A strategy for empowering the youth for leadership in the Seventh-day Adventist church in South Malawi Field, Malawi

Abstract

The study leading to empowerment of young people for leadership was pursued in South Malawi Field of Seventh-day Adventists where the majority of members in the Church are young people aged 12-30 years. It had been observed that young people are not meaningfully involved in the Church. They are, generally, excluded from leadership positions and older members of the Church seemed to monopolize leadership opportunities in the Seventh-day Adventist churches in South Malawi Field. A specific Church, Soche Seventh-day Adventist Church, was selected for study with a view to generalizing the findings to the whole territory of South Malawi Field. The researcher asked for 40 young people and 30 adults who were randomly selected to make up group that could be used for the study. By the time the process of study began, 35 young people aged 12 – 30 years and 25 adults over 30 years of age had committed themselves to continuing with the program when it was launched,implemented, and evaluated. What was of major concern as the study was embarked upon, was that although young people of Soche Seventh-day Adventist Church were highly receptive to the good news of the gospel, membership attrition rate among them was quite high. Many young people fell prey to many problems which affected many young people in the area. Closer observations indicated that young people were generally inactive in Church, and were denied leadership opportunities and positions in the church. Although the Church had been operating in this territory for more than 115 years it had been losing opportunities for helping young people develop and operate fully to their God-given potential. This study sought to change the situation in South Malawi Field by designing a program for developing youth leadership potential. Soche Seventh-day Adventist Church is one of the largest churches in the city of Blantyre, and it was selected for pilot study. Following the establishment of a theoretical framework and description of the local situation, a strategy was formulated and applied to the local situation. In order to achieve the objectives of the research a questionnaire was prepared. Two groups of people were selected: 35 young people aged between 12-30 years and 25 adults aged between 31-50 years. Apart from the group there were those who participated in the interviews before and after the program had been implemented. The study started in 2006 and continued up to 2009. What came out clearly from the study was that many adults do not accept the young people to be empowered for leadership positions in the church. The majority felt that the youth may take over their leadership positions and yet they lack everything that is essential in leadership. The church appeared to have had little interest in training the youth for leadership. Nevertheless, after implementing a mentoring program for developing leadership potential for the youth, there was a change of attitude in favor of involving young people in all programs of the church, and systems were put in place to prepare the young people for leadership positions.