaking evangelical churches did not go unnoticed.

Ortiz was featured in two front-page articles in The Press Democrat in 1993.

The articles spotlighted a shift within the local Latino community away from Catholic churches and toward Bible-based churches. This was sparked by missions, such as Ortiz’s, whose goal was to evangelize the world, starting with the Sonoma County Latino population.

Ortiz III talked about his father’s feature in the paper with pride. He even recited a passage from the profile on his father.

“The Rev. Ezequiel Ortiz thrusts his right fist into the air,” Ortiz III said. “Sweat pours from his forehead. He wipes his brow with a handkerchief. He wipes his mouth. He jabs with his index finger. He takes his glasses off and wipes his forehead.

“’Are you with me?’ Ortiz calls out.” His son recited this line the way his father would have, in the full-tone, undulating voice of a pastor.

It’s this line that encompasses his father perfectly, he said. The elder Ortiz’s style of preaching was to encourage people and get them excited.

That encouragement extended beyond the pews, his family said, with Ortiz helping immigrants to become American citizens and then open their own businesses.

“He was a true patriot,” Ortiz III said. “He believed in constitution and believed that everybody from Mexico could have that opportunity.”

In 1987, when the first amnesty program began in California, Ortiz canceled services so he could help shuffle immigrant workers to Catholic Charities to get their application paperwork started.

He would take trips to San Francisco to the Mexican consulate sometimes, Contreras, his daughter, said.

“Dad really just wanted to help them assimilate, first with church and God, but then with their homes and families,” Ortiz III said.

Narcissa Ortiz said her husband’s favorite statement was “to God be the glory,” which is a biblical way of saying to be humble in everything.

“He told us to be servants to our community and to our family,” she said.

A celebration of life will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at Centro Cristiano Evangelistico Iglesia in Roseland. It will be followed immediately by his burial in Sebastopol across the street from where his first church was located at 1583 Sebastopol Road.

**Correction: This story has been updated to correct the year Narcissa and Ezequiel Ortiz were married, as well as Ezequiel Ortiz’s place of birth.

You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-526-8511 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler.