Manifest_FullCopy_ColorForWeb_082116

By Young Adults, For the Church

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A Project of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan

manife
contents
7 Editor’s Note
KELLAN DAY
10 Local Introvert Seeks Church Home
KATIE VANZANEN
13 You Went As Proud As Any Crossed One
KAI KOOPMAN
14 When Love Displaces Fear
LUKE GETZ
17 Anatomy 101
JAMES KESSEL
18 Kneading
ANDREW HARMON
21 Church of the Holy Unknown
ANDREW HARMON
22 Dear Episcopal Church
PHILIP ZOUTENDAM

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est

27 Roots
DAVID WITWER

28 A Kingdom of Freedom
SARAH STRIPP

30 On Creed(s)
KAI KOOPMAN

35 Thy Kingdom Come
ANDY SAUR

36 Finding Community
NATALIE KOMPIK

40 Our Hope for Another Way
SCOTT WATSON

43 Glory
KRISTIE NEFF

44 Author Bios

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Editor’s Note

By Kellan Day

Two years ago, I was asked to speak on a panel at Calvin
College’s Worship Symposium. The panel consisted of
three Calvin students and myself and was devoted to the
topic of “Young Adults in the Church.” Droves of pastors,
middle-aged worship coordinators, and eager-to-under-
stand laity flocked to the sessions. The room was packed,
and every attendee leaned into the conversation with
untamed enthusiasm. After each panelist presented, one
woman in her late fifties asked an insightful question:
“Who bears the responsibility of forming intergenerational
relationships? Adults or young adults?” The question led
us panelists to ponder the responsibility of both parties –
young adults and adults – for cultivating relationships. We
answered “Both!” The sole burden of cultivating inter-
generational relationships and community cannot only

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rest upon “older adults.” Young adults must participate in
the conversation as well; we must show up, not as token
young adults in a congregation, but as a full members of
the Church.

Manifest exists, and is in your hands, because of young
adults choosing (and yearning) to be a part of the conver-
sation. This is us trying to hold up our end of the deal and
bear responsibility for the body that we belong to.

You’ll hear a variety of voices in Manifest; it is less of a
coherent narrative and more of a diverse collection. But
also be warned: don’t plan on walking away from this col-
lection with ten things you and your congregation can do
to attract more young adults. It’s not about that; it should
never have been about that. It’s about us being young
humans who wholeheartedly want to participate in the
discussion and live in community together. You need our
voices and we need yours. We all have responsibility as we
discuss the future of the church.

In this publication you will encounter compassionate,
bold, and faithful young adults. Scott and Philip, raised in
the evangelical church, challenge the Episcopal Church to
practice patience and discernment in this uncertain time.
You will hear the voice of Katie who seeks to find a new
church home in a new city – and the difficulty of doing that
alone. Natalie shares the complexities and gifts of belong-
ing to a young adult community and Andrew courageously
names and questions the Eucharistic implications for the
imaginative food-culture that many Millennials are pas-
sionate about. The poets share their vision through snap-
shots of hopeful, liturgical, and creation-centered imagery.
Luke unveils an important evolution in his spiritual journey
and Sarah, committed to witnessing and working for pro-
phetic change, tries hard and walks humbly as she serves
her new community in Jackson, Mississippi.

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I pray our voices will embolden you to live faithfully in this
complicated world and unpredictable church-terrain. We
bring our faith stories and our lives to the conversation.
We meet you at the table, ready to discover the many
manifestations of our God in this world. We invite you to
join us.

manifest 9

Local Introvert Seeks Church Home

By Katie VanZanen

Since moving to Boston, Massachusetts, this past fall, I’ve
visited half a dozen churches, shyly, and often alone. My
home denomination doesn’t have any churches in the
area, and geography is paramount when one relies on
public transportation. I’ve done Google maps searches
for “churches in my area” and painstakingly investigated
congregations along convenient bus and subway routes. I
read about statements of faith and read between the lines
about issues I care about. I look at their staff bios to see
where the pastors went to school. I explore their outreach
ministries and discipleship programs. And if the website
is too fancy, I get a little suspicious. A church that spends
its time and money on graphic design is not the kind of
church I want to join.

I’m not looking for glamour; I’m looking for honest fel-
lowship. When I walk into a church, I want to know who
the community is. I don’t want worship that entertains or
distracts me. I don’t want to be a target demographic to
whom a product is pitched. I want to be welcomed, but
not only because I’m a new face. I want to be welcomed
because I am welcome, and wanted, even just for one
Sunday. I’m not looking for a dozen new friends. I am
looking for a meaningful connection with one person,
two people, who make room for me without presumption,
expectation, or imposition.

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But my concerns about strange congregations are, at root,
all about me. It’s ironic that I have quietly focused my
search for a church home on my needs and preferences,
the idiosyncrasies of an introverted academic. Church isn’t
about me, and shouldn’t be, but it’s difficult to identify
other criteria by which to evaluate a congregation, and
even harder to know where I can serve after one or two
visits. I know that my idea of a “good” church is peculiar
to my tradition and temperament. I know that there will be
many churches I simply do not like, and many more peo-
ple who like those churches. It may, in fact, be a spiritual
discipline, when looking for a church, to repeat after Amy
Poehler: “Good for them, not for me.” I know that there is
no perfect church, and if were I to find one, there wouldn’t
be room for me.

