“Strength is the glory of young men” (Proverbs 20:29, CEB). Due to a lack of trust, teeming youth all over the world are looking for a place of refuge—a community with which they can identify and proudly call their own.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church believes that allowing young people to drift away from the church as a result of relational issues will be detrimental to the mission of the church. Hence, their strength would be missing in God’s noble work.
For the church, total youth involvement is a must, so as to give countless young adults the attention they truly deserve. Likened as “grown-up plants… corner pillars fashioned as for a palace (Psalm 114:12, NASB), young people remain critical to the growth of a community and the church.
In the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the need to harness the potential and spiritual gifts of young adults brought about the existence of senior youth ministry as well as the development of Senior Youth Leader (SYL), a leadership curriculum in response to the growing needs of leaders to guide young adults.
On August 1–4, 2019, the General Conference Associate Senior Youth Director, Pastor Pako Edson, launched the Senior Youth Ministry for the West-Central Africa Division at Babcock University in Ogun State, Nigeria, prompting all youth ministries directors under the WAD to replicate the launch in their various unions.
In compliance, on February 10–14, 2021, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Jengre-Gari, Plateau State, hosted 163 young adults drawn from the three local conferences in the Northern Nigeria Union Conference (NNUC) for the SYL launch and training, tagged “Moving to the Higher Ground”.
The facilitator, Pastor Daniel Chiroma, Jr., Youth Director of the NNUC, remarked that the SYL launch and training in the conference was timely to prevent the depletion of young people in the church. “To us in Northern Nigeria, it is a serious concern to prevent the youth from neglecting their role in assisting the church in fulfilling its mission. More reason we have used the occasion of the Senior Youth Leader launch to empower 163 young adults to take up leadership responsibilities at various levels of youth ministries in the union.”
Earlier, the guest speaker, Pastor Yohanna Harry, president of the NNUC, had admonished the young people to always stand on the truth, reminding them that making it to “higher ground” is a personal task that must be taken to heart and pursued with humility.
Commending the efforts of the youth in the NNUC, particularly in the area of evangelism, the One Year in Mission (OYiM) project, Pastor Harry called on leaders at all levels to help young people build uncompromised integrity by involving them in leadership responsibilities as well as encouraging them at all times to obey the Word of God, which will guarantee them a higher ground.
Harry added, “Youth inclusiveness or total youth involvement is the only way the future of the community and church can be secured.”
The five-day leadership training and SYL launch were anchored on ten modules of seminar topics: introduction to youth ministry, youth development, current issues, leadership, mentoring, church planning, creative youth ministry, serving, outreach, and digital ministry.
Participating and engaging with real-life case studies, the training exposed young adult leaders to what it takes to develop a strong faith maturity while serving as keys and characters of influence for the development of the kingdom of God. Happy for the SYL launch and training, participants applauded Adventist Youth Ministries leadership for organizing the program, which is evident that the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Northern Nigeria is committed to building the youth.
Certainly, the future will look very bright and attractive if the teeming youth are intentionally guided and supported to make the right choices. As the EPIC (experiential, participatory, image-rich, and connected) generation is in need of integrated mentorship and authentic, intergenerational dialogue, leaders must help them stand up for good.
You are the mentors; they are the mentees. Guide them!
