He was born and raised in East Harlem, which was the cultural center of Puerto Rican life in New York. His conversion came at age of 15 in a store-front Pentecostal Church, a process which began when entered a dance hall because he heard the music. He thought it might be a social club, but actually it was a Pentecostal service. Within the week, as he said, “I gave my life to the Lord”. After that he began a rapid move into ministry. He soon attended a Bible institute, and by the age of nineteen he had his first pastorate. As he put it, “in indigenous Pentecostalism, one doesn’t need lots of education, the idea was to give you the toughest pastorate, and if you made it you were called!” His first church went from 9 to 300 in about 6 years.

As with many Pentecostal pastors, Rivera was self-supported. His early ministry coincided with the war on poverty. He took a job organizing welfare folks, and got caught up in the 60’s social movement. His life came to evidence a strange duality; he was organizing during the day, but at night telling his people to suffer now because heaven was coming. Of course it was difficult to explain to his congregation what he was doing when he got arrested. Rivera characterized this period as a search for wholeness: “How do I get a theology that responds to both personal and structural transformation?” Through his ministry Rivera had seen the Lord change the lives of gang members and drug addicts. But he also needed to respond to a system that was robbing people of dignity. So Rivera went to the New York Theological Center and ask to study with Bill Webber. The problem was that he needed a bachelor’s degree to study, which he did not have. Rivera was able to convince him to let him study because, as he put it, “our churches are full and yours are empty.” Webber essentially said “if you find me forty people like you, then I’ll get Lilly to fund an undergraduate program.” Rivera came back with sixty Pentecostals. The program was set up and Rivera received his first exposure to the liberal theological spectrum.

During his studies Rivera developed a reputation for knowing something about church growth and evangelism. As a result, a Reformed Church in America (RCA) consistory called him to serve as a consultant, and then asked him to be pastor of a dying Bronx church. In time he formed a Hispanic Council for the RCA. Within a few years, he was serving at the denominational office on the 18th floor of 475 Riverside Drive. For Rivera this was a new experience in the church, he didn’t know denominations worked this way. To him it looked like a Fortune 500 company. As he described it “It was my submersion into white America.” He ended up raising money and preaching in such different places as Sioux City, IA and Holland, MI. While he was received well, he could not help noticing cultural differences. Through this work he came face to face with the wider church and mainstream America.

This work did not blunt Rivera’s concern to combine Pentecostal piety with a social gospel. His ministry was a combination of evangelizing, altar calls, and raising issues of social justice at the same time. In communicating his concern for social justice, Rivera stated, “If these are people of the Word, have to use the Word — not the language of Marxist analysis or revolution.” Militating against Rivera’s message was his encounter with American civil religion in the guise of Christianity, with America as the New Israel. Rivera describes this different gospel, “If you’re doing well, if you are part of the mainstream, then you’re okay, you are part of the covenant. But if you are poor, you are sinful. That I think is the dominant paradigm for how the dominant culture relates to the poor – and it works in both the liberal and fundamentalist ways of treating us as objects of mission.” It was illuminating for Rivera to meet folk who were still solidly evangelical, who believed in justification by faith, and yet held these views. He learned that people can be connected to God, and yet still be a racist; that ethics do not always cross over. As Rivera stated, “That is still the challenge of the church — how to preach a gospel that personally transforms but also confronts the structures.” After 10 years with the RCA, a personal crisis lead to his withdrawal from active ministry. He continued to work training people and organizing on educational reform. He also preached occasionally, and increasingly felt he should do more.

Eventually he founded LPAC in 1993. The goal was to help Latino and other congregations develop holistic ministries. He characterizes their work as Christ-centered and evangelical, but also involved in social and economic issues. A major part of LPAC is to provide technical assistance to pastors and thus to develop Latino leadership. Funding for LPAC came from the Pew Charitable Trust. The original proposal was to train 120 people in 3 years, and 10% of them would start holistic ministries. In the end 20% did so. Examples of such ministries are group homes and after school centers. In this way LPAC has spawned other organizations. Many others who went through LPAC training returned to their congregations and began to shift their ministries to be more holistic.

Pastor Rivera described the basic philosophy of LPAC: the local congregation, as “the body of Christ, is the instrument of change. This is so because the only things we ‘own’ are the indigenous churches. The board and personnel of LPAC is totally Latino. Again, this is a matter of trying to build around the infrastructure that was available.” At the same time, LPAC recognizes that individual congregations cannot do everything, so it sponsors various institutes and programs.