By Charles Muchiri
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| Charles Muchiri |
Last weekend, I attended Mass, no…I went to Church at St John Catholic Church - Mihuti, which is one of the many outstations under Gikondi Parish, Nyeri Archdiocese.
This was the first time that I was joining my home forks at a Church service this year.
It was thus very easy to single out any conspicuous development in this Church where I took my catechism classes about 18 years ago!
And there are two major things that I noted:
One: Lack of Holy Mass
St John Catholic Church, like many other local churches under Gikondi Parish only gets opportunities to celebrate Holy Mass periodically.
Apparently, this is because the Parish only has two out-stretched priests who have to serve about 15 local churches within the morning hours of a single Sunday!
Most of the local churches thus often end up without Holy Mass.
On this day, the Liturgy of the word is led by an upcoming Service Leader, Mr Wanjau Githaiga whom I am made to understand he is new on the job.
He is assisted by the Church Chairman who ‘co-celebrates’ with him. And although the Chairman is at ease with his well driven sermon, our upcoming Service Leader is still learning the handles of the game and it takes quite an effort for him to stumble through the invocations.
Two: The Church is populated by the aged
Here is an even more significant observation that I made, the entire church is almost composed of the elderly – or at least, over 40-years-old-and-above Christians. Most Christians here are actually well beyond their 50’s.
Indeed, the youths are as sparse as the word can stretch. Partly, this may be out of the fact that most schools are still in (third term) session. But then again, Mihuti sub-location, under which our home church falls, has quite a number of day-schools.
Given, there is an imminent danger that if the youths are the Church of tomorrow, then St John Mihuti may be headed to an early extinction – on this account, God forbid.
But the issue of lack of youths isn’t a concern that is only confined in the Holy walls of the local churches.
Here at Mukurwe-ini Constituency, where our local church falls, population statistics have been pointing out to a significant drop of new-borns.
Many local leaders, especially the politicians have now gone as far as introducing monetary incentives to any woman who gives birth to a new born.
Obviously, there are other issues that certainly come into play, like the unspoken rural-urban migration that has become common-place here in Central Kenya, and particularly in Mukurwe-ini. Evidently, there must be a number of catalysts that are responsible for this rural-urban migration, which by itself is not always positive for the future of any up-country region, but this is certainly another topic for another forum.
Bottom-line; our local Church is in a screaming need for young people, and someone with a solution would better be reading this!
/Follow this writer on Twitter: @muchirimuchoki/
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