04.08.2020

"You are the salt of the earth"

From 22 to 26 July 2020, 200 youth leaders, including 70 young women and 130 young men, from the four UEM member dioceses of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, namely the Eastern Coastal, Karagwe, North Western and North Eastern Dioceses, met for a five-day workshop under the "Youth United in Mission" programme. The workshop was hosted by the Karagwe Diocese (KAD).

The opening service was conducted by Bishop Dr. Benson Bagonza of KAD. In his opening address to the workshop, the deputy moderator of UEM, Bishop Dr. Abednego Keshomshahara, addressed the current age of digitalization as follows: "Today's technology has significantly improved communication. While in the current Covid 19 pandemic people are no longer able to meet physically, here it is digitalization that helps people to communicate simultaneously. Young people know more about digitisation than their parents, they are more familiar with the internet and with communication tools such as WhatsApp, email and zoom". Keshomshahara advised young people to use these means of communication sensibly and with foresight to pass on constructive, health-promoting and morally acceptable information. Ideal application possibilities are offered, for example, in the area of evangelism, in the professional world, in the private sphere and for cultivating friendships.

Many diverse skills and experiences

The leitmotif of the workshop was "You are the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13). This motto was illuminated from different perspectives in order to strengthen the young people with regard to their everyday situations and their abilities. An important topic was, for example, the encouragement and promotion of South-South partnerships among the young people in the form of choirs, but also questions of life, misleading theology and the Youth Climate Action Day were on the agenda.

The youth leaders presented their diverse skills and experiences in a church and social context. Some of them are for example employed by churches, non-governmental and governmental organisations in Tanzania. Others are facing challenges such as unemployment, although they have been holding their college and university degrees in their hands for many years. In this context they made the following recommendations to the churches and to UEM:

• Succession plans in the churches should also take greater account of young people and their participation in various leadership positions.

• UEM should continue to advocate more intensive training of young people with a view to maintaining leadership skills.

• Partnerships should be strengthened on both sides in a South-South and North-South direction.

• Young people should receive scholarships and be encouraged to apply for the support programme.

25 years of international UEM

Following the workshop, the 25th anniversary of the international UEM was commemorated after the Sunday service on 26 July (in anticipation of 2021), also in the Karagwe diocese. Here the young adults were taken along with the KAD on a UEM trip starting in 1996. In his introduction, Bishop Dr. Benson Bagonza declared: "In 1995 I was one of the delegates who took part in the first meeting in the Evangelical Church in Cameroon to discuss the unification of the churches from the Bethel Mission and the Rhenish Mission Society". He was therefore confident and proud to belong to UEM as a member church, for he had helped to bring the UEM out of the baptism and is now the head of the Karagwe diocese as host of this year's youth workshop. During the presentation, he explained that the Karagwe Diocese is one of the UEM member churches that has benefited greatly from the fellowship in all five UEM pillars: diakonia, development, advocacy, partnership and evangelism. Last but not least, the leading theologian mentioned that he, too, was a product of the international church communion, as he had written his doctoral thesis - like many other colleagues in the Karagwe diocese - with the help of a UEM scholarship.

Zakaria Mnkai (youth officer of the UEM regional office in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania)