The need for mentoring and retaining the Adventist youth for discipleship in Yelwa District, North West Nigeria Conference

Abstract

Problem The Yelwa District Seventh-day Adventist Church has seen a notable decline in the attendance of young people in the past 20 years. The Church's spiritual health has been impacted by the decline in attendance. It also presents a significant threat to the Church's leadership and its survival. One of the challenges threatening the future of the Church is the lack of a comprehensive mentoring strategy that is geared toward the retention of young members. The leaders of the Church have adopted some strategies to address the challenges. Some initiatives include creating ministry opportunities, developing new member courses, and employing full-time Bible workers. However, due to inadequate mentoring strategy, those efforts have not been yielding the expected results which suggests that the Church needs to adopt more effective intervention strategies. A major aspect of the intervention strategies, which seems to have been neglected by the Church, is deliberate coaching and training of new members to stem the ongoing loss of members.

Method The Church ran a mentorship program from February 2020 to January 2021. The program was organized for young and old members of the Church by some youth leaders who were willing to sacrifice their time for the mentoring and teaching of members as disciples of Christ. To educate, equip, and engage church leaders in a series of seminars, the Church created a mentorship curriculum for youth and new members' care and retention. The curriculum covers issues like spiritual formation, spiritual relationships, and spiritual gifts, which are appealing to young members and youths who have been backslidden from the Church. The program's efficacy was evaluated by seeing how the church's leadership approached youth and prospective members.

Results Even though the training was initially designed for young people and older members of the Church, the Conference Administration requested the participation of all the youth leaders from the Districts in the Conference. Consequently, 94% of the youth leaders in the Conference were in attendance. The participants were enthusiastic about the program. They were eager to learn about the principles of mentorship that would lead to effective discipleship. The work reveals that the young people who participated in mentorship training have been attending church programs consistently since the training was conducted. The young people have also been active in various church activities. The response also suggests that to support mentor-mentee relationships in the Church, mentors would like further training. The mentees who took part in the program also support the sustenance of the mentorship program in the Church. Meanwhile, the study records that the challenge of sustaining the seminars and training for mentors and leaders in the District is very great.

Conclusions Young people need to be mentored and discipled to stay in the church. It is also necessary for promoting youths’ active participation in the Christian faith and for selfless Christian life. A workable mentorship guide for discipleship will enhance spiritual reformation. It will transform mentor-mentee relationships that will foster the identification of latent skills in the youths. It will also encourage the young people’s retention for discipleship in the Church. The research, therefore, emphasizes that leaders and older members need to work together to encourage attitudes of openness, honesty, and spiritual growth which will help them to perform their tasks well in the Church, particularly among the youth. Young people, therefore, need mentors for effective training, engagement, encouragement, and guidance. Church members also have the responsibility of reaching out to the leaders of the future generation, and influencing the leaders positively.