Founded in 2011, Arise Milwaukee will offer one last Family Day event July 12 before it ceases operation — in part to the inspiring worship nights now being offered by many parishes. (File photo)

Transformation in the name of Christ: If there was any mission embraced by the group of twenty-something friends who founded the ministry of Arise Milwaukee, it was this.

So even though Arise’s Board of Directors voted this month to cease operations at the end of July, the closure of the ministry after 14 years doesn’t feel like a failure. The goal, all along, was transformation that organizers hoped to foster through dynamic worship nights at parishes that included contemporary worship and praise music, adoration and confession.

“We’re celebrating a mission accomplished,” said Arise Executive Director Valerie Winkel. “Arise has done what the Lord called it to do.”

Arise will end on a positive note, with its final event being this year’s Family Day on Saturday, July 12, at Menomonee Falls Village Park, that will once again bring together Catholic parents, children, clergy and religious brothers and sisters.

“That’s going to be our big hurrah — our farewell,” said Peter Giersch, chair of the Board of Directors of Arise.

The decision to close down Arise has been discerned by its board for several months, according to ministry leadership. There was no death knell, no one drastic thing that necessitated the closure. Rather, it was a gradual understanding that the work Arise set out to do has now been done — and done so thoroughly that the ministry is no longer needed.

Arise’s impact can clearly be seen in the present-day archdiocese, said Doug Ulaszek, Director of Adult Formation and Marriage and Family Life for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

“Seventeen thousand people participated in the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage in 2024 at one of 60 stops throughout the archdiocese,” he said. “Many things led to this renewal, of course, but Arise stands out as a key culture-shifting force.”

“There was a real need to help young people encounter the transcendent, and I think that’s what Arise did,” said Fr. Luke Strand, Rector of Saint Francis de Sales Seminary. At the time of Arise’s founding, Fr. Strand was a newly ordained priest, soon to become the vocations director for the archdiocese. In that role, he would personally experience a generation desperately seeking truth and beauty — and rediscovering it in the sacraments and devotions of the Church.

“I think people flocked to Arise (worship nights) because they had an opportunity to encounter our Lord there in a way that they didn’t in other places (at that time),” he said.

In 2012, Saint Francis de Sales Seminary had 17 seminarians in formation for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, according to Fr. Strand. This year, there are over 40. Many of those men — along with the priests who have been ordained in the last decade — have been shaped by the ministry of Arise.

“We cannot tell the story of today’s vibrant young adult community, the growth in our seminary, the increase in women’s religious vocations, and so many beautiful marriages and families without also telling the story of Arise,” said Fr. John Burns, who has been a longtime supporter of the ministry and a frequent presider at worship nights.

Another sign that the ministry was moving toward redundancy was the increasing difficulty in finding parishes to host worship nights — because most of them have now implemented an event like that of their own.

Arise was originally founded in the spring of 2011 by Talia Westerby and Dominick Albano, who were both working in parish ministry in the archdiocese — she at the Basilica of St. Josaphat, Milwaukee, and he at St. Joseph, Wauwatosa.

“We realized we both had a heart for the same thing: to bring a dynamic encounter with Christ to people through adoration of the Blessed Sacrament using contemporary praise and worship music, while offering prayer teams and confessions,” Westerby recalled.

To brainstorm moving forward with this idea, Westerby and Albano formed a core team made of some of their close friends and colleagues, including Tom Klind, Michael Gutzwiller, Margaret Rhody, Heather Patrowsky, Barb Myers and Pete Burds.

“We wanted to create opportunities for people of all walks of life to have a really positive, uplifting, wonderful experience inside a Catholic church,” Klind said. “There was such a pent-up longing in the faithful for that kind of thing.”

The first Arise Worship Night took place in 2011 at the Basilica of St. Josaphat, Milwaukee. Bishop Donald Hying, who had just been installed as an auxiliary bishop in Milwaukee and now leads the Diocese of Madison, was the evening’s presider. The events quickly gained popularity and were soon held several times per year.

One of the enthusiastic attendees was Winkel herself, then a college student at Carroll University, Waukesha.

Arise also went on to collaborate with Cor Jesu, founded in 2012 by Fr. Strand, Fr. Burns and the Vocations Office. This weekly event features Mass, adoration, confession and an opportunity for fellowship. Like the worship nights, Cor Jesu became an opportunity for a transformative encounter with Christ in his Church.

In 2017, Arise Ministries merged with Wisconsin Youth Rosary Evangelization to form Arise Milwaukee. This merger combined the scope of both groups and expanded the reach of Arise to include the Wisconsin Catholic Youth Rally, an event run by WYRE for its first 12 years under the leadership of father and son team, Dick and Brian Magliocco. Brian also served as executive director of Arise and steered the ministry through the difficult days of COVID lockdowns. The Wisconsin Catholic Youth Rally became an anchor event for Arise and has provided encounters with Christ for over 10,000 middle- through high-school aged youth from all over Wisconsin.

Arise leadership says that there are hopes that the Wisconsin Catholic Youth Rally can continue in some form.

“For those of us who started Arise, it was always about the Eucharist,” said Klind. “We knew the Lord would take care of everything. We named it Arise, in a sense, because the Church needed a new face to meet a new generation. And the face of the Church in Milwaukee has never been more beautiful, more full of hope, than it is right now.”

Now a ministry of the Vocations Office and St. Robert, Shorewood, Cor Jesu continues to be held every Wednesday at St. Robert. For more information, visit strobert.org/faith-formation/young-adult-ministry/.

For more information on Arise’s final Family Day and to register for the event, visit arisemke.org/family-day.