Mentoring Youth for Mission in the Twenty-first (21st) Century: A Case Study of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Nigeria

Abstract

The youth of the present generation are faced with issues that are beyond their control. These issues are as a result of the changing world. The present world of technology, the social media, and busy family life have created a gap between children and their parents, thereby making it difficult for the two parties to relate mutually. Incidentally, the church is not immune to the challenges bedeviling the contemporary world. One of the ways by which the church is negatively affected is in the aspect of mentoring. From the Apostles’ days, mentoring process has been an effective way of helping and developing young Christians. However, the gap created between the older members and the young people in the Church through the advance in technology and human communication is somewhat rendering mentoring of little or no effect for achievement of mission goals in the 21st century. To ensure the trend does not hinder this generation from transmitting the apostolic values, which the preceding generations earnestly fought to sustain and carefully handed down to the succeeding generations, to those coming behind them, particularly in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Nigeria, something drastic must be done. It is against this backdrop this paper sets out to review the concept of mentoring in Christendom in the 21st Century from the perspective of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Nigeria. It therefore evaluates the extent the prevalent relationship realities between the older individuals and the youth have hindered productive mentoring processes and discouraged sustainable youth development in the church.