Youth Alpha Joins The National Service
The Youth Alpha Course has been rolled out as the new curriculum for the weekly Christian moral and religious classes in National Service (NS) camps across the country.
NECF Malaysia and Alpha Malaysia are partnering to provide facilitators with resources and training to run the course. Both organisations hope the new materials will excite and enable more churches to work in their local NS camps as it is is one nation-building strategy to build the next generation.
Youth Alpha is a basic discipleship course that takes teenagers through 14 fundamental topics of the Christian faith. Each meeting is interactive, with group activities, DVDs, powerpoint presentations, and very importantly, food.
Pastor Teo Chung Hock, the youth pastor of New Life Church in Petaling Jaya, pioneered the use of Youth Alpha in NS and has run it with six batches of trainees at a camp in Banting. He will now help to train more volunteers to be facilitators. "I think the church needs to recognise this as a mission field that is at its doorstep," he said.
There are 85 NS camps across Malaysia but just over 40 of them have Christian classes. Religious and moral classes - Islamic, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu - are held every Thursday and Friday nights, but Christian partici-pants at camps without Christian classes either have nowhere to go or end up at the classes of the other religions.
"The problem is manpower," lamented Larry Lee, the executive secretary of the NECF YouthNet, which has been given the task to coordinate Christian classes throughout all the NS camps in the country.
It has been difficult to recruit volunteers to teach in the camps as the response from churches have been slow. Meanwhile, those volunteers who have been going to the camps on their own have been stretched to exhaustion.
With Youth Alpha providing a simple, yet dynamic structure, it is hoped that more churches and youth ministries will participate in the NS ministry, and there will never be a shortage of facilitators in the camps.
Larry explained that Alpha was chosen, not just for its good programme, but because it was able to provide continuity and sustainable growth for the long haul. "In fact, Alpha Malaysia is willing to gazette a substantial amount of resources and manpower for the NS project," he revealed.
The impact on youth at the camps will be significant as the weekly sessions provide a place for them to fellowship and receive spiritual education.
Surveys by NECF have shown that many of the youths who attend the Christian classes at NS are second-generation Christians who do not necessarily have a personal relationship with God or a grasp of the fundamentals of the faith.
"Hence, with Alpha," said Larry, "we can go back to the basics of Jesus Christ, who He is, why He died, how do I pray, etc."
Another benefit of the programme is that it is inherently a discipleship programme for church youth groups.
Pr Teo travels three hours to and from the Banting NS camps with his church youths. "It's like on-the-job training for them. They pray, strategise, and run the course together. And when they drive back they talk more and debrief. So it is a great discipleship and outreach opportunity for the volunteers going in as much as it is for the trainees in the camps," he explained.
Larry concluded, "For many years, Malaysian churches have prayed for God to impact the next generation. Now, God has provided this window of opportunity because for three months, we have a captive audience within a retreat-type setting.
"Maybe previously we had shortcomings in the curriculum, resulting in volunteers being left in the dark on how to teach.
"But now that we have a solid programme in Youth Alpha, our churches really have no excuses not to heed this Macedonian call in Acts 16: 9-10, as well as to make our God famous in the NS camps."
Those interested to volunteer for Youth Alpha in NS camps may contact Alpha Malaysia National Office at 03-2698 8200 or email info@my.alpha.org
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