I need an imperfect church with space for another imper-
fect member, but all those imperfections seem to get in
the way of the faith community I’m looking for. Seeking a
church home is a lonely, uncomfortable, and distressing
process. I’m most often distressed at my own selfishness
and judgment. The welcome I expect from the churches
I visit, the space to be my particular, peculiar self, is the
same grace I am compelled to extend to those congre-
gations, however I feel about their loud worship bands,
chirpy greeters, and discotheque-inspired PowerPoint
backgrounds. The triune God is worshiped in many ways.
I’m just trying to figure out how I best worship him, and to
what kind of collective worship I’m called.

Sometimes, faced with a cold walk or a long bus ride or an
early alarm clock or existential questions or all the above,
I stay home. I’ve done it often in the last six months. This
decision inspires almost as much self-doubt as church

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attendance. On the better bedside Sundays, I pull out my
copy of the Book of Common Prayer and read the litur-
gy of a morning prayer, or even a Sunday service. Alone
in a new city, I take comfort in remembering that around
ten o’clock Eastern Standard Time, loved ones around
the country are worshiping; even when I do not, they fill
sanctuaries with song. And together, we read the same
Scripture, and repeat the same words:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy
kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heav-
en. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our
debts, as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into tempta-
tion, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and
the power, and the glory forever.
Thy kingdom come.
Amen.

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You Went as Proud as Any Crossed One

By Kai Koopman

recoiling against folding your arms,
against any pious wanting for stone
auspices or remembered gold railings.
Orange haired and static, you upturn to
the compressed rice disk. The positive side
charges your eyes, blue spools, through which you
plead for a wedge of severed wafer. Given
to the undone iteration of your
body – fingers curled, wanting to touch – you
are unfurled in the crossing. You gaze up
to challenge only retreating hands.
Father’s holy shoulders shudder at the
little knelt you, his own fine recoiling.

manifest 13

When Love Displaces Fear

By Luke Getz

If you were to die today, where would you go?

Growing up in Bible Belt America, I faced this question
everywhere. It was posted on billboards and bumper
stickers; it came up in conversation — especially in youth
groups; it confronted me, most frequently, in my own soul.

But facing this question was something I really didn’t care
to do. There was a culture of fear in my Christian commu-
nity, and I found myself caught in it.

The message of salvation was always the same: to free
yourself from eternal damnation, you needed a relation-
ship with Jesus. That kind of fear mongering seemed like
an effective method to draw people in, and so it was com-
mon. It meant that many of my Christian friends felt the
need to be constantly “on fire for God,” and they pitied
those who lacked their close relationship with Christ. It
also meant that others, who didn’t share their passion for
the church, attended only because they didn’t want to go
to Hell.

Through most of my high school years, I felt no genuine
connection to Christ. It was like I was suffering from spir-
itual Stockholm syndrome — embracing and loving this
great, terrible God in order to avoid pain and suffering. To
me, the church’s primary function seemed more preven-
tative than celebratory. If you embraced the church, you
would be spared the eternal flames of Hell; if you dis-

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owned the church, your family would mourn your soul.

In college, though, things changed. I returned to the
church and found myself believing in Christ with a fresh
vigor. And I knew that my ideas about faith had to change.
Living in fear had failed me in the past, and I saw how
unsustainable it was. I stopped questioning my salvation. I
started asking myself new questions. I began to reevaluate
what it means to live in Christ.

Two questions in particular helped my view of the church.
The first question was this: What does it mean to go to
Heaven, and why would we want to go there? All my life
I had been less focused on Heaven and more focused on
just avoiding Hell. I never stopped to consider what Heav-
en would really be like.

In all honesty, none of us can really be sure. In 1 Corinthi-
ans 2:9 we’re told that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor human heart conceived, what God has prepared for
those who love him.” We know that Heaven is good be-
cause God is good, but we cannot fully know what He has
in store for us.

So, again, why would we ever want to go to Heaven? I
think a second question helps answer this one: What does
it mean for me to be a human being?

Looking back at the book of Genesis, we see that God
creates man in his own image. This creating in God’s
image implies a desire for deep companionship and part-
nership. There is a Greek word, koinonia, which means to
be in communion or participation with someone else. Just
as we long to commune with each other, so God longs to
share in koinonia with us, and to enter the body of Christ
is to experience that communion with God. We are bro-
ken, but through the blood of Christ, we are able to return
to the Creator. The joy of Heaven is not food, drink, or

manifest 15

music — it is perfect koinonia with Jesus Christ and all his
saints. Humans have been designed for this communion,
and to resist it is to deny a fundamental part of our very
essence.
While the fear-mongering crowd is not wrong in their
belief in Heaven and Hell, their approach is unhealthy and
unhelpful. God does not desire to control us — if that was
his desire, he would do so. No, God’s desire is for us to
choose communion with him. He is not a hateful God, but
he is a jealous one. We are his creation, and he longs for
us to love each other and him. Hell is indeed terrible, but
worse than fire or pain is the denial of grace and the loss
of koinonia with God. We should embrace Christ because
of the love he offers, not because of the fear of hell.
In 2 Timothy 1:7, Paul writes that “God has not given us
a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound
mind.” Instead of seeing Church as a one-way ticket to
Heaven, we should see it as an opportunity to celebrate
communion with our Creator. When we spread Christ’s
love instead of fear, we show the true kingdom of God as
it was meant to be.

