Theological Education in Contemporary Africa

Chapter Twelve - Theological Education and the Youth in the Family, Church, and School

CHAPTER TWELVE Theological Education and the Youth in the Family, Church, and School Josphine Gitome D uring one of the worship services in my local church, a drugaddicted youth who was poorly dressed and dirty entered the church while the speaker was preaching. All eyes turned to the boy. The preacher immediately stopped and called the boy forward for prayer. The young man hurriedly walked out looking very intimidated. Was that right procedure to handle this situation? He had not waited to develop a relationship with the young person and did not even ask him whether he wanted to be prayed for. There is an increasing number of youth with serious problems in our society, but it is doubtful whether our theological institutions today treat this issue adequately. The young people in church-sponsored schools and Christian families are struggling with issues requiring guidance and counsel. My own research among the youth in the P.C.E.A. church in Kikuyu Parish revealed a need for individual guidance and counselling that was not always forthcoming.1 In this paper, we shall examine various contexts for youth ministry showing the type of challenges that youth face and the need for a theological curriculum to address these needs. _____________________________________ 1 J. Gitome, “Pastoral Care and Counseling to Educate Young Adults in the P.C.E.A. Church: With Special Reference to Kikuyu Parish” (University of Nairobi M.A. thesis, 1989). Theological Education in Contemporary Africa Youth in the Family Most young people spend less than 20% of their time with their parents due to their engagement at school or college. Formal education itself may alienate children from their families. In the past families, neighbors, friends and peers facilitated guidance and counseling for the youth. In modern society we have delegated what was previously done by family and neighbours to the formal education sector or schools. The traditional roles of the family and other support structures are therefore minimized or neglected. We must however note that, inasmuch as youth culture may be influenced by urbanization and modernization, theAfrican traditional worldview still holds an important place in the thinking of African people. This is evident from the fact that well-schooledAfricans still hold to traditional beliefs especially when dealing with issues of health and affliction, birth and death etc. Laurenti Magesa, for example, points out that some youth resort to traditional healers when they are faced with a challenge they perceive the Christian faith cannot help them overcome.2 For this reason alone, we must ask, ‘how can theology address this issue?’ It is imperative to seek to understand theAfrican worldview if this question is to be adequately addressed. The coming of missionaries intoAfrica brought with it a western form of education, which largely ignored the existing forms of African traditional education3 and at times even directly undermined it. As a result, most African church leaders have been trained for many years in a theology framed in the western worldview. There is an urgent need for a paradigm shift if theological education is to be relevant to the youth inAfrica today.As we examine anAfrican approach to morality among youth, we find in African tradition a wealth of material to draw on. The theological student must be adequately prepared in a 220 _________________________________________ 2 See Laurenti Magesa, African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life (Nairobi: Paulines, 1998). 3 This was largely informal: social norms, religious beliefs and practices; family life, individual’s roles and responsibilities and special trades were learned from family, specialists, peer groups and elders as one grew up. theology of culture so that he or she becomes skilled in integrating the informal education of the African communities into pastoral guidance and counseling. For example, in traditional sex education, the age group, community sanctions, ritual celebrations, and social support from the elders, all play a part. The church needs to explore ways of integrating these ‘African traditional resources’ into youth programs in the church so as to be able to deal more effectively with issues of human sexuality. The youth are struggling to understand their sexuality and at the same time to cope with all sorts of modern societal pressures. Catechism and learning the Ten Commandments by heart are not an adequate preparation for these struggles. The issue of sexual purity and especially sex outside marriage is, for example, a case in point. It is obvious that many Christian...