Mentoring Young People in Veeplaas Seventh-day Adventist Church: The Role of the Local Church Leadership

Youth Ministries is the lifeblood of the Church today. This ministry is also designed to assist youth within and youth in the communities. The Seventh day Adventist World Church membership is mainly composed of young people with an estimate of 75%. Young people have been and continue to take leadership roles in the local church. Yet, the Church’s challenge of losing young people and failure to uphold Christian standards has been discovered to be increasing day by day. The degrading standards and morals within church youth hinder one of Adventist youth Ministries’ objectives, which is ‘Youth working for other youth.’ It is further discovered that the neglect of mentoring programmes which provide opportunities for youth to develop spiritually and mentally and the absence of spiritual and mentally matured mentors in the local churches is the cause for either the loss of young people or poor decision making by youth in matters relating to life. This article seeks to discover and display the use of mentorship programs at Veeplaas church of Seventh day Adventist as means to retain youth, reduce or prevent moral degeneration and providing counseling and guidance among them. Literature is used to review, define and critically look at mentoring as a discipline effective for youth development.