In the spring of 1999, when Park Ridge Center staff began work on the project "Congregations, Health, and Healing" with congregations in Evanston, Illinois, some aspects of the project's direction had begun to take shape, while others had not.

We knew that a cornerstone of the project would be the effort to engage both Jewish and Christian traditions, including the heritage of the participating congregations, but examining what the denominations had to say about health and healing. Our aim, as we put it at the time, was to "mine the untapped potential of the traditions" (Bulletin, July 1999) in search of practical guidance for health and healing in congregations and communities today. For too long, the wisdom of the religious traditions about health and healing has been overshadowed by our collective faith in science and its technologies. Even the recent sea change whereby the research community has granted "spirituality" a chance to prove its worth in scientific terms might fail to lift the vessels of the religious traditions in its rising tide, for the spirituality in question is typically cast in generic, if not firmly nonreligious terms. What wisdom from the traditions had been relegated to the margins, whether by design or simple neglect, that might help us understand and practice new arts of health and healing, or practice old arts in new ways? What do the traditions have to say about the community as a locus or a recipient of health and healing? And what appropriate and creative roles do the traditions suggest for congregations, their leaders, and individual congregants? It was also clear that the project would proceed in three phases that would be partly sequential, partly overlapping. First, a project working group consisting of consultants, a rabbinic or pastoral leader from each participating congregation, and the Center's project staff would meet to refine the project's vision and tailor it to the specifics of congregational programs, schedules, and circumstances. This group would meet periodically throughout the project, both to plan next steps and to evaluate progress; hence, its work would overlap with other phases.

Although the clergy leaders would play a pivotal role in project planning and design, the actual work of the project in each congregation would move forward through the efforts of a designated leadership group. That group, identified by clergy leaders, would facilitate the congregation's development of an internal vision for project participation, assist in developing the educational program and ministry project [see below], and shep-herd the implementation of both the educational program and the ministry project.

The second phase of the project, beginning in the fall of 2000, is an educational process in which each congregation will have an opportunity to learn more about how its tradition addresses health and healing issues. Project staff members, with advice from the working group and the congregation's leadership group, will draw on their research in the traditions to design a curriculum for each tradition.

Last, but hardly least, based on what the congregation learned from its tradition, and its discernment of its potential ministry in health and healing, the congregation would develop and engage in what we call a ministry project. Exactly what these projects would look like was not determined in advance. Congregational leaders had voiced some ideas, but nothing definite had yet taken shape; the field of possibilities was wide open. Congregational projects could focus on the congregation itself or on the community beyond, and both intra- and inter-congregational projects were conceivable.

We wanted to narrow the scope of possibilities, so the working group began to work toward consensus. From the beginning, violence as a concern for the Evanston community and its congregations had marked the group's conversations; the hate violence of last summer, in which several Orthodox Jews were wounded and Ricky Byrdsong was killed [see "Voices from the Pews" in this issue], had happened far too close to home to be ignored. But violence seemed such a complex and massive issue. Should we—and could we—really take it on? In the end, however, the need in the community—and in the congregations—seemed too compelling for the group to settle for any second- best option. Finding ways for congregations to address violence as a problem that affects the community's health became the unifying theme and task. At the heart of the challenge would be identifying and employing the distinctive resources that the traditions could provide for addressing this issue.

One nagging question remained: how could the project proceed in such a way that the result was not several congregations ostensibly working on the same project, but actually working in their own ways and in relative isolation except for periodic "checking in" at the leadership level? How could the project serve to bring together, perhaps even transform, the congregations that participated? Eventually a suggestion emerged that would provide both for the ownership of one project by a congregation, or for collaboration between congregations: a congregation or congregations can generate a project, lead it, and oversee its implementation, while members of other congregations who find that this project is the one that truly suits them can also participate in it.

Just how the congregations will approach violence as a problem of community health, a problem for religious traditions, and a problem for and in the congregations themselves, is not yet fully settled. However, in addition to the education programs that will begin this fall, the congregational leaders have agreed to hold a retreat that everyone from the participating congregations will be invited to attend. The retreat will feature not only intercongregational dialogue and educational sessions, but also common worship and ritual—observances that can underscore both the diversity of expression and the unity of purpose of those gathered together.

None of the planned activities diminishes the seriousness, the difficulty, or the seeming intractability of the violence that those in the congregations and their community know, sometimes all too well. But they are steps forward in a journey that we hope will ultimately prove of benefit not only to the participating congregations and to the Evanston community, but also to many other communities whose congregations are struggling with violence as a threat to health.