This comes against the backdrop of rising levels of crime amongst young people, especially in our large cities. It also sets into stark relief the statistics about youth suicide which are far too high in our Western society and reflect the hopelessness and alienation that some youngsters feel. Even this week a couple of older teens made a suicide pact and decided to throw themselves from the roof of a Spanish shopping centre. The young man went first and died but his girlfriend hesitated and was grabbed by security guards, but she had to wrestled to the roof level to prevent her also killing herself. Our children are in desperate need of the love of God and the life-changing message of the good news about Jesus.
I became a Christian in my mid-teens and children and young people are open to choosing for themselves at an age when sadly some churches write them off as irrelevant to their worship or way of doing things. They are not the church of tomorrow - they are very much part of the church of today - and we need to make provision for them before it's too late. Thank God, the Uprising did just that, and we must pray that every young person, and older leader, who made a decision there to follow Christ more closely, will not only stick to that commitment but share the good news with others so that they too can be spared the hopelessness that seems so obvious in a lost generation.
