We, the youth, constitute half of the world
population. Many things happening around
the world are very often budged by us either for fun and frolics or for
calculated impairment. In the past two
decades, the world has witnessed events of ethnic and religious conflicts,
communal disharmony, and increase rate of unemployment, famines, violence and
misery adversely affecting the prime of our youthful lives. Our style of living is hauntingly fashioned
and controlled by the so called market driven policies and very rarely by
spiritual and social values.
Globalization, both cultural and economic,
has victimized us by impelling us to be more individualistic, entrepreneurial
and consumerist to prop up our standard of living in a developing country like
India. To bad luck, we are educated but
without employment, energetic and creative but without opportunities. The Church of North India existing untaken
for the last 35 years in Indian church history, and having a lot of young
people in its 26 dioceses spread across and throughout India, is not an
exception.
In the given situation, we are frustrated
today thinking that there is probably no hope for us. Today we are passing through a very critical
and difficult time due to the fact that certain ways of life that for a long
time were accepted as given are no longer so.
Today our education is privatized and standardized by the technicality
and technology. We carry a load of
unwanted expectations from our families, friends and society from our
childhood. There are social norms and
rules that demand us to be submissive without paying any attention to our ethos
and pathos. We do not play the traditional
games and sports so much as we play with computers and SMS. We
have no time to come to church as other stifling things keep us busy all the
day. If this is our condition, then how
can we think of transformation?
Therefore, there is an urgent need to empower us and challenge us to
become agents of transformation in our own context. We believe the following three elements are
rudimental in bringing about transformation in any set up.
Perspective-building
“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its
taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?
It is not longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden
under foot by men”. “You are the light
of the world. A city set on a hill
cannot be hidden nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a
stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works
and give glory to your father who is in heaven”. Mathew 5:13-16 (RSV)
We, the church youth, today face an identity
crisis. Very often we question ourselves
who are we and what can we do? People
neither make us aware of the saltiness we posses in us nor of the illuminatory
effects of our behavior and actions. It’s
all a matter of perspective which a teeming million of youth in India lack
miserably. Here, we want the church to
play the role of a catalyst and imbibe the insinuation so much so in our mind
that we would begin to understand how much we are needed by the society and
render our service and contribution pertinently. It should help us identify our issues,
detrimental forces and factors at all spheres which by itself would be the
beginning of the process of transformation.
Being a developing country, India everyday
resolves and fabricates multitudinous problems. As mentioned earlier, vital
fraction constitutes the problems of the youth. This not only connotes the
problems "constructed" by us but also the problems "faced"
by us.
Basically we, the youth in
India, Christian inclusive, are going through more personal issues. Many of us are
introvert, (this word always being wrongly taken for a shy or reserved person,
actually means "a person predominantly concerned with his/her own thoughts
and feelings rather than with the environment around") or extremely
gregarious and few are able to create balance. This situation has risen because
of the fact that the society is either very harsh or very lenient with us.
Seemingly all our issues
are directly and obviously related to the form of the society around us. In
reserved societies we struggle for the "freedom of choice" - choice
to occupation, choice to views, choice to clothes and most of all choice to
education. Outgoing educational prospects or provisional jobs are strictly not
accessible to girls. This part of us suffers from extreme restrictions, which
includes the suppression of thoughts, feelings and anxieties, leading to
repression. Adolescents’ problem of maladjustment here is accompanied by
factors like the family, social and educational background, and their not being
able to catch up with the constructive aspects of modernism. It brings about
conflicts of values and creates frustration among us.
Pseudo spirituality or
rather no-spirituality-at-all cannot be overlooked. We know that we are becoming more
individualistic than ever before which is causing our spiritual and religious
breakdown and rundown. Mundane
satisfaction is going far away from us which we are hankering after. For every problem seen around, Globalization
is always believed and debated to be the root of all evils. Hence, a fair conclusion can be deduced here
that we are under the stress of:
- Personal, social and
psychological problems
- Vocational and
educational problems
- Moral and religious
problems
- Adjustments in
academia
- Sex and development
complexities
- Home and family crisis
- Problems related to
finance
These problems conceivably are being
unravelled; nonetheless it seems that the intricacy of each dilemma is mounting
with every new key antidote. Therefore, a Perspective-building
on each issue specified above should be endeavored with a thorough analysis of our
personal and social participation.
Ecumenical
Networking
An imperative part of the church’s ministry
to us should be to develop and strengthen a network of ecumenical partners at
the grassroots, regional, national and international levels to enable the flow
of information and participation going on unabated from one to another. It is the participation in the mission that
brings about transformation not the isolation or exclusivism. But when we mean networking, we should
invariably mean sharing of available resources, competency and professionalism
as well.
Leadership
Development
The Church of North India has fifteen
million communicant members in its fold of which nearly six millions are young
people aged in between 18 to 30 years of prime youth. But unfortunately we are never attracted to
church leadership which is perpetuating in a second-line-leadership
crisis. Thus, realizing the need of
equipping these young people systematically and conceptually for leadership the
Church of North India Synod envisioned a three-tier “Training The Trainers”
programme to train as many as twenty thousands young people in its 26 Dioceses
which we appreciate the most. This would
serve two objectives mentioned above such as empowerment for transformation and
equipping conceptually for leadership.
Peer pressure can be a good factor here as we
can motivate one another faster and better than an aged person. Leadership sounds very big and attractive;
generally, it synonymies with power, position, authority, popularity and what
not. But the much-needed transformation
comes through servant leadership exhibited by our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His
life a ransom for many”. Mark 10:45
We need the church to help us cultivate the
attitude of servanthood when we shoulder the responsibility of leadership in
the church or anywhere else. Otherwise,
unsolicited destruction will supercede the anticipated transformation.
Kasta
Dip
(This article was written for North India Church Review published in 2005)
