A Case study for Assessing the Pathfinder Club operations in Central Zambia Conference

Abstract

With a total membership of over 874,000 baptized members as at September 2013, the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church in Zambia, generally referred to as the Zambia Union Conference (ZBUC) was rated the second largest Union worldwide based on membership. At the same time, records revealed that more than 60% of the membership were youths. As would be expected, in the Central Zambia Conference (CZC), located right at the heart of the Union and the focus of this study, the situation is no different, in both rapid membership growth and high ratio of youth. Lamentably, CZC quarterly statistical reports indicate that thirty percent of early-teens who leave the Pathfinder Club and join Senior Youth Club soon drop out of church membership altogether. Without doubt, the high dropout rate negatively impacts membership statistics in both the CZC in particular, and the ZBUC generally. This high dropout rate is suspected to be due to the transitional challenges teenagers face as they move on to senior youth and adulthood. We could infer from the above that the Pathfinder Club is failing to meet its goal of nurturing the youth for adulthood. There is need, therefore, to identify the challenges that youth face during this transitional period. Also, it is necessary to assess the operations of the Pathfinder Club in CZC in order to ascertain whether there is something missing in its curriculum that makes youths in the CZC to be inadequately prepared for this transitional period. The purpose of this study therefore, is to assess the causes that lead to the failure in operations of the Pathfinder Club in CZC to fulfill its mission of nurturing early teens for senior youth and adulthood. That is the object of this study. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data, the study has established that there are indeed some very serious challenges youth face during the critical transition period from Pathfinder Club to the Ambassadors Club. The study also found out that there is a serious handicap in the way the Pathfinder Club is run, making youth quite vulnerable as they transition to senior youth.