By Cheri Sgro-Morettini

The RENEW approach to brining parishioners together in small faith communities was studied during a two-day workshop at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in Alpharetta.

Father Art Baranowski, who travels to various dioceses representing RENEW, led the two-day workshop, “Creating Small Faith Communities,” on Jan. 25-26. A priest of the archdiocese of Detroit, Mich., he told of the vision which inspired his former parish, St. Elizabeth Seton in Troy, Mich.

“I believe that our deliberate pastoral attempt to bring parishioners together into small groups can serve as a model for any parish, for all parishes,” he said.

The two-day workshop was focused on “the nuts and bolts of restructuring the parish and renewing Catholic life.” At St. Elizabeth Seton now, he told the group, “the people do not go to church, they are church.”

Parishes represented by pastors, staff members and volunteers were: Christ Our Hope, Lithonia; Christ the King, Holy Spirit; Immaculate Heart of Mary, Atlanta; St. Thomas the Apostle, Smyrna; St. Thomas More, Decatur. Also represented were the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the archdiocese.

Father Richard Kieran, pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary, said the workshop “further confirmed a lot of things that I believed and wanted to implement.” Some small faith communities are already in process at IHM, including the administrative staff and parishioners.

Another participant, Terry Zobel, is director of adult education and the RCIA at the host parish. Reflecting on the experience at the Alpharetta, she commented, “It was my hope that when we as a parish began RENEW in the fall of 1989, we would not see it as ‘just another program,’ but as a way to begin to create small on-going communities centered on sharing faith. We have not seen the typical pattern of drop-off in attendance that many parishes across the country have experienced. As we proceed through our fourth season this Lent, St. Thomas has its largest enrollment yet. This tells me that these small faith communities have begun to take hold in our parish.” Some RCIA candidates, she added, are planning to join RENEW in the fifth season to continue their experience of sharing in small faith groups.

Ret Goettee, director of religious education at the Cathedral of Christ the King, said, “The key to small faith communities is adaptability. The concept idealistically is where we need to go. Fleshing that concept out with all its variables (culturally, ethnically, leadership, etc.) is the main factor. We find a lot of people hungering for a small group experience because of the large parish of over 3,000 that we have at Christ the King. The value of small faith communities is certainly seen in the minds of the RCIA candidates.” She said the parish representatives left the seminar with a commitment for the RENEW program for 1992-93, “with an eye for small faith communities in the future.”

“The tradition and experiences of American Catholics have always been with ethnic neighborhoods,” Father Jim Fennessy, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas, commented.

“The Catholic Church in Atlanta is unique in that it doesn’t have these stable communities in a given area for several generations. When I first arrived at St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the concerns that often seemed to surface was that we were not as close and did not know our parishioners in the same way as we used to when our parish was small. So the pastoral challenge before all of us at St. Thomas Aquinas was how we could create a structure through which our people could both receive and give care to one another. We have experienced RENEW where people have met in small communities and had the opportunity not only to share their faith and pray together, but to form deep friendships.”

“Catholics are by their nature a compassionate and caring people,” Father Fennessy continued, “and have a desire to imitate the qualities of Christ in their lives. One of the frustrations people sometimes have is that they do not have the opportunity readily available to show compassion and love. I believe that the small faith communities can offer this opportunity to people to fulfill these virtues in their lives and their communities.”