Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

Dear youth lead­ers, you have come to the king­dom for such a time as this. You can­not af­ford to ig­nore or tram­ple on your pre­cious her­itage. Youth are un­der in­tense pres­sure in this post-mod­ern era. Spir­i­tu­al val­ues con­tin­ue to em­bar­rass those who love the Hol­ly­wood re­cy­cled garbage that nev­er has and will nev­er help the de­vel­op­ing world. The mur­der rate in the Carib-bean is in­creas­ing and our lead­ers ap­pear clue­less and pow­er­less. The mind ben­ders have their agen­das. We now hear about five gen­ders in­stead of two. The gang cul­ture is fu­elled by the drug and gam­bling sub­cul­tures. What is very clear is that we have scores of youth in our ter­ri­to­ries who are de­pressed to the point of be­com­ing sui­ci­dal.

We have enough su­per­fi­cial lead­ers. Now we need com­mit­ted, pas­sion­ate, ded­i­cat­ed, sac­ri­fi­cial youth lead­ers who are role mod­els and have a deep in­ter­est in our youth. It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al be­cause there are many gi­ants to be con­quered. Your sense of his­to­ry will de­ter­mine how you are mo­ti­vat­ed to use your spir­i­tu­al gift­ed­ness to make a dif­fer­ence in the com­mu­ni­ty. We have a mighty army but many of our sol­diers are liv­ing in the dress­ing room re­fus­ing to come out on the play­ing field. An­gel Ro­driguez in his book, Fu­ture Glo­ry: The 8 Great­est End-time Proph­e­sies in the Bible, refers to the ex­tinc­tion of the pas­sen­ger pi­geon in the USA. Let us look at the rel­e­vant sec­tion of this book in the chap­ter "Prepar­ing for the Apoc­a­lyp­tic Con­sum­ma­tion": "Or­nithol­o­gists tell us that dur­ing the 1860s the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca had nine bil­lion pas­sen­ger pi­geons.

Hu­mans be­gan to hunt them on a mas­sive scale, us­ing the feath­ers for mat­tress stuff­ing, some of the in­ner parts of the birds for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es, and the meat for food. Many birds per­ished in shoot­ing match­es. The re­sult? "On Sep­tem­ber 1, 1914, the Cincin­nati Zoo had the one re­main­ing pi­geon. They called her Martha. For 14 years they had been of­fer­ing $1,000 to any­one who could bring a mate for her, but none was found. On Sep­tem­ber 1, at 1 pm, the pi­geon died–and with it a species." Very sig­nif­i­cant is his con­clu­sion about the sur­vival of the rem­nant: "That will not be the ex­pe­ri­ence of God's rem­nant peo­ple. The Lord will pre­serve the hu­man race through a faith­ful rem­nant." How many of our youth study, un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the his­to­ry of our church and the role they are chal­lenged to play in this es­cha­to­log­i­cal mo­ment?

How many of our youth are guid­ed by that his­to­ry? Are our youth con­cerned about Rev­e­la­tion 12:17? "And the drag­on was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the rem­nant of her seed, which keep the com­mand­ments of God, and have the tes­ti­mo­ny of Je­sus Christ." It was John Wes­ley who wrote that "wher­ev­er rich­es have in­creased, the essence of re­li­gion has de­creased in the same pro­por­tion. There­fore I do not see how it is pos­si­ble, in the na­ture of things, for any re­vival of true re­li­gion to con­tin­ue long. For re­li­gion must nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­duce both in­dus­try and fru­gal­i­ty, and these can­not but pro­duce rich­es. But as rich­es in­crease, so will pride–and love of the world in all its branch­es–so, al­though the form of re­li­gion re­mains, the spir­it is swift­ly van­ish­ing away."

George Knights, in com­ment­ing on this state­ment, states that Wes­ley's so­lu­tion was that "Chris­tians should not on­ly gain all they can and save all they can, but al­so give all they can, so that the king­dom of Heav­en would re­tain the al­le­giance of their hearts." Are you con­cerned about the qual­i­ty of our Ad­ven­tist youth pro­grammes? Are we ap­ply­ing the lit­mus test to our min­istry to see if it is meet­ing the com­pul­so­ry re­quire­ment of trans­mit­ting the gold­en her­itage of God's rem­nant? Is sec­u­lar­ism bit­ing in­to the hearts and minds of our youth? In this tat­too-in­fest­ed, ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty-spread­ing, ad­dic­tion-in­creas­ing, plea­sure-de­mand­ing, hi-tech porno­graph­ic world there is an over­whelm­ing need to mo­ti­vate our of­fi­cers to move the youth or­gan­i­sa­tions from the triv­ial to the sub­stan­tive, from the su­per­fi­cial to the pro­found, from the en­ter­tain­ment to the prophet­ic di­men­sion.

This is the awe­some com­po­nent of our task. Sal­va­tion and ser­vice must be the goal of the youth min­istry in each com­mu­ni­ty which is be­ing bat­tered by vol­ca­noes, tsunamis, earth­quakes, en­vi­ron­men­tal and spir­i­tu­al pol­lu­tion. I am call­ing up­on youth di­rec­tors of con­fer­ences and mis­sions to pay spe­cial at­ten­tion to the con­cept of the mis­si­o­log­i­cal quadri­lat­er­al as pre­sent­ed by George R Knights. This re­lates to mis­sion in four di­men­sions: health, ed­u­ca­tion, pub­li­ca­tions and mis­sion. Knights iden­ti­fies the val­ue of train­ing and re­search in our her­itage when he analy­ses that "it was no ac­ci­dent that the send­ing of the de­nom­i­na­tion's first for­eign mis­sion­ary and the es­tab­lish­ment of its first col­lege took place the same year."

He goes on to iden­ti­fy the need for train­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the prepa­ra­tion for mis­sion­ar­ies lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly: "The grow­ing church saw the col­lege as a nec­es­sary in­sti­tu­tion for the train­ing of mis­sion­ar­ies for both the home­land and over­seas." Our pro­grammes must be mis­sion-fo­cused, ser­vice ori­ent­ed and dri­ven by our ex­tra­or­di­nary her­itage. The rich­ness of Ad­ven­tism is seen in the gold mine of our his­to­ry. There is an en­er­gy that sparks a com­pul­sion to wit­ness, which is pro­duced as we al­low our pi­o­neers to in­spire us. Roots 2010 must go to those depths in or­der to lift the self-worth of our youth. There is an ab­sence of a sense of ur­gency in our church­es. This must be re­stored and re­stored quick­ly. We must not al­low fash­ion to paral­yse our sense of mis­sion. Our ca­reer sem­i­nars and work­shops must em­pow­er our youth to choose ca­reers that would place them in the mis­sion bat­tle­front. Roots must fo­cus on a spir­i­tu­al re­vival and a Pen­te­costal out­pour­ing in each of our church­es. May God con­tin­ue to bless you!