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Anatomy 101

By James Kessel

You think you want this body.
Diverse members, one purpose;
focused eyes and perceptive ears,
strong hands helping with
a heart in the right place.

You say you want this body,
but have you considered
my wrinkles and folds
covering never exposed surfaces,
desperate for touch?

What about that sore back in the morning
or the sweat stains on my t-shirts?
Besides, my hair’s a mess and my
figure is nothing to behold
(not to mention the anxiety).

Do you really want this body?
The nail-pierced hands,
scourge-scarred back and all?
One question: who
will wear the crown of thorns?

The thought much easier
than to embody.

manifest 17

Kneading

By Andrew Harmon

I grew up with the security, comforts, and privileges of
a good home. I enjoyed good meals surrounded by a
caring family. I was formed by, and found meaning in, my
home as well as my school and my large evangelical youth
group.

But now I am a twenty-something, grown up and sent out
into the world to find formation and meaning for myself.
And I am not alone in this: my peers, my fellow Millennials,
are developing new ways of meaning — often apart from
the social institutions of older generations.

One meaning-making venture that captivates me is food
culture. For me, and for many Millennials, this culture
grows out of our social and economic disillusionment. Our
mistrust of institutions pushes us to form our own sustain-
ing economy outside the financial status and direction
that aging institutions offer. I find myself spending money
at local farms, coffee shops, and restaurants run by fellow
Millennials. Though we are accused of lazing away from
success, sidestepping the venerable ladder of corporate
America, we are actually finding success in new, creative
ways in the local economy. The newsworthy Millenni-
al exists, but looks different: She is an entrepreneurial
restaurateur committed to both local sourcing and hole-in-
the-wall-ness. She employs over-educated and underem-
ployed — or sometimes seemingly unemployable — folks
to run the business with her.

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Food as a culture also transcends the restaurant in my cir-
cles. The traditional family meal may have been knocked
from its pedestal, to the chagrin of our parents’ genera-
tion, but if we struggle through holiday meals with family,
we joyously anticipate the annual Friendsgiving celebra-
tion. This sacred meal accommodates friends displaced
by choice or accident — an international student or a
friend who identifies as LGBTQ whose old home is a pit of
overt hate or subtle aggressions. With our budding social
geography we appreciate food in new ways. We live with
other families, long-term partners, friends, idea-sharing
comrades, or cute pets. Community happens intentionally
or unintentionally, often over plates of food.

Food, for me and my peers, means more than simple sus-
tenance. Culture and community springs forth in a mystical
way that is physical, social, emotional, and spiritual. And
many of my friends follow a passion to pursue food justice
and development work. As a table with friends slows us
down, or a quick bite provides an opportunity to support a
friend’s business, a deep understanding of food takes hold
that connects with our sense of justice and peace. We
encourage efforts to do justice and spread inclusion by
growing, producing, and consuming food.

Food has taken hold of us. Deep in our character, food
makes holy connections that exhilarate us and simply
make sense of the world. I find this fascinating in light of
the one trend that Millennials are most known for: the
abandonment of religious identity. 35% of Millennials
ascribed to no religion in the US Census, earning the title
“the Nones.” The old understanding of spirituality and
meaning is changing in our collective experience.

I stand at the margins of Christianity, disagreeing, partici-
pating, observing, and listening. From here, I eat with my
church congregation of mostly white folks who are proud

manifest 19

of their potlucks and community meals. I also eat with a
diverse set of neighbors excited by my church’s food but
not by its cultural baggage. I eat with young black queer
Christian activists, with Latina secular humanist Baby
Boomers, and with Millennial “Nones.”
I eat and wonder, with the last vapors of Eucharist on my
breath: does my less Christian generation understand the
power of this mysterious meal more than my fellow pa-
rishioners? Am I finding the radical divine providence and
spiritual community more in a shared meal than the teach-
ing and function of my church? With these meaningful ex-
periences in a culture of food, do I incorporate or critique
the Eucharistic practice at my church? I see real manna at
the food pantry from my urban neighborhood CSA farm.
My peers find existential nourishment in a shared meal
that reflects the sacramental truth of the Eucharist. We Mil-
lennials work from the ground we till and the institutions
we deconstruct to cultivate meaning in our situations.
I eat and wonder: is God in the food we prepare, the cul-
ture we create?

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Church of the Holy Unknown

By Andrew Harmon

What is this, Church?
What are you?
My peers are leaving - for other fulfillment.
But it is not they who have lost something,
for they are still hungry.
I stay only because I am a pushover and a pleaser.
You could be a welcoming place for the
widow
orphan
queer person of color
friend
enemy
You could feed the neighborhood. Spread the gospel.
You could foster prophetic imaginations. And listen.
But don’t ask why we are leaving.
Don’t capitalize on what we are eating.
Just sit. Listen.
Celebrate.
And wait.

manifest 21

Dear Episcopal Church,

By Philip Zoutendam

We know you want us — need us to survive, in fact — and
so you want to know what we want. What will get young
people like us in the door? What will get us to stay, to
serve in the liturgy and sit on vestries, to pay our tithes, to
baptize our children?

