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When the Regeneration leaders and Jukanovich met, they saw immediately how similar their visions were. Crouch and his colleagues invited Jukanovich onto the Regeneration board and made the Vine the national-conference portion of The Regeneration Forum.

"Meeting the guys from rq was a confirmation for all of us that the vision we had was worth pursuing and that God was giving us the chance to start something new," Jukanovich says. "It has been a great partnership."

"We would never go hear St. Matthew's Passion," she said, "if it were the woodwinds one night, then the strings the next night, and then the next night the choir." So why, Monroe asked, do we experience the church in discrete sections: the Baptists over here, the Anglicans over there, some Orthodox in the corner, and a few Presbyterians down the hall?

Grassroots unity in the church is a central goal of the Vine. The conference is "the incarnation of an intangible vision," says Bill Haley, who in addition to his role as president of the Regeneration Forum is director of outreach at The Falls Church (Episcopal) in Virginia. "To foster a greater sense of unity in the church is a very abstract goal. The Vine is a way of seeing that vision lived into reality."

Haley was encouraged by the surge in Catholic participation last year. "There were more Catholics this year, though we still want to have more. And the Catholics were encouraged by what they saw."

The Orthodox front is a bit bleaker. While several Orthodox Christians attended the first Vine in 1999, Haley notes, none returned to Lake Geneva in 2000.

Brother Jonathan Kalisch, a Dominican studying for the priesthood, says efforts such as the Vine are "mandatory … Christians should get involved in crossing boundaries in a real way whenever we can." As a theology student in a Washington-area ecumenical consortium of schools, Kalisch is used to interacting with Christians from other traditions. "But the Vine was an incredible experience," he says, because of "the faith-sharing and the genuine fraternity and fellowship in Christ."

The apostle Paul wrote that the eye cannot say it has no need of the foot, yet "I have no need for you is written all over the way we do Christianity in America," Crouch says. "The Vine has made us realize that we do have need of these other brothers and sisters in Christ."

Vine participants talk unashamedly about ecumenism—and make no mistake, they don't mean the anemic, wishy-washy brand that grows out of a knee-jerk need for liberalism and tolerance. The Vine's vision for ecumenism is different from the old-school version that, in the pursuit of harmony, simply ignored the importance of the doctrines and traditions that distinguished them from other Christians. At the Vine, you'll meet people who are committed to their distinctive traditions and who are enlivened by sharing with folks from other corners of God's kingdom.

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February 5 2001, Vol. 45, No. 2