Tri-State Tres Dias History

Tri State Tres Dias (TSTD) is an Evansville, Indiana community devoted to providing a Christian renewal experience for members of protestant denominations. Intended benefits of the experience include personal spiritual growth for the individual and deeper involvement of the individual in his/her home church congregation. The parent organization with which TSTD is associated is Tres Dias International.

The history of the community is evolutionary, as described below.

History of the Tres Dias Movement

Tres Dias traces its ancestry through Cursillo, which had its beginnings amid the turmoil and destruction of civil warfare and of the Second World War, which left Spain with empty churches and a sense of aimlessness and diminished dreams. Late in the 1940's, a sense of revival was stirring within the Roman Catholic Church. Small groups of friends in various Catholic action groups began to share their faith regularly to help one another. Pilgrimages were organized whereby men and women could rededicate their lives toward Christian ideals. Bishop Juan Hervas, who was active in action groups and renewal activities with the men on the island of Majorca, and Eduardo Bonin, who was involved with organizing pilgrimages, met through these sharing groups. They began to see how the church could benefit and the lives of people could be changed through studying and sharing their lives in Christ.
With a broadening vision of what these small sharing groups (reunion groups) could accomplish, weekly meetings produced periodic retreats where the reality of living a Christian life was intensely taught and experienced through support by reunion groups. These retreats became known as Cursillo de Christiandad, which means "short course in Christianity."

The Cursillo movement was confined to Spanish speaking countries until the late 1950's when a group of men from the Spanish Air Force, who were in training in Texas, and were in a Reunion Group, conducted the first Cursillo in the United States. Among the Spanish-speaking people the movement began to spread across the United States. The first English speaking Cursillo was held in the early 1960's.

Protestants who attended the weekends, saw the need to make the experience available to other Protestants. Various denominations developed their own renewal programs modeled after the Roman Catholic Cursillo de Christiandad. For various reasons (see the history of Tri-State Tres Dias, below, for an example) a need for an ecumenical protestant three-day renewal experience was felt. This led to the development of the interdenominational Tres Dias.

History of Tri-State Tres Dias

A small group of Christians from Mount Vernon, Indiana attended an Episcopal Cursillo in Owensboro, KY in the mid-1970’s. Subsequent to their week-end experience, they decided to form a local Ecumenical Cursillo community under the authorization of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis. The two men primarily responsible for the founding of this community were Father Bob Webb (Episcopal) and Father Joe Dunne ( Episcopal, who was formerly a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest).

In 1976, the Tri-State Episcopal Ecumenical Cursillo #1 was held at the Sarto Retreat House in Evansville. During the first several years only one set of week-ends (one for men and one for women) was held per year. However, soon a long waiting list developed. As a result, two sets of week-ends began - one set in the Spring and one in the Fall. An occasional summer week-end was held for women only so that the waiting list could be shortened.

In the mid 1980's it was made clear that in order to continue the sanctioning by the Episcopal Church, our group of Christians would need to limit its strong Ecumenical nature. A committee explored all similar movements to see if our community of Christians could find a natural 'fit’ with our essentials, while maintaining our valued Ecumenical mixture. A recommendation from the committee was followed by personal discussions and visits with the small, but International, Tres Dias movement. As a result of this information gathering, prayer and consideration, our Tri- State Episcopal Ecumenical Cursillo was approved as the Tri-State Tres Dias Community in 1988. Not only have we continued our Ecumenical policy, but it has expanded to include people from additional local churches and continues to grow. The denominational barriers have been eliminated as we all worship our One Lord!
In the Fall of 2004, we have just completed our set of Tres Dias # 54 week-ends at Sarto Retreat House.

International Tres Dias Banner