Here is the truth, which we may not always articulate or
even know very clearly ourselves, and which may at first
appear just another annoying Millennial irony:

What we want is for you not to give us what we want.

We are the generation that, in our families and equally in
our churches, has been given too much of what we want.
We have ridden that carousel, going up and down, around
and around, and ultimately nowhere at all. We don’t want
a new seat on the same ride. We want off.

We are children waking up on November first. We do not
want more candy.

Talk with us and you’ll find that many of us are refugees
from the Christian pop culture boom of 90s Evangelical-
ism. We grew up in a church re-created in our own image:
video screens and video games at youth group, rock
bands on the church stage and on our Christian radio sta-
tions, pastors who dressed down and “led conversations”
instead of preaching sermons, and then released us to life
groups and life hubs and hub team family fellowship fun
groups.

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By the time we reached our twenties, we had gone round
enough times to see that it was soft and amorphous,
subject to change when a new trend blew in. Our churches
and their fads felt always younger than us.

So we left, and we traveled backwards in time, and many
of us have come here. It’s possible that some of this migra-
tion is itself part of a fad, and some newcomers, growing
tired of high church as the next new thing, will pick up and
move on.

But the Episcopal Church stands at a crossroads, at the
intersection of ancient and modern and Catholic and Prot-
estant. This church is, consciously so, in the very middle of
things, and that is so important for those of us who grew
up arch-Protestant but yearn to be part of the “one holy
catholic and apostolic church” — but who also cannot
forsake, in the way the Roman church would ask us to, the
places and patterns of belief in which we first met God.

And so, we have come here. We hope to stay. We hope
to baptize our children here and catechize them as Epis-
copalians. (And what does the Episcopal Church need
more urgently than children?) We hope to pass on to them
a tradition more durable and coherent than the one we
received (though we bless our parents for loving us and
teaching us as they did). We hope for something solid,
something stable.

What we want most deeply is to be embraced by a church
that does not welcome us with a question — “What do
you want?” — but with a statement, spoken with the calm
confidence of age: “Welcome. Here is what you need.”

Is that what we find here?

Honestly, I fear that it is not.

manifest 23

I have watched for a while, from the outside and from the
inside. I have listened and read and attended. What I have
seen in the church, at least as a national institution, is not
confidence or stability but frenzy. I have seen a church in a
furious hurry to change just about everything.

I am still here, for now, despite that. In fact, I’m not just
visiting anymore; I’m moving in. I’ll be received as a full
member of the Episcopal Church the very day after I finish
writing this. In spite of all my misgivings, I have chosen to
stay, in part because I think “choosing” a church is part of
the American Evangelical myth I’m trying to escape. I’m
not sure that kind of choice is my prerogative.

But I can’t shake the ominous feeling that I am moving
into a house being surveyed this very moment for dem-
olition. The place has already been remodeled — rooms
rearranged, walls knocked out, furniture replaced — but
that doesn’t seem to be enough. They’re outside right
now, eying the foundation, talking about bulldozers.

That may have been just a vague (and pessimistic) im-
pression until recently, but it’s been cemented with the
prospect of (another) Prayer Book revision, no longer just a
suggestion but an official resolution of the General Con-
vention: 2015-A169: “Requires the Standing Commission
on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) to prepare a plan for the
comprehensive revision of the current Book of Common
Prayer and present that plan to the 79th General Conven-
tion.”

What worries me so much about this looming change is
that it truly does jeopardize the foundation for who we are
and how we live as Episcopalians. I have found that I can
live with other changes, many of which looked like a Rubi-
con from the other side. But I could live with those innova-
tions and revolutions precisely because of this foundation,

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precisely because common worship and common prayer
meant that it was not a matter, ultimately, of living with
changes, but of living with people — people with whom
I affirm and pray things that are older than all of us. I fear
that this too, the thing that binds us together in the midst
of so much change, is about to be changed.

And I fear it is going to be changed, and maybe lost, in
my own name. Doubtless the new liturgists and their com-
mittees, urgent to attract young people, feel pressured to
fit our services, our language and patterns and prayers, to
the times. But I say again, I am tired of the times, and I am
tired of churches trying to follow them, running after them,
breathlessly trying to keep up with them.

I pine for the timeless, the old, even the odd. I, and other
young people like me, yearn for roots, even though roots
sometimes look gnarly and weird.

My attitude, I confess, is essentially conservative, and that
is a dangerous word even to whisper in the Episcopal
Church if you want anyone to listen. But this is not about
sex or gender or marriage or ordination. I’m not asking to
re-litigate all the fights of the last two decades. My plea is
far simpler, and it springs from a basic, obvious, uncontro-
versial truth: some things are worth conserving.

My plea is this: Slow down.

Change will and should happen as the church responds to
the Spirit. But the change I see in our church seems driven
by inertia and habit and hurry, not by wisdom or discern-
ment. I see little evidence that we have stopped to think
about what exactly we are hurrying towards and what we
are hurrying to leave behind.

