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Benedictine monk of Saint John's Abbey, Minnesota, since 1969.

Article explores hospitality in worship

Bridgefolk participant Heather Grennan Gary explored hospitality and worship in a recently published article in U.S. Catholic. Heather shares with the following introduction for the article:

The hospitality I’ve encountered within a Mennonite context has been a special and surprising gift. I wrote the following article in part to uphold it as an example worth emulating especially within Catholic parishes, where there’s frequently a need to step up the level of hospitality toward visitors, newcomers, regular attendees, and longtime members alike.

While this article necessarily focuses on the inhospitable feeling I experienced at a specific parish, it’s certainly not just about this parish—nearly every parish community I’ve visited or attended over the years has room for improvement. And while I chose not to mention the denomination of the hospitable church for the purposes of this article, I hope Bridgefolk recognize it as Mennonite.

Read the article here.

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Summer conference update

Bridgefolk Conference 2011

Mark your calendars for this summer’s conference: August 4-7 at the MCC Welcoming Place in Akron, PA. Conference planners have been meeting to finalize details and registration and conference information will be made available in April.

This summer’s conference, second in a series of three, will continue to explore “key practices” that we share as Mennonite and Catholic Christians.  Our gathering this summer will provide an opportunity to explore the practices of hospitality, forgiveness and common worship.

The conference, in the beautiful retreat setting of the Welcoming Place, will provide ample opportunity for personal reflection, sharing in small groups and corporate worship.

Watch the Bridgefolk website 2011 conference page for more information in coming weeks.

Praying the Bridgefolk prayer – 10 years and counting

Ten years ago this week, a small group of original Bridgefolk participants and leaders met together to talk, pray and discern.  How should we follow through on our initial meeting in Pennsylvania in 1999?  What kind of community are we becoming?  How will participants know if they are “members?”  Should we have a common discipline of prayer, the way religious orders do?  What will bind our life together when we depart?  It would be good to at least have a common prayer that would resonate equally with Mennonites and Catholics, they decided, but what might that be?

In the middle of the night, one of Bridgefolk’s co-founders found the following prayer taking shape, got up, and wrote it down.  When he shared it with the others the next day, the group embraced it as a simple answer to many of our questions:

  • If someone can pray this prayer with all their heart, he or she is Bridgefolk.
  • Our rule would be to pray this prayer daily, and live accordingly.

On this 10th anniversary of the Bridgefolk prayer, therefore, we invite you to pray our common prayer today, to make or renew your commitment to pray it daily, and to live out the groanings we share for a Church of unity, nonviolence, and faithfulness to our Lord Jesus Christ. Continue reading “Praying the Bridgefolk prayer – 10 years and counting” →

Bridgefolk featured on Australian radio

Bridgefolk co-chairs Marlene Kropf and Abbot John Klassen were recently interviewed for an Australian radio show discussing modern ecumenism.  The interview will air this weekend and soon be available online.

A preview from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

ABC Radio National – Encounter 20 February 2011

Convergences:  ecumenical stories

What has happened to ecumenism, since the early enthusiasm of the sixties and seventies?   The stories of convergence told in this Encounter tell of points of unity within diversity.

In the great ecumenical excitement of the 1960s, Rev Dr Norman Young (once Methodist and now Uniting Church) and Fr Gerald O’Collins SJ (Catholic priest and theologian) became friends.  Their ideas converged on the importance of ecumenism – and on the figure of Jesus

Political scientist Scott Waalkes comes from a Calvinist background – but he has taken up with the Catholic tradition’s use of the liturgical calendar and with theology, in order to critique globalisation.

And in Minnesota, Mennonites (Anabaptists) meet up with Benedictine monks.

Tell us your “Bridgefolk moments”

Bridgefolk Conference planners are working to prepare for this summer’s conference.  As we set the schedule and discern the shape of our gathering, we want to hear from you.  At each conference, there are special moments of grace – some carefully prepared and others spontaneous – that shape us individually and as a community.  We want to remember those stories as we plan this summer’s conference.

That means it’s time for a bit of nostalgia: What are your Bridgefolk moments?  What are the memories that stay with you from year to year?  Share your responses in the comment section.

Mennonite seminary hosts conference on Mary

Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Elkhart, Indiana) will be hosting a conference entitled My Spirit Rejoices in God my Savior: Mary in Anabaptist Dress in late March.  Bridgefolk board members Mary Schertz and Marlene Kropf are among the event coordinators.

From the conference website:

We recognize Mary as woman who said yes to God. We recognize her as the first disciple in Luke’s Gospel. We identify her as a revolutionary. She tugs at us in art, music, poetry and drama.

As Mennonites have become more involved in ecumenical conversations, we realize that Mary plays a role in those discussions as well. While we will examine Anabaptist perspectives in particular, we want to encourage dialogue on the biblical figure of Mary and to examine recent interest in her from a variety of perspectives.

This conference, sponsored by the Institute of Mennonite Studies, will initiate and encourage wide-ranging discussion about Mary, including biblical, theological, pastoral and practical aspects. We are inviting people from a variety of disciplines to join us, so that these conversations involve pastors, church members, scholars, artists and church leaders. Our hope is that all who participate will join in conversations about Mary and will experience art—music, poetry, story and visual art—that will help us understand the place of Mary in our lives and thoughts

Click here to visit the conference site directly.  A short article in the Mennonite Weekly Review can be found here.

Catholic Peace Fellowship magazine features Bridgefolk connections

Now available online is the Catholic Peace Fellowship journal Seeds of Peace, which last year devoted an issue to exploring “Mennonites, Catholics, and the Peace of Christ.”

From the introduction:

Because the Catholic Peace Fellowship has its headquarters in Northern Indiana, we have been graced to live close to, and work closely with, many Mennonite friends. Some of us have been working with Mennonites for quite some time, since the early eighties when the Christian peace movement in this country was focused on resisting the arms race by witnessing to Jesus. The same was true during the First Gulf War, when Mennonites from around the country and in Europe took the lead in supporting military conscientious objectors. Since the attacks of September 11, Mennonites have made it their business to get in the way of war, particularly in their work in sending out Christian Peacemaking to Palestine, Iraq, wherever peace can be made. More recently, and closer to home, we have enjoyed the presence of Mennonites in animating the activities of peacemaking here in “Michiana,” as our region is called. And we in the Catholic Peace Fellowship have been the beneficiary of a close Mennonite friend, Biff Weidman, who rents out our space for a song. In ways temporal and spiritual, we are blessed with the Mennonites whose life and work we are privileged to share.  In this issue, we have focused on the fruitful relationship between Catholics and Mennonites that has been patiently cultivated over the past thirty or so years.

The issue features, among other articles, an excellent reflection by Bridgefolk participants Margie Pfeil and Biff Weidman.  Visit the journal in its original location here.