By Nathan Day Wilson, DisciplesWorld contributing writer

INDIANAPOLIS (8/1/09) — Disciples Peace Fellowship (DPF) celebrated and challenged a crowd of 200 this morning at its breakfast featuring all organic, locally grown food.

Co-moderator Robert Crawford started the celebration by reminding attendees of biblical calls to peace. Bruce Ervin, first-ever peace intern for DPF in 1975, continued the mood by witnessing to the impact DPF had on his life: “The internship for me meant the difference between a life in the church or not.

Kristin Walling, one of this year’s interns, exclaimed the DPF intern program is “great because so many people don’t realize that you can have jobs just making peace.”

Director Kathy Coggins said more than 2,000 youth are reached each summer by DPF interns, making the DPF intern influence on youth and young adults “the largest young person effort in the Disciples of Christ.”

Attendees were challenged as well. Noting that contributions were half the amount of 2008, co-moderator Tom Longman challenged attendees to renew membership, give to the DPF Permanent Fund, and give seed money to the establishment of the Kirby Page Peace Internship Fund.

Coggins added that the challenge is “how to sustain that which we do well,” referring specifically to the DPF intern program.

Crawford introduced the morning’s speaker, Celeste Brown. Brown is the mother of Sherwood Brown, a national guardsman killed in Iraq.

In a moving 12-minute address, Brown spoke to the notion that “loving our neighbors is our life’s struggle and work.”

“Every weapon is built by human hands, hands that caress their own children. And then those same people go to work building weapons that kill other people’s children.”

“Instead,” said Brown, “our humanity must be our armor.”

The morning’s final challenge came from Brown: “We can heal the fragmented world.”