DEERFIELD — Rev. Liza B. Knapp’s spiritual journey has traveled through times of doubt, fog and clarity — eventually leading to the First Church of Deerfield, a United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist church.
On Sunday, Knapp will deliver her first sermon in Old Deerfield, officially starting her ministry and coming full circle to a call she first felt as an undergraduate college student.
Knapp graduated from Andover Newton Theological School about four years ago, a seminary she first visited during an open house about 30 years ago and, at the time, decided not to attend.
Over the years, Knapp, a Greenfield resident, has received a bachelor’s, master’s and two doctoral degrees; taught middle school and college; helped start Northampton’s street ministry, Cathedral in the Night; and served as designated term pastor at Belchertown United Church of Christ.
“Greenfield has been my home for a while. I’m really looking forward to serving the community I’m part of,” Knapp said Thursday morning, sitting in the church’s office space with a steaming cup of tea, lit by cascading window light.
Through a doorway, the church’s magnificent pipe organ decorated the far wall of its expansive auditorium, an elevated pulpit at the other end.
“And I’m also looking forward to listening to that organ,” she added.
Knapp grew up attending a Presbyterian church in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
After high school, she went to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she studied biology and religion — two academic disciplines she “found that many people felt were areas of conflict.” During that time, Knapp said she was “shipwrecked” spiritually; she stopped attending church, and nearly gave up on her faith.
After college, she moved to Washington, D.C., and taught middle school for about 13 years.
There, Knapp continued, she “settled into who I was. I came out during those years and that was a really important spiritual development. I couldn’t be my whole self with God until I was my whole self with myself.”
“You reach an age when you have questions and want to think,” she said, taking a sip of tea. “Doubt is incredibly faithful. Because if you question, that means you’re trusting that God is out in front of you and not just in what you’ve left behind.”
Around 2000, Knapp went back to school at Bard College, pursuing a master’s degree in environmental studies. She met her wife, Lora Wondolowski, at the school. Today, Wondolowski works as executive director of Leadership Pioneer Valley. Together, they have two daughters, Alice (sixth grade) and Phoebe (second grade) Wondolowski.
In 2003, Knapp was accepted into a doctoral program at UMass natural resources department, studying conservation and organismic and evolutionary biology. Knapp and Wondolowski moved to Franklin County and started going to First Churches of Northampton — where Knapp said she rediscovered God.
Spiritual clarity came for Knapp right before she took the final doctoral exam, when a fellow student mentioned with relief that it was the last collegiate exam they’d ever take.
“And instantly, at that moment, I thought, ‘Well, until I go to seminary,’” Knapp said. A few years later, during which she taught at a few colleges including Mount Holyoke, she enrolled at Andover Newton Theological School.
Looking ahead, Knapp said she’s excited about the prospects of a “long-term ministry” in her own community. She said her ministry will include helping out at Greenfield’s Cathedral in the Light, an offshoot street ministry of Cathedral in the Night, and creating programs to reach the local Deerfield community.
“The question is, how do we turn the church inside out and be the church beyond the doors?” said Knapp in referring to challenges the Old Deerfield church faces in the coming years, adding, “and I like that goal.”
The First Church of Deerfield’s weekly Sunday morning worship service begins at 10 a.m. and lasts about an hour.
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