Increasing and Sustaining Youth Participation in Programs for Effective Adventist Youth Ministry in the Abuakwa District of Kumasi, Ghana

Abstract

Youth participation involves the youth taking part or being involved in all programs and activities that concern and involve them. The Adventist Youth Ministry is the department of the church which works with, for and by the youth with the primary focus of the salvation of the youth through Jesus Christ and preparing them in various ways for service. The youth constitute the majority of the church and the community. Therefore, they can have significant roles to play both in the church and community as indicated by the biblical, theological and theoretical evidence. A lot of concerns have been raised about the decline and apathy among the contemporary youth in the participation of church activities and programs in this era of post-modernism. This is affecting the moral and spiritual lives of the youth as well as the church as a whole. A Library research and other forms of research were used to probe into the participation of the youth in a church program that included both qualitative and quantitative approaches, including key informants interview, focus group discussions, and administering of questionnaires and their analyses. In the four churches of the Abuakwa District of the Seventh–day Adventists, namely, Abuakwa, Maakro, Sepaase, and Tanoso, it was found that though the youth participate in church activities, from the adult and the aged there was a decline. All these necessitated the urgent need of effective intervention for improvement. A program, with the purpose of increasing and sustaining youth participation for effective Adventist Youth Ministry, was consequently developed and implemented in these four churches of the district, to ameliorate or alleviate the problem. The benefit of the program was seen when the spiritual life and the number of the youth who involved themselves in church and youth programs increased in all four churches in the Abuakwa District. A district youth evangelistic team, ADAYOM, of 25 youths was also formed. The adults and church leadership understood and embraced the need for maximum youth participation in all church activities including leadership. In conclusion, the implementation of the intervention brought improvement in the involvement of the youth in church activities.