Lutheran youth unsure of where to find their daily bread

Young adults in Asia faced with the disillusionment of a good education that no longer guarantees employment opportunities need spiritual guidance from the church on how to get their daily material bread and meet their spiritual needs.

"What does a job mean? What does work mean?" asked Rev Sekino Kazuhiro from the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church, presenting the LWF Asian region youth response to the keynote address of the Asia Pre-Assembly Consultation (APAC), that ended today in Bangkok, Thailand.

"Today, many young people are crying of physical hunger and of spiritual hunger," said Kazuhiro, underlining the importance of gainful employment.

"However, many young people cannot get a job; the unemployment rate is too high," he noted, citing the unemployment crises in countries such as Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Japan and Thailand.

"Sometimes they have to choose a job that is lower than what they are trained for and sometimes they don't get a job at all," noted Kazuhiro, who is a member of the LWF Council.

The keynote address by LWF Vice President Bishop Dr Munib A Younan included biblical and daily life anecdotes as well as regional examples on the abundance and lack of food.

He had pointed out that the prayer for daily bread "speaks to a deep existential fear that still plagues humanity today, as millions of mothers and fathers do not know how they will feed their children tomorrow".

"It is a fear confirmed by the fact that 16,000 children die of hunger every day," he said.

The Asian youth affirmed the keynote speaker's call to the region's churches to speak out boldly about the underlying causes of hunger. The alarming statistics of children dying from hunger and others feeding from garbage bins in Gaza "express the pain of young people and of the next generation", Kazuhiro reported.

Their message emphasised the need "to have compassion and to take action". Even when such initiatives are very small, they are important, "because without such action, our communion would be meaningless," the youth added.

In a plenary presentation on Tuesday, the Asian youth cited some of the urgent issues that impede their spirituality, and suggested ways in which the church could enhance the inclusion and participation of young people.

"Youth are drifting away from their parent churches to charismatic churches," as the latter offer worship styles that fit the young generation, said Ms Sofia M Samuel from the India Evangelical Lutheran Church on behalf of the group. This is a burning issue for the churches in the region, Samuel emphasised.

The youth group pointed out that Lutheran churches have a rich heritage to offer, and urged further reflection on ways in which worship and other church life could be made more relevant also to young people's needs.

On participation in church work, the group noted that many young people were interested in being more actively involved, but they lacked initiative and encouragement from church leadership. They called for orientation and training in church administration and management to prepare them for such responsibilities.

The youth expressed appreciation for LWF’s support toward theological and non-theological scholarships, which also benefit the rest of society. They underlined the importance of educational support in secular subjects such as business administration, as this allows Christians to also take up jobs in administration outside the church.

Their concluding appeal for young people's inclusion in the Lutheran communion was an interpretation of the topics of good soil, sowing, harvest and processing, which will guide Village Group discussions at the July 2010 LWF Assembly in Stuttgart, Germany.

APAC youth delegates added: "The youth are the soil, the seeds of training need to be sowed in us. Then definitely, a rich harvest of good leaders can be reaped who will change society and share their potentials with all humankind."