Church Youth

We are encouraged by some of the steps the young people at our churches are taking. As a church we are now meeting in 3 different homes on Sunday mornings for worship - but meet during the week for a Bible study on Friday nights (rotating in different homes) and the young guns meet up at our place on Saturday evenings.

The youth have decided to divide themselves up into 3 mini-teams. Each team will have 3-4 core people running it and will be doing a 3 month project.

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One team will be doing a Bible study in the home of a family of 3 young people whose parents have passed away and who are on-and-off participants in one of our Sunday worship times. The idea is to build up this family and reach out to friends in the neighbourhood.

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The second team is planning a 'Discipleship Training School' where they will be taking Saturday afternoon sessions with 4 pre-teen girls from our Thane fellowships. The young people see this as a way of developing the faith of these girls and also as serving as an entry for them into the Youth group.

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The third team is planning to meet regularly with one of the HIV positive families we are in touch with at JSK. It is going to be a real challenge for them, since the family they are planning to reach out to is one where father, mother and one child have the disease. They live close by to one of our fellowships and have even attended worship a few times - but their situation is grim as both are repeatedly ill and just do not seem to be getting much better despite being on medications. Excellent opportunities for our youngsters to come face-to-face with what it means to trust God.

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Our Saturday evening meetings are thus being retooled to being a support time for these teams - a time to reflect on what has happened and pray for each other - spurring each other on to love and good deeds (Heb. 10.24). To get things rolling the young people have started conducting our Saturday fellowship in Hindi - something that urban youngsters usually feel very shy about - but something absolutely vital to reach out to people for whom English is not a natural lingo (read: most of our dear country).

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Hats off to these youngsters! We have so wanted this generation to step forward and make bold moves - and go into opportunities to learn what it means to trust God. We need a blanket of prayer over every positive step we take forward for our loving Lord!