Tanzania: Young People Actively Participate in Small Christian Communities Workshop in Dar es Salaam
“Action Plans” and “Implementation Steps” were the highlights of a “One-day Small Christian Communities (SCCs) Pastoral Solutions Workshop” at Immaculate Conception Parish, Mavurunza in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Saturday, 1 September, 2018.
Eighty-two lay people from 54 SCCs in the parish participated in a lively workshop facilitated in Swahili language by Sister Rita Ishengoma STH, and Father Joseph Healey MM, members of the AMECEA Small Christian Communities (SCCs) Training Team, together with a Tanzanian Augustinian priest Father Zakaria Kashinje OSA.
A high point of the workshop was the active participation of young people. There were 19 young people aged between 16 and 29 years, which is an age bracket of youth as suggested by Pope Francis for the forthcoming Youth Synod in Rome in October, 2018. Two young women and two young men in their 20s joined the Facilitators Table in coordinating the workshop. One concrete proposal was to start Small Faith Sharing Communities/ Small Bible Reflection Communities specifically for young people during weekly meetings of the Young Catholic Workers (YCW) popularly known as Vijana Wafanyakazi Wakatoliki (VIWAWA) in Tanzania. And the key point expressed is that young people themselves take ownership and initiative of this pastoral activity.
The active participation of the young people affirmed that the Small Christian Community (SCC) is indeed the “Emerging paradigm of youth empowerment in Africa.” This has been pointed out on the SCCs Website (http://smallchristiancommunities.org) Poll for September–October 2018 so much that each of the young people at the workshop received the new AMECEA bookmark, “Celebrating Young People Small Christian Communities (YPSCCs) in Eastern Africa”. And, as part of explaining how the SCC model of Church is a new way of being/ becoming church, the participants used the name Mwanajumuiya (Swahili for a “member of a SCC”) to reinforce the pastoral priority that SCCs have a new structure, a new mentality, and a new vocabulary.
The process of the workshop came from the Second Edition of the book “Strengthening the Growth of Small Christian Communities in Africa — A Training Handbook for Facilitators” by Chimombo, Emmanuel, Joseph G. Healey, Rita Ishengoma, Rose Musimba, Febian P. Mulenga and Alphonce C. L. Omolo, (eds.), Nairobi: AMECEA Pastoral Department and Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2018.
At the beginning of the workshop participants identified the 14 most important obstacles (vikwazo in Swahili)/barriers/problems/difficulties/challenges in the growth of SCCs in the parish. They ranked the greatest four obstacles as follows: little faith (51 votes); laziness (50 votes); many collections (31 votes) – in fact, a popular complaint was about the “Michango Church” which literary means ‘the Catholic Church of many financial collections’; and parents of different faiths (22 votes).
Furthermore, participants formed four small communities to discuss practical pastoral solutions to overcoming these four obstacles — what they called the medicine (dawa in Swahili) to cure these problems.
The solutions and their implementation steps were also discussed at length in a plenary session where members of the St. Nicholas of Tarentino SCC in St. Alipius Outstation performed a role play of a typical meeting in a SCC that reflects on the Gospel of the following Sunday. This too was discussed and evaluated with one main purpose being ‘How can we make our weekly SCC meetings better?’
As of September 2018, the Archdiocese Dar es Salaam has approximately 5,555 SCCs in its 111 parishes – a calculation that is based on the 50 SCCs each in the 111 parishes. The number is higher if one includes the SCCs in schools. Dar es Salaam is one of the leading dioceses in the AMECEA Region. Tanzania alone has over 65,000 SCCs.
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By Joseph G. Healey, MM
