The statistics reveal that the youth make up a large percentage of the population in South Africa. And Africa as a whole. With that being said a large number of these youth are Christians. South Africa comes in at third place with the highest number of Christian youth. The downside of this is that, although the highest number are Christian, they are not active members, in that they do not won a bible or attend any local church.
These statistics are alarming because they speak of the inability of the church to captivate young people and the lack of creativity to attract the youth. Lindsay Lategan who serves at OneHope as the Southern Regional Ministry Coordinator spoke about the need for the church to be active and passionately pursue young people. The world is very attractive and lures young people towards its pleasures and desires which are contrary to the standards set out for believers to walk in. young people have found comfort in complete strangers on the internet statistics show that young people spend most of their time surfing the net. This then spoke to the lack of interaction between parents and their children.
Those called to teach young people, be it youth pastors, children’s church teachers and mentors and mentees must be well equipped to handle young people. They must be trained on what young people need and how to effectively cater to their needs. This was another point spoken of by Shaun Marais serving as a local missionary with Child Evangelism Fellowship SA.
The youth need the involvement of their parents in order to make informative decisions. And parents should not leave the responsibility of raising godly children to external entities like the church and schools. Godly children become godly based on what they see at home. Parents must be involved in every aspect of their children’s lives. The world has an extremely loud voice with diabolic undertones, but the voice of the parents can be even louder. As alluded by Noluvuyo Masindi who serves at the Student Ministry as the SCO National Higher Institutions Director.
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