Utumishi Blog

Rev. Benard Kamau spoke at the iServe Ministry Training Course last year on the subject of rural youth ministry. It was brilliant. The full presentation is here and it’s well worth reading in full but, to summarise, here are some of the issues he brought up:

• We need to understand what the Church is and what it’s supposed to be doing. This is absolutely key both for the youth and the non-youth (and church leadership). What exactly is the church – a club or a body? Is it about fulfilling my personal needs/desires/tastes or is it about service? What is the church’s central mission – buildings, structures or proclamation and discipleship? And who owns the church – the leadership, the wealthy respected families, the youth or Jesus?
• Youth in Kenya (particularly rural Kenya) is defined not so much by age but more by status in society. A married 17 year old will move out of youth to respected adulthood while a 40 year old single or someone who has ‘failed’ in life might still be seen as in the youth category and given little respect.
• Rural youth find their questioning and exploration suppressed.
• The growth of peri-urban areas – which are neither wholly rural nor wholly urban but contain both cultures – lead to contradictory expectations on young people in these areas producing confusion and tension.
• Why have a specific ‘youth service’? There are dangers in having a self-selecting, mono-cultural, mono-age church, not seeing themselves as members of the wider body. There is little opportunity for self-sacrificial love for different ages and cultures within the body. And (as Benard gave various examples in his presentation) there is often very little content to these youth-led youth services – just a random collection of testimonies, thoughts, verses, songs and kuruka – rather than solid Biblical food.
• Churches tend to engineer programmes for youth as a block but, “the trick is to mentor a few.”