Please slow down. And please don’t be fooled: hip and
new — whether music or morals or language or liturgies

manifest 25

— is not really what young people want.
Please remember that you are not just the Episcopal
Church. You are part of the Anglican church and inherit a
rich heritage of the Anglican communion. You do not get
to be and do whatever you want. You are not making this
up as you go along.
That is a great gift in a world that is glutted on novelty and
bored with continual self re-creation. If you recognize that
heritage and hold it fast as the grace that it is, young peo-
ple like me will keep coming, and we will stay, and your
church will still be around to ask, fifty years from now, what
it is that young people need.
Sincerely,
A Young Person

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Roots

By David Witwer

Time cacophonies by, recitations
of the memory in a worn-
out cell phone,

maybe one of the seven
I’ve buried, and does that make
me old or young?

Perhaps I’m both,
like when I wait patiently for bread
but then stand too quickly,

jostling my neighbor like
a cough. We’re
spare-part saints,

weak in the knees, the
kind who breathe in conversations,
who fear above all

that our prayers are
lost in the dark. There’s
nothing profound about us;

we’ve put down roots in
hard ground, the kind Jesus
warned us about,

but, on some Sundays,
we taste moisture just
beneath the stones.

manifest 27

A Kingdom of Freedom

By Sarah Stripp

Often people tell me I can’t save the world. It’s said gently,
albeit with pity: “Well, Sarah, you know you can’t save the
world.” It’s meant to take a burden off my shoulders, to
stop me from feeling the weight of the world. It’s meant
with the best intentions, and often comes from those who
love me most.

But something about these words lingers with me, and
troubles me.

It’s not because I think those people wrong, or because
I want them to have more faith in me, or even because
I think the world is actually mine to save. But I’m usually
told this when I talk about good things — working for a
nonprofit, or living in under-resourced areas — or bad
things — when I vent the frustrations that surface when it
seems like the whole world cares more about wealth and
power and comfort than the righteousness, peace, and joy
that mark the Kingdom of God.

I worry that too often we in the church have used this
phrase as an excuse to ignore those very good, or very
bad, things. Well, the world is not mine to save, so I will
continue to live in it as it is. Oppression, racism, hatred,
fear — these are all unfortunate, but I can do so little, so
what’s the point?

Every week, we go to church and proclaim the incarnation,
the cross, the resurrection — powerful acts of redemption

28

and victory. We proclaim that God has overcome sin and
death, and we pray boldly and confidently for peace and
justice in our own cities and the world. And yet, it seems
as if we do not believe our own words. We fear the things
we pray against just as much as those who never utter
such prayers.

I know I cannot save the world. Even the church collective-
ly cannot save the world. But I wonder if we have stopped
believing in a God who came to save. A God who has
ushered in a kingdom of freedom from oppression, and
love instead of fear. A God who has promised to be with
us always, to the end of the age. I worry that the church
has forgotten who our God is.

All around us we see a world that tells us we are slaves —
slaves to hatred and terror, to wealth and power, to fear
and chaos. But the church is called to recognize a reality
that is so much greater, because we find our citizenship
in the Kingdom of God, which is here and now and in our
very midst. And as we pray for it to become fully known,
we must respond as people who do know, already, that
it is real. It is a reality where we put away our weapons,
where we serve our neighbors first, where we seek to give
rather than receive. Death and poverty and humility are no
longer the things we fear, for it is the poor and the meek
and the merciful, we are taught, who know this reality
best.

Sisters and brothers, I do not ask that we try to save the
world; our efforts would be futile. But my hope for the
church is that we begin to open ourselves up to the true
reality around us — that we free our hearts from the things
our society tells us should hold them captive. Jesus came
that we “may have life, and have it abundantly” (John
10:10). I pray we will start living this abundant life today.

manifest 29

On Creed(s)

By Kai Koopman

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

So begins the Nicene Creed. In many ways, this is the
fulcrum of our Sunday morning Eucharist. We move from
the Lessons and the Sermon—through which God disclos-
es Himself to us through salvation history—and stand to
affirm our faith in the present tense. When we rise to say
the Creed, we begin, again, to speak and act in faith. And
we begin with the words, “We believe in one God.”

As Episcopalians, our first act of faith is catholic confession
to the Truth of one God. If I’m truly confessing, though, I
must admit that confessing the Truth (capital T) feels impo-
lite according to some strange secular calculus. It puts the
firm in affirming our faith together.

Like any good Millennial, most of the time I’d rather be-
gin, “We believe that people are free to acknowledge the
truth they find fit.” Yet I confess the Creed, and wonder if
I presume to corner the market on Truth in relation to my
friends. What a jerk move, to tell another person that they
are cosmically misled. And yet, I—and we—confess the
Creed.

We believe in one God,

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If I’m clear-headed, I take comfort from the Creed’s func-
tion as an anchor and mantra. If other spiritual and re-
ligious traditions have creeds, why not have one, too?
In fact, the Creed begins in the same way as Islam’s and
Judaism’s central confessions:

Shema Yisrael
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One

Shahada
There is no God but God
and Muhammad is His prophet.

Nicene Creed
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

Some days, I would really like to stop right here. Yet, I
continue. I continue to claim a very particular version of
salvation history in Jesus. And, if I’m being honest, the
particularities much more than the sweeping claims are
what tie me in confessional knots. In my perfect world, my
Creed-saying wouldn’t escape the nave; when I’d leave,
I’d return to my public, respectful, relativistic self.

