Contributor

Kirstin Vander Giessen-reitsma

Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma is the editor of catapult magazine, a bi-weekly online publication affiliated with the organization *culture is not optional (*cino). She and her husband Rob are the co-founders of a non-profit, volunteer-run fair trade store called World Fare in Three Rivers, Michigan, where *cino purchased a historic school in 2009 for future college and community development programs. Their *cino internship program offers them the opportunity to live in community with young adults exploring themes of small town dynamics, home economics, imagination, rootedness, and practical theology.

Biking, reading, eating local produce, and creating opportunities for education and community are among her favorite activities and she is grateful that life in the Great Lakes region allows for such pleasures.

Slow Organizing for Kingdom Come

Community development means learning how to listen, persuade, negotiate, compromise, and reconcile.

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More From This Contributor

Kirstin Vander Giessen-reitsma Feb 1, 2008

Andrew Bird: hope, despair, and whimsy

Technology, politics, creation, outer space, childhood, science, fear, media, evolution, the end of the world—the music of Andrew Bird is not typical pop fare obsessing with romantic relationships.

Kirstin Vander Giessen-reitsma Oct 1, 2004

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Reinventing the Well: Considering Design for Healthy Neighbourhoods

Though terrorism and security are dominant issues in the current campaign for president of the United States, no election can occur without abundant reference to family values. Debates over who and what constitutes a healthy family take place everywhere, from our churches to our political talk shows.

Kirstin Vander Giessen-reitsma Sep 1, 2004

Turning dollars into dignity: Teaching a small town how to trade

The connection between fair trade, as a response to the excesses of global capitalism, and the Christian faith is natural, given a solid theology of work and the imperative to open our ears to the cries of the poor. In today’s global political and economic climate, individual disadvantages result from worldwide structures of trade.

Kirstin Vander Giessen-reitsma Apr 1, 2004

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Against Indifference

I love Waiting for Lefty, a play I first discovered in the midst of my undergraduate education at North Park University. Written by Clifford Odets in the 1930s, the story takes place in the union hall of New York taxi drivers… Waiting for Lefty is significant to me because the place in which the characters find themselves stuck symbolizes a place where many Christians get stuck.

Kirstin Vander Giessen-reitsma Jan 1, 2004

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A Fork in the Road to Worker Justice

Third and final in a series addressing the roots, current state, and future prospects of the Christian labour movement. It would be easy to paint a bleak picture of the future of the Christian labour movement. In my own personal experience, there is little overall...