I am the Reverend Zachary Charles Kyaw Nyein. Kyaw is pronounced “Joe” and Nyein is pronounced “knee-ain,” rhyming with “vein” (both names are of Burmese origin). Folks in different contexts call me Father/Reverend/Pastor Zack — or just Zack! I use he/him pronouns and serve as Senior Associate Rector and Pastor of Imagine Worship at Saint Bartholomew’s Church in the City of New York, affectionately known as St. Bart’s. 

I currently reside in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan with my husband, Michael Waterson, who is a native Michigander. Michael serves on the biology faculty at Lehman College in the Bronx and is active in the St. Bart’s community. Together, we enjoy the arts, time outdoors, and visiting family in Tennessee and Michigan, where many of our loved ones are scattered across the Mitten. For recreation and wellbeing, I enjoy taking group fitness classes and singing with the Grace Church Choral Society, a local community choir.

I studied music education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where my burgeoning sense of call was nurtured by the Tyson House, a vibrant Episcopal-Lutheran Campus Ministry. After graduation, I was licensed as a lay preacher and commissioned by the Bishop of East Tennessee to plant Project Canterbury, a progressive campus ministry housed in an Anglo-Catholic parish serving the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. I later prepared for ordination through Yale Divinity School, Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Since being ordained in 2016, I have served at Grace Church Chattanooga; All Saints’ Atlanta; and, since 2022, St. Bart’s NYC. At St. Bart’s, I founded Imagine Worship, a radically welcoming midweek congregation that includes many spiritual seekers and newcomers to the Episcopal Church. My continuing education has included participation in the inaugural cohort of Trinity Wall Street Leadership Fellows and the Learning from London program through Bexley Seabury Seminary, exploring fresh expressions of church.

I felt drawn to the Great Lakes because of the courage, faith, and imagination reflected in your diocesan profile and in the “Juncture Journey” that has brought you to this moment. My husband Michael’s family hails from Up North, and over the years I’ve come to love both the beauty of the Great Lakes and the earnestness of its people. I was especially inspired by your expansive understanding of church — one that embraces traditional expressions of Christian community alongside your camps, Plainsong Farm, and ministries of service, care, and justice where God’s people are fed and formed, gathered and scattered back into the world as the hands and feet of Christ.

As a seasoned innovator, much of my vocation has involved cultivating new life within inherited church structures, trusting that God’s New Creation never throws away the old. If called to serve as your first bishop diocesan, I would hope to bring energy, resourcefulness, and creativity to help this new diocese flourish, together with the compassionate heart and steady pastoral presence needed for healing, trust-building, and shared discernment to continue. Above all, I would aim to encourage lay people, priests, and deacons alike to boldly claim their baptismal callings as we build God’s church together.

I know that an authentic vision for the diocese must be discerned collaboratively through prayer, intentional listening, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That said, I am captivated by the Great Lakes as America’s “Third Coast.” In a time of polarization, destabilization, and profound spiritual thirst, I wonder whether God is calling this diocese to embody a “Third Coast” way of being church: pastoral yet pioneering, rooted yet adventurous, forward-thinking yet spacious enough to honor a diversity of perspectives. Grounded in the Anglican via media (“middle way”) and fueled by the loving, liberating, life-giving Way of Jesus Christ, I imagine a diocese alive with communities of Word, Sacrament, and Service that form disciples, foster belonging, bridge divides, and invite the weary to be renewed by the fresh and ancient streams of God’s amazing grace.