RiseUp! fans flames of new evangelization

University students gather from across the country

By JEFF GRAHAM

Five years ago 100 students from around Canada gathered in the basement of St. Francis de Sales Church in Burnaby for the first ever RiseUp! the annual Christmas conference of Catholic Christian Outreach.

Since then, the conference has travelled to Ottawa, Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Toronto, gradually gaining momentum before making its return to Vancouver this year from Dec. 28 to Jan. 1. Over the past five years the movement has expanded significantly, and this year the conference attracted 400 students from across Canada.

The conference attracted George Weigel as a keynote speaker as well as speakers Father Tom Rosica, CSB, CEO of Salt and Light Television, and Msgr. Gregory Smith of the Archdiocese of Vancouver.

For CCO, RiseUp! 2005 is light years ahead of where it was five years ago, a sign of the rapid growth the movement is experiencing.

“I tell students newer to CCO that once they go to RiseUp! they’ll want to go to every single one,” said SFU student Jessica Shin. “You get the best New Year’s party in the country.”

“Every year I feel more and more convicted in my role as a missionary on my campus and am encouraged when I see so many students take up the call to evangelize.”

Dedicated to Catholic evangelization and leadership development on university campuses across Canada, CCO’s RiseUp! conference gives students a chance to meet with hundreds of their peers who are also trying to live out their faith and evangelize.

“It’s hard to go to something like this and not gush about it,” said Msgr. Gregory Smith, who spoke on the second night of the conference. “When it’s CCO, it’s okay to gush.”

Msgr. Smith was a key supporter of the movement when it was first invited to Vancouver by Archbishop Adam Exner, OMI, in 1998 to assist with the Catholic community at Simon Fraser University.

The movement had humble beginnings when it first started up at SFU, hosting a single faith study on campus and employing a single staff member. However, since then it has grown significantly by expanding to Douglas College, increasing its staff to seven, and hosting over 50 small group faith studies across the city last semester.

Many of the students in those faith studies also attended the conference, which is meant to build up and encourage students and challenge them to share their faith.

The conference was well received by attendees and was augmented by a heavy dose of praise and worship, a night of Eucharistic adoration, a New Year’s party, small workshops, and daily Mass.

There was even a roaringly funny Arnold Schwarzenegger skit by CCO staffer Rob Kraemer to provide some levity.

Perhaps the most original session was a commissioning service on the third night of the conference, during which attendees were given a small crucifix blessed by Pope Benedict XVI. The students were challenged to take the cross with the idea that they would one day give it to a person they had helped lead to Christ.

“The commissioning ceremony was memorable for me because we each received a crucifix blessed by our Holy Father,” said SFU alumnus Aiden Wickey. “We were instructed to pass the cross on to someone in need in the future, and one talk during RiseUp! opened my eyes to the need for evangelization in China, and so I hope to one day give my crucifix to someone in China.”

CCO has been encouraging evangelization in students like Wickey since its humble beginnings in Saskatoon in 1988, when it was founded by Andre and Angele Regnier at the University of Saskatchewan. The couple, who had been involved in Campus Crusade for Christ, wanted to provide a similar ministry for Catholics.

The Regniers began CCO by going onto campus with a few photocopies and a lot of ambition. Eighteen years later the movement has grown to a staff of 25 people and has expanded to Regina, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Halifax. The movement is now guided by CCO president Jeff Lockert.

In his address to the 400 students present for the conference Lockert quoted the last two Popes as he exhorted his captivated audience.

“The Church is young; the Church is alive,” he said, quoting Pope Benedict XVI. “Do not let that hope die; stake your lives on it! We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son.”

Many students were greatly encouraged by Lockert’s exhortation and the conference as a whole, but recognized that the road to campus evangelization and personal holiness as a young person is full of potholes.

“It’s not easy to rise up, and God knows that,” said Jennifer Padrinao, an SFU student. “I left this conference feeling blessed with true friends, and I’m ready to rise up now.”

Padrinao said she recognized the inevitable pitfalls that would come in faith and life after the conference but added, “Now I can do all of that with God and with others.”