2025 Annual Appeal

There is a truism about planting new communities: The goal of the first five years is to simply survive. In the fall of 2023, The Benedictine Way reached our five year anniversary and celebrated in a very big way at Trinity Cathedral in Omaha. Now, having celebrated our 6th anniversary, we've begun to concern ourselves much less with surviving but rather with thriving.

In the next five years we pray for continued growth in our life of prayer, service to the poor and forgotten, and the building of genuine Christian community. This is our future, and we are ready to thrive into it. We write you today to ask your support through a 2025 pledge or a one-time donation.

Because in our time, a time of epic loneliness and withdrawal on the part of many from society and the church, thriving into the future is about a continuing commitment to build community among young adults and welcome them into a life of prayer, service, and fellowship. 

Because in our time, a time of continued food instability in our North Omaha neighborhood, thriving into the future is about a continuing commitment to distribute food to our neighbors in need and to share a meal with those who want to “taste and see” what community is like.

Because in our time, a time of longing for deep prayer and contemplative life, thriving into the future is about a continuing commitment to spread Benedictine spirituality and build communities throughout the Diocese of Nebraska and the wider heartland. 

And in our time, a time when so many people in the heartland have told us of their deep need for Christian community, and their need for growing a sense of peace through a contemplative life, thriving into the future is about new beginnings. For The Benedictine Way, that new beginning is an online part of our community called the Contemplative Underground.

The Contemplative Underground launched on November 9th and is an expansion of the Saturday Centering Prayer Sit we have been leading for over four years. The Contemplative Underground will offer a live, online centering prayer sit every day of the week and will, over time, offer many different ways to access what it means to pray, to be contemplative, and to open our hearts further to Jesus. Already, people from eighteen different states have joined this special community. Your pledge and donation will help support this work.

So in our time, a time when churches are closing all over the country, when fewer people come to our own church services, what we have found is in fact a longing for community, for prayer, for the opportunity for service - and perhaps most of all - for a grounding in community. It is as almost as if there has been an underground movement, both people who go regularly to church and those who never do, who desire Christian community.

For The Benedictine Way, thriving into the future is about continuing to build community at Incarnation Monastery in North Omaha, it is about continuing to build community throughout the Diocese of Nebraska, and it is about continuing to build community throughout the heartland to develop us further into a Monastery for the Heartland. 

But in order to thrive into the future, we need your help. Please consider donating to our 2025 Annual Appeal. Both one-time gifts and pledges for monthly given are most welcome. We encourage you to give generously so that we may continue to serve the poor, welcome young adults, build communities here and in many other places, and teach contemplative prayer.

You can make your pledge here, and schedule payments or make a one-time donation here. 

Peace be upon you, 

Brother James Dowd, OSB
Prior
Incarnation Monastery
3020 Belvedere Blvd.
Omaha, NE 68111