People in need of food in a southeastern Missouri community can now get help close to home, thanks to members of a parish who have been taking part in a faith-sharing process from RENEW International.

Members of St. Denis Catholic Church in Benton—a rural city with nearly 900 residents —were prompted by their participation in ARISE Together in Christ to organize a food pantry in cooperation with three other churches in the area.

Msgr. Neil Connolly is the recipient of this year’s 2014 Msgr. Thomas A Kleissler Award. He will receive the award and be honored at RENEW International’s 15th Annual Gala on June 5, 2014. The award is named for RENEW’s co-founder and is given to a person or persons who exemplify one or more of the remarkable qualities of Father Tom:

“Walking the walk” became much more than a cliché when members of a parish in Texas participated in the first season of ARISE Together in Christ, a process of spiritual renewal and evangelization from RENEW International.

According to Racheal Garza, who leads the parish program, more than 350 men and women joined the small Christian communities at St. Michael Church in Levelland, a city of more than 13,000 people in the Diocese of Lubbock in the northwestern part of the state.

Each of the six sessions of an ARISE season invites participants to share their faith and then to put it into action in their everyday lives. That message wasn’t lost on the folks at St. Michael.

For example, Racheal said, she identified three women who were willing to create a “Giving Tree” in order to collect items for residents of a local nursing home. One of the women recruited a friend to help.

Anyone seeking a concrete example of the new evangelization can find one in Sebree, a little city in northwestern Kentucky.

That’s where Patti Gutiérrez discovered how an invitation via digital media could have unexpected results, touching not only active members of a parish but also Catholics who had stopped participating in the life of the church.

Patti is parish life coordinator at St. Michael Parish in Sebree, which is in the Diocese of Owensboro.

St. Michael, like many parishes in the diocese, is taking part in ARISE Together in Christ, the five-season faith-sharing process for small groups, one of the resources available from RENEW International.

After the parish had completed Season Two of ARISE,Patti took stock.

“Seeing that very few young adults had participated in our small groups,’’ Patti said, “I decided to brainstorm a few that I could invite personally.

“To my great surprise, I ended up with a list of twenty-four young couples that were somehow connected to our parish, but few actually attending Mass.

It would take more than a few hundred miles in this digital age to break up a faith-sharing group in Texas.

That point was made by a small Christian community in St. Mary’s Parish in Odessa, a city located in the Diocese of San Angelo in west Texas.

The group is participating in ARISE Together in Christ, a faith-sharing process from RENEW International consisting of five seasons of six sessions each.

According to the group leader, Lyd Reyes, one of the members, Janelle Woody, moved away—four hundred miles east, in fact, to Port Lavaca, which is situated on a bay off the Gulf of Mexico.

According to its web page, a parish in the Diocese of Owensboro, Kentucky, is dedicated to “continuing the mission of Jesus Christ through word, worship, and service.’’

And parishioners who have been participating in ARISE Together in Christ, the faith-sharing process from RENEW International, have taken a new look at what service means and can’t wait to see where it will lead them next.

The parish is St. Romuald in Hardinsburg, which is about 70 miles southwest of Louisville, where 11 small groups completed Season Two of ARISE last spring.

RENEW International staff members prayed for Lisa Marie Meehan and asked the Lord to bless her as she prepared to travel to Zambia where she will spend three months conducting volunteer research to improve maternal health.

Lisa, who received the Spirit of RENEW Award at the 2013 RENEW International Gala, is one of 21 Merck & Company employees heading to countries around the world, including India, Zambia, and the Dominican Republic this year to volunteer with non-profit organizations. Her company’s Richard T Clark Fellowship program allows 30 employees annually to embed with nongovernmental organizations for three months to work on specific philanthropic programs. In Lisa’s case the Merck’s Merck for Mothers program and RTC are partnering with Africare and the University of Michigan on formative research on maternal waiting homes to reduce the mortality rate among pregnant women in Zambia.

When Latino/Hispanic parishioners begin La justicia brota de la fe: Formación en la fe y en la Doctrina Social de la Iglesia this fall in the Diocese of Stockton they will be well prepared. Twenty two of the twenty-five parishes that will use La justicia brota de la fe participated in the training workshops held September 3-5.

Manuel Hernandez of RENEW International’s Pastoral Services Team led the six workshops held at three sites throughout the diocese. The majority of the 225 participants were small community leaders who will be facilitating the faith-sharing sessions, and Manuel described them as enthusiastic and energetic. He said he was particularly impressed with members of St. Joseph Parish, Mammouth Lakes, who drove more than five hours for the training.

Many New Jerseyans have one primary destination in the summer: the beach.

The sands of the Atlantic coast provides a place for getting a tan, swimming and surfing, playing volleyball and Frisbee, and just unwinding.

And for 27 members of a parish in Long Branch, the beach this summer also provided a setting for drawing closer to the Virgin Mary.

Deacon Eugene Somma of St. Michael’s Church on Ocean Avenue led the group, which gathered on the beach in North Long Branch, in At Prayer with Mary,a resource from RENEW International.

At Prayer with Mary, written by Father John Phelan and Brother James Posluszny, both members of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, provides seven sessions that include prayer, scripture, personal reflections, faith sharing, and commitment to gospel action in everyday life.

A conversation between members of an ARISE group led to a moving visit to Tanzania for an Ontario man.

John Couto of Listowel, Ontario, said he had thought about joining a mission trip but didn’t act on it until Patricia Graham—a fellow member of an ARISE small group—spoke, during one of the group’s sessions, about Chalice, a Catholic organization based in Nova Scotia.

John learned that Chalice assists people in need in Asia, Haiti, Latin America, Ukraine, and Africa.

The opportunities Chalice offers include sponsoring individual people—mostly children, but some adults, too—with donations of $33 per month.

“When I heard of Chalice,’’ John said, “I contacted them and sponsored two children—one in Peru and one in Tanzania.

“After a few weeks, Chalice contacted me with information about a mission going to Tanzania. I signed up for it, and we went in August of 2012.’’

John said the group, comprising 24 people from across Canada, conducted a two-week medical mission in two regions in the southern part of Tanzania, which is situated on the Indian Ocean in East Africa and is one of the poorest countries in the world.

The trip John joined was the beginning of a three-year mission to the two locales in Tanzania, focusing on maternal and family health. He said the mission group consisted of medical doctors, dentists, nurses, and some support volunteers like him.