Dear friends,
Please join us for our fifth annual Bridgefolk conference. This year we will again gather at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. Meeting from Thursday evening June 29 through Sunday noon July 2, our theme will be “Making Peace: At Table, in the World.” This year we are able to offer online registration as well as mail-in registration. You will find a tentative schedule, as well as registration materials at http://www.bridgefolk.net/conferences/.
Calling ourselves a “movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics,” Bridgefolk has often examined the challenge of peacemaking. We have also encountered the pain of brokenness that prevents us from fully sharing at the table of the Lord. At the 2006 Bridgefolk gathering, therefore, we will continue to keep peacemaking in focus while frankly and lovingly facing the challenge of Eucharistic communion.
Nowhere is the scandal of Christian disunity greater than when Christians depart from the Lord’s Table to kill or exploit one another. Nowhere is the promise of God’s kingdom more tangible than when people from estranged nations and communities share a meal together. Through formal presentations, storytelling and discussions, we will explore peacemaking at tables set in various places — from the Eucharist, to the family, to communal and global settings.
The 2006 Bridgefolk conference is being held just prior to the summer Monastic Institute at Saint John’s Abbey. Entitled “One Heart, One Soul: Many Communities,” this week-long institute will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Benedictines in Minnesota by discussing “intentional communities” and other new monastic models as they are springing up in unexpected forms, places and denominations. Bridgefolk participants are encouraged to attend some or all of this event if they are able. More information on the Monastic Institute is also available at http://www.bridgefolk.net/conferences/.
Grace and peace,
Gerald Schlabach
Bridgefolk Executive Director
info@bridgefolk.net
www.bridgefolk.net