Young leaders gather to make a difference.

Wednesday 7 July 2004

Over 500 young Christian leaders representing a multitude of churches and organisations from across South Africa gathered today at the YFC Camp, Hekpoort, Gauteng for the SACLA Youth Leadership Assembly. They meet until 11 July.

Held in the beautiful surroundings of the Magaliesberg mountains, the young leaders will make use of creative tools such as drama, sport, graffiti worship, multimedia and music to equip, motivate and train themselves to be change agents - reaching out to their own generation in their own continent of Africa.

This is a follow-up conference for the youth track of last years ground breaking South African Christian Leadership Assembly (SACLA), the most denominationally representative Christian gathering in the history of South Africa.

Buhle Dlamini, founder of the nationwide Young and Able Youth Advisory Services, spoke in the evening, as the first plenary speaker, on the vision, passion, character and faith of a change agent. “My hope is that young leaders will come here to get a vision of what God wants in their society,” Dlamini said, “but that they will also become implementers, putting an action plan to their vision – this can’t just be a talk shop!”

The young leaders are dividing daily into four working groups representing leaders in schools, leaders in churches, leaders in tertiary institutions and leaders in the study of youth culture.

The programme includes an inspirational plenary session each day, time for detailed work in the working groups, socialising, networking and elective courses on topics such as HIV/AIDS, racism and family breakdown.

SACLA 2003, held in Pretoria, was attended by over 4000 Christian leaders from all walks of society, who tackled the problems of HIV/AIDS, crime, violence, poverty and unemployment, racism, sexism and crisis in the family. It was addressed by senior national and international leaders including the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki.

In addition to the SACLA Youth Assembly, the SACLA process is continuing on an ongoing basis on a local level, as well as in many other vocational forums and with theological consultations. SACLA is sponsored by the South African Council of Churches (SACC), The Evangelical Alliance of Southern Africa (TEASA) and African Enterprise (AE).