KALISPELL - The Rev. Chad Jones might call it a giving of thanks. Rabbi Allen Secher might call it todah rabah.

But they're really speaking the same language, and on Sunday both will call it bridge building, this multi-faith Thanksgiving potluck that has become a Flathead Valley tradition.

"It's not our differences that matter," Jones said. "It's our commonalities, the traditions we share. Caring for community. A passion for helping people."

Jones works the pulpit at Kalispell's First Presbyterian Church, which will sponsor this year's multi-faith meal.

"We're all in this world together," he said. "Any faith group needs not to be on an island by themselves. We need to consider the whole community as a family."

A family, this Sunday, of Methodists and Catholics and Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Jews and Unitarians.

Last year, four congregations gathered 125 people to share the season's bounty. This year, 11 congregations expect more than 200.

"The whole point of all this has been to build an understanding, and a cooperative relationship between the faith groups of the valley," said Ina Albert, the rabbi's wife.

It started, she said, when a high-profile family of white separatists moved into the Kalispell area several years ago. They were met, by some, with hostility - Albert called it "hate versus anti-hate."

"I thought that was the wrong way to handle something you didn't agree with," she said.

Instead of confrontation and intolerance, she promoted "putting forward a positive message of our own. Tolerance, diversity, friendship. To create the sacred, caring community that we all want to live in."

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The first gathering was held last Thanksgiving, a potluck heavy on vegetarian fare, decidedly kosher. A vegetarian meal, she said, leaves no one out, and symbolizes the inclusiveness of the event.

They chose Thanksgiving because it wasn't Christmas and it wasn't Hanukkah and it wasn't Ashura - it was, in a word, secular. Sort of.

"All faith traditions have some sort of fall celebration of harvest and thanks," Jones said. "It's common to all of us."

"Clearly," Secher agreed, "the Pilgrims who started all this were a religious people, and they were just taking stuff right out of the Bible."

And so the congregations gathered, not just for Thanksgiving but also in the winter, and the spring, and again in the summer. At a Unitarian church and a Mennonite church and a local park. This weekend, Jones' Presbyterian flock plays host.

He's a vegetarian himself, and is bringing "good old-fashioned mashed potatoes."

"I would love to see this become a real tradition in this community," he said. When they pass the plate, the offering goes to Habitat for Humanity, a group "that transcends our faith differences."

This summer, he said, his congregation gathered to build handicap ramps for 10 local households. The Jewish community, he said, sent 14 volunteers to help "and that was because we were already connected through these multi-faith events."

His Jewish neighbors were, he said, true to their heritage very fine carpenters.

"Everyone has such a wonderful time" at the gatherings, Albert said. "We eat all mixed together, sharing tables so we don't just clump up in our own groups."

There's a program - ministers and rabbis and reverends keep it mercifully short - with a spiritual but largely non-denominational theme. Stories, poems, brief sermons. At one event, the highlight was a presentation based on the popular movie, "March of the Penguins."

What you don't get is preaching.

"You won't get a lecture on how a Catholic gets to Heaven," Albert said. "What we're doing is standing together, because all roads lead to Rome. Everyone wants to find a place of peace, and oneness, and the blessings of God. We each follow a different road to get there, but we're all looking for the same things."

This, she said, is how faith works, on the ground, in a world of many faiths.

This is a workaday faith.

"This is a vision of what this place can be," she said, "if we choose the wisdom of tolerance."

Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at (406) 862-0324 or at mjamison@missoulian.com.