adminPerspective Stephen Mpofu
VERY often when children and other young people get caught up in delinquent acts, adults including parents wag angry fingers at the children instead of at themselves for failing to bring up their offspring in proper ways. The implication there is that the adults themselves, including parents of offenders, were not brought up in ways that eschewed juvenile delinquency, and this suggests that adults, including parents of the offending children stand guilty themselves for failing to bring up their offspring in ways that accord with societal norms.
In effect, therefore, when they blame children for errant behaviour they indirectly wag accusing fingers at themselves as parents for not bringing up their offspring in proper ways.
News that Pentecostal and apostolic churches in Victoria Falls have introduced a programme to raise children as responsible citizens should be applauded by every Zimbabwean interested in the maintenance of law and order in the country.
The churches in question have introduced a programme in the resort town to teach children about morality and other life skills as a way of preparing the young to become responsible citizens in adult life.
Very often society wags fingers at young people for engaging in delinquent acts when, in reality, society should instead be kicking itself in the groin for failing to raise children in normative ways.
In the Victoria Falls programme 30 churches have banded together to empower children to become responsible socially and spiritually.
Under normal circumstances, church leaders have waited at entrances to their places of worship or behind the pulpit for parents to bring their children to the church.
In fact, children are normally not catered for so that they become more hangers-on to their parents if they are not big enough to attend Sunday School.
In the new programme at the resort town, children below the age of 10 years from different church denominations gathered at Moringa Grounds in Mkhosana on Saturday where they were coached on biblical scriptures and how to interact with one another.
The zonal coordinator for the programme, Pastor Vhangani Ndou, said training was held last year for Sunday School teachers who are called programme directors.
Pastor Ndou said: “The motive is to grow these children spiritually in a life of evangelism and discipleship.”
Very often children are left out of church during service while they also find it difficult to listen through the whole sermon in church because their listening capacity is limited, he said.
Yet, catching them young, when they are still impressionable is like sowing seed in virgin land with obvious results as the crop grows to maturity.
In fact growing up children in the word of God is akin to applying fertilisers to a young crop with obvious results in the end.
On the other hand, it becomes a difficult task to let children grow up in a world of crime and then try to fish them out when lawlessness has become their second nature.
Pastor Ndou said the programme was “meant to capture their attention and teach them morals and social life with the aid of games.”
Today Zimbabwean society as well as societies elsewhere in the world are riven by juvenile crimes because the Church and parents have not joined forces in bringing up children imbued with the fear of the law and of God to desist from anti-social behaviour.
In many cases the Church wags a finger at parents for their wayward children with parents retorting by blaming church leaders for imprisoning themselves behind the pulpit instead of going out there to bring the lost sheep to the fold and salvation.
Joint partnerships between the Church and society at large cannot fail to cleanse not just Zimbabwe, but other countries as well, of prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves, murderers and other social misfits in order to bring humanity closer to the Creator with obvious dividends to follow.
If what the church denominations are doing in Victoria Falls were to be the norm countrywide, Zimbabwe will have achieved a milestone in harnessing its human resource for social and economic development by cleansing society of social ills that hang over its “neck” like an albatross.
The church in partnership with parents as agents of socialisation cannot fail to bring up young people who will become responsible citizens of this country and a joy to emulate by societies elsewhere in the global village where juvenile delinquency is a menace.
Online Reporter