Yet, I confess the Creed. Sometimes it’s enough to jar my
jaw out of joint. I continue to point to Christ as God, as
incarnate, as man, as resurrected, as judge. I—and we as
confessional Christians—continue proliferate, complicate,
and particularize God’s identity. I’m just as puzzled as I
must be puzzling to others, especially those who are on
the fence about religion at all.

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Our puzzling-ness, to my surprise, has been the focus of
recent national, secular news attention. Since when do you
hear, on NPR, during your after-work commute, commen-
tators parsing the finer points of Trinitarian Theology?
When do secular commentators pay such keen attention
to the sounds, syllables and story of our first act of faith?

And what would these commentators say next? Compared
to the world’s other monotheisms, aren’t Christians the
brash brother to more patient faiths? Perhaps the Nicene
Creed has struck the current verve, but confessing it isn’t
exactly what secular culture would deem “inclusive,” is it?

As the late, great religious historian, Jaroslav Pelikan
contends, the doctrine of the Trinity, paradoxically, was the
effort to preserve monotheism. The heft of the opening
words, “We believe in one God” has knit Christians across
time and space, for 17 centuries and counting.

Pelikan, a collector of Christian creeds, reminds me of the
Creed’s poetry, which recounts the one God who was pres-
ent at the beginning: God, the Spirit of God, and Christ,
the Logos, who were there, and, with one breath, began
(Genesis 1, John 1). “The first Unitarians were the Trinitari-
ans,” he quips.

We believe in one God,

As a refugee resettlement worker in West Michigan, I’ve
discussed faith with Muslim co-workers, friends and com-
munity members. They would probably express reasoned
disagreement at the Creed’s insistence on God’s three

1 ‘Do Christians And Muslims Worship The Same God?’ All Things
Considered. NPR. December 20, 2015. http://www.npr.org/2015/12/20
/460480698/do-christians-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god

32

ness, and emphasize different aspects of Jesus’ nature and
mission. But, they would also say, “There is one God.”

I relish interfaith dialogue partially because I can’t shake
my hippie-self’s need for peace, love and equanimity.
But, to my dismay, the dialogue is sometimes hard. I’ve
realized that I have the propensity to say things that are
off-key, even as I try to develop an open and welcoming
disposition. In this context of my own limitation, for once,
the Creed has reconciled me—a Millennial—to something.
Thankfully, the Creed is not my truth.

My version of monotheism may be different from that of
some neighbors, but as a child of our one God, I have
arrived at an unalienable sense of our collective bond—
not our difference. Says Dr. Pelikan: “[T]he world is much
more pluralistic than it is relativistic.” With one God, I can
receive those with other beliefs not only as others but as
siblings.

Dr. Pelikan tells us about history: “...The most important
systematic formulation of Jewish theology, A Guide to the
Perplexed by Rabbi Moses Maimonides, Rambam, was
written under the protection of a Muslim ruler and written
in Arabic. And the most important statement of Eastern
Orthodox Christianity ever written was entitled “On the
Orthodox Faith” by John of Damascus, protected by the
Sultan of Damascus.”

For the two minutes I’m confessing the Creed, I can’t step
back into relativism. Instead, I make a more cosmic and,
I’m coming to realize, a more hopeful stand. My confes-
sion is not about which truth I (we) am (are) witness to, and
which, by extension, is discredited. Confessing the Creed
is singing God’s adoption speech immersed in the waters
of ancient monotheism. It is beginning again at witness-

manifest 33

ing the Truth of one God—which is to say the whole Truth
about the whole God, for the whole world.
We believe in one God.
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

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Thy Kingdom Come

By Andy Saur

Out here in the barren low lands
I dream of hills
that echo back my name.
Even the smallest incline will do
if I prostrate before it
offer my words—
a whispered prayer in the dirt.

Such a posture has a prophet made,
the wilderness resounding
with the voice of God.
In this wasteland
of worn hands and hearts,
cracked and creviced by the sun,
everything begins anew.

Reduced by heat and time,
we are deserts
of concentrated hope
awaiting the spring rains
which bring forth primroses—
a gleaming white bursting
from the broken soil.

manifest 35

Finding Community

By Natalie Kompik

In many ways, “community” has been my life’s work.
And at the same time, ironically, it has eluded me in my
own life. Facilitating community for others has given me
a sense of meaning and purpose for the last ten years in
different contexts: first with adults with special needs in
a nonprofit organization, then at a church in the young
adult and college ministry, and most recently with college
students on a college campus. Although I have devoted
my life to building community around me, I have in many
ways felt like I have been on the outside looking in.

At times, I recognized and lamented this void in my life;
other times, I resisted acknowledging it. I had close friends
and family whom I loved and who loved me, but this sense
of “community” seemed like an unattainable ideal for
my own life. The reasons for this lack of community in my
life are seemingly endless: time, fear, compartmentaliza-
tion – just to name a few. I had given my life to facilitate
community for others, but I was unsure of where to find
community myself.

