“I’ve always been involved with kind of edgy things,” Tirza shares. “The adventure has woven in and out of my spirituality my whole life.” As a child, she lived in a Christian commune with no running water or electricity, where her first memories are of making food together and gathering in community. As an adult, she carried that spirit forward by creating a peace-based activist circus in San Francisco, choreographing large-scale performances, teaching yoga and Ayurveda, and leading others into spiritual practice through movement, ritual, and service.

Before coming to Community Church, that same adventurous spirit was forged by years of intense responsibility and care. Tirza raised two children largely on her own, including a son with significant special needs who requires “24/7 care. There’s no stopping. There’s no break,” while she navigated a toxic marriage, built a business by necessity, and held her family together through years of instability. “My son is my greatest teacher,” she shared. “He shaped who I am, what it means to really support somebody who exists outside of what we consider the norm.”

In 2020, both of her children moved to Southern California. Tirza found herself traveling back and forth monthly, carrying love, responsibility, and grief, while quietly asking what her life was becoming now that survival was no longer the only task.

Community Church entered her life gently, through relationship. She had been around the grounds for years, using the kitchen for Ayurvedic cooking and attending her daughter’s basketball games, but it wasn’t until she helped a client get to church that she stayed herself. “I was really struck by Pastor Ben’s sermon,” she said. “He was speaking truths I really felt.” With a history of Christian trauma, stepping into a church was not easy, yet she found herself feeling unexpectedly at home.

Dreams of entering seminary had first come into view years earlier, when her children were small. “I quickly realized that was insane,” she says, laughing. It was only later, when her children were living in Southern California, that she had the space, and a nudge from a dear friend, to feel the timing was right to say yes.

As part of her seminary program, Community Church opened its doors. What began as an internship soon grew into deeper involvement and a role in faith formation. “Every single conversation here is about giving,” Tirza said. “How can we help? How can we support? That’s my language.”

Today, Tirza describes her life as shaped less by crisis and more by meaning. She is healing her relationship with God and Jesus, becoming “a baby again” in faith, trusted and held during a time of transformation. Moments like baptisms feel especially sacred. “From the indigenous lineage I study, the holy waters are the holder of the Holy Spirit,” she shared. “Everything we do with the water is so so so sacred. Each baptism is the deepest honor.”

At Community Church, her years of parenting, caregiving, and resilience now fuel a larger purpose: helping create sanctuary and community for neurodiverse kids like her son. “Parents can’t do it alone,” she said. “We need teams. We need community.” Community Church is a stepping stone on that path, a place where survival has softened into contribution, and where a life shaped by care is being trusted, nurtured, and shared.

Written by Linda Basso