Two years ago, a friend invited me to attend an Episcopal
parish with her one Sunday morning. While in college,
I had learned that I loved the rhythms of the liturgical
church. My work, however, was so intertwined with my
church attendance that I had not been able to properly
explore a liturgical tradition until this invitation. So on that
frigid February morning, I made my way to Grace Episco-

36

pal Church, and have continued making my way to Grace
each Sunday (and other days as well) since then. Much like
the cold Michigan winter, it took some time for my mem-
ories of liturgy to thaw and for new life to spring from the
frozen soil of my soul. As I began to grow comfortable, I
made an effort to invite others to share their lives with me.
And, with perhaps more difficulty, I began to invite others
into my life, receiving the gift of being known by new-
found friends at Grace.

During the fall of 2015, the young adults of the church em-
barked on an experiment of knowing and being known by
one another, and I was invited to be a part of the group.
Although a little resistant and suspicious at first (because
I had not been asked to help lead the community – it
has been my life’s work after all!), I realized that I needed
the experience of simply participating in the community.
Friendships were formed, meals were enjoyed, conflict
arose, discernment occurred, the group transformed.

Being a part of this community has not only deepened my
appreciation for community, but it has also shaped how I
view my current role of facilitating community with others.
And, as I look into the future, I anticipate that facilitating
community will remain a large part of what I am called to
do.

When I ask myself what gives my life meaning, why I do
what I do, the first word that comes to mind is community.
Honestly, though, this feels like a bit of a cop-out. But then
when I think about some of the things I have experienced
from being a part of the community at Grace, words like
reconciliation, wholeness, healing, and transformation fill
out the picture. These words are embodied by the peo-
ple who I have invited into my life and who have invited
me into theirs: The friends who helped me move on a

manifest 37

freezing winter day, and then who helped me move again
six months later on the hottest day in August. The friend
who was a truth-teller on my behalf even when I didn’t
know I needed it. The friend who walked alongside me as
I staggered and stumbled through anxiety, betrayal, and
loss. The friend who, unsolicited, gave me a book that
gave words to my unspoken journey of doubt. The mar-
ried couple who hand me their child to hold when I need
reminders of goodness and innocence. The friend who
invites others to be vulnerable and experience wholeness
in conversation and through the written word. The many
friends who administer the Eucharist to me each Sunday
morning. The friends who gather regularly to share a meal
and conversation and poems and readings and art.

Each of these memories and experiences have in some
way facilitated transformation and healing in my life and
fueled my desire to help others to experience this kind
of community. We cannot and will not live in community
perfectly. But these fellow travelers have made tangible to
me the presence and reconciling work of God, even when
I don’t grasp it in real-time. As I reflect on the question
of where I find community and experience the presence
of God, the answer has risen easily in my mind: the com-
munity that gathers at Grace and the liturgy wherein we
receive the sacraments of grace and reconciliation.

These experiences help me make sense of what gives
my life meaning and what those things are that “[I] can’t
not do.”² I think of my desire to build bridges within the
larger, often-divided Church. I consider the joy I gain after
helping college students navigate roommate conflict,
moving from tension to peace. I think about walking with

2 Parker J. Palmer. Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Voca-

tion. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, 2000, pg. 25.

38

students as they process past wounds from their families
and then proceed to do the difficult work of forgiveness
and acceptance. As I reflect on my own journey of recon-
ciling the good with the bad in my life, I realize that I want
to help others do the same. I consider how fully present I
am when I offer the cup of the Eucharist to my community
at Grace, reconciled to God and to one another through
the body and blood of Christ.

It is a joint effort, this experience of community marked by
reconciliation. I have needed others to invite me into their
lives for me to know them, and to be known. I have had to
tear down the walls I have built around myself that sepa-
rate me from others, and even separate me from myself. I
have to invite them to know me (even and especially the
parts that I’d rather they not know) and for me to grow
in knowing myself. It is not only a joint effort, but also an
ongoing one. Although the ultimate act of reconciliation
was fulfilled on the cross, we must continue the work of
reconciliation within and amongst ourselves, inviting again
and again, reminding ourselves and one another of this
essential work.

I am grateful for both the formal and informal expressions
of community and God’s presence in my life. I am thankful
for the way the work of reconciliation of the cross makes
possible the work of reconciliation within myself, with oth-
ers and with God. This work is what gives my life meaning,
and, I suspect, has something to do with my calling.

manifest 39

Our Hope for Another Way

By Scott Watson

When I was asked to contribute to this collection of work,
I felt conflicted over my ability to do so. In many ways
I still feel like an outsider looking in on the Episcopal
Church, peering through an open red door and seeing
a strange, yet familiar, world unfold before me. Growing
up in the culture of American evangelicalism, dare I say
even fundamentalism, my low church instincts have often
made aspects of the Anglican tradition seem unfamiliar
and foreign. And yet, because of the paradigm-shifting
theological training I have been blessed with over the last
few years, something about a tradition claiming reformed
Catholicity beckoned me to its doorsteps.

It’s an interesting experience coming into the Episcopal
Church as a young evangelical. There is the perception
that my wife and I have been drawn to the Episcopal
Church because of its stance on particular social issues,
or because of a more general rejection of evangelicalism
on our part (this has come from both Episcopalians and
my friends in the broader evangelical world). It can put us
in an awkward spot when neither are the case. Truthfully,
what has drawn us into the Episcopal Church is the chance
to encounter, through Word and Sacrament, the historic
Catholic faith - what Anglicans like to call “the faith re-
ceived”. An historic expression of the faith embodied in
the liturgical life of the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic
Church; this is what brings us into the Episcopal Church.

40

Going against assumptions, my wife and I do not look to
the Episcopal Church to be either progressive or conser-
vative; these are false dichotomies that this broken world
presents to us as the only options. As Calvin famously
stated, the human heart is an idol factory, and these false
options are idols that compete for our imaginations and,
ultimately, our loyalty. Our hope for this church, and for
this diocese, is that another path is tread, another option
chosen, another way opened through the work of Jesus
Christ and made available by his Holy Spirit (a via media
perhaps?). The Church is called to live in this world, for the
sake of this world, but not to be defined by this world. The
Spirit that the Father has sent to dwell amongst his peo-
ple can empower us to divest ourselves from the world’s
self-destructive ways. Our hope in worshiping in the Epis-
copal Church is to go beyond such dynamics, to go back
into the Church’s history in order to find a more faithful
way forward.

Will we find our hope fulfilled in the Episcopal Church? I
honestly do not know. There are days and conversations
that leave me confident. And then there are times when I
am left asking myself, exasperated, “What are we doing
here?!” But we hope, and pray, that the Episcopal Church,
and particularly this diocese, will be a place where we can
define ourselves not as the world would have us, as Dem-
ocrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals, people on
one side of an issue or another, but as baptized Christians.
This means that we are people who have died (been cruci-
fied) to our own agendas and are now followers of a cruci-
fied Messiah who rejected the false options the world set
before him. When we are tempted with the world’s fallen
choices, let us choose another way - the way of holiness,
of new creation life in the Spirit. With this hope for the
Church in mind, it would seem apropos to allow the apostle
Paul to have the last word, exhorting us to a new reality:

manifest 41

Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no
longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds.
They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from
the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of
heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned
themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every
kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ!
For surely you have heard about him and were taught in
him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your
former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by
its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and
to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according
to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:17-24
Amen.

42

Glory

By Kristie Neff

Close your eyes and bow your head.
Give glory to God, small child!

I say, I am.

The sting of Kentucky bourbon burns through my throat,
Lava Falls’ churning waves explode inside my eardrums,
And my eyes are frozen to Lake Michigan’s wintry banks.
Dirt crusts my fingers as I pick parsley, basil, and thyme,
And stories spin like a lazy susan around my seasoned
table.

Vigils awoke my soul from the darkest night,
And I’ve sung into Zambian skies Compline’s lullaby.
L’Engle and Oliver are my companions into the wild,
And so my neighbors’ stoops are worn with evening wind-
ing.

I sometimes bathe my nightmares in pain-squeezed tears,
And, later, laughter erodes the rules set straight as pews.
Finally, on feeble feet I climb to Anglemeyer Lake to chase
fish and dreams.

I say, open your eyes and lift up your head.
Glory! We are fully human.

manifest 43

manifest
author biographies

Kellan Day is preparing for the priesthood. She recently
moved to the South for seminary and the excellent rock
climbing.

Luke (Atticus) Getz is a graduate of Calvin College. He
continues to study theology and philosophy in Grand
Rapids, MI.

Andrew Harmonis a Community Health Worker and a
dreamer. His dreams include bikes, food, laughter, and
lots of music, in service to a flourishing community.

James Kessel hails from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where
he lives with his wife, Tina. There, he studies theology and
dabbles in filmmaking on the side. He is interested in the
integration of theology, psychology, and culture, and enjoys
music, food, books, the outdoors, and the Detroit Tigers.

Natalie Kompik spends her time getting good books
into the hands of readers working for Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co. after having spent a number of years
in church ministry and higher education. She enjoys
traveling, learning new things, trying new food, and
good conversations with friends.

Kai Koopman lives in Sewanee, Tennessee. For the past
three years, he developed an interest in interfaith dialogue
while working alongside refugees in West Michigan.

44

Kristie Neff enjoys Mary Oliver, Rilke, playing outside,
and keeping up with friends across the country. She
and her husband transitioned their home to Northwest
Arkansas, where she works as Director of Campus
Ministries at John Brown University.

Andy Saur serves as the Executive Assistant at The
Colossian Forum. In his spare time, Andy seeks sunshine
and an empty city bench where he tries to write (often
failingly).

Sarah Stripp grew up in West Michigan, but currently
lives in Jackson, Mississippi. She works for a community
development focused non-profit, Springboard to
Opportunities, and if she’s not at work, she’s probably
trying to find something new to create in the kitchen.

Katie Van Zanen is an English instructor and graduate
student in Boston, Massachusetts studying literatures
of migration, citizenship, and identity. She owns three
Michigan Awesome t-shirts.

Scott Watson, his wife Jeri, and their daughter Miriam
worship at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids. He is
a graduate student at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.

David Witwer is a filmmaker living with his wife in Orlan-
do, Florida. He seeks God’s presence everywhere, but
especially in the art of Haruki Murakami, Francis de Sales,
Lars Von Trier, Underoath, and so on. David loves explor-
ing the backcountry as well as discovering new breweries.

Philip Zoutendam is a former Texan and a former English
teacher. He works at Eerdmans Publishing, where he
pretends to know about theology and also hosts The
EerdCast, an author interview podcast. He and his wife
Erin are parishioners at St. Andrews in Grand Rapids.

manifest 45





A Project of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan
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