The Archbishop met with the Anglican Young People Association, which supports youth across the Church of Ghana. The group welcomed Archbishop Sarah to St Barnabas Anglican Church, Osu and told her about their work, from evangelism, mentoring and accompaniment, to campus outreach and community service.
Read the Archbishop's address:
God is good! All the time!
It is such a joy to be with you this afternoon. Thank you for taking your time out of whatever you have been doing to be with me. It is my privilege.
In this presentation, I heard bold, young people talking about their faith, but I also heard mentioned at least twice, the comment was that so often as a church we think that young people are the church of the future. That is not right. You are the church of today. Is that not right?
And Paul gives us the image of the body for a reason. He gives us the image of a body for being the body of the church because it is made up of many different members, lots of different parts. If one part is missing, the whole body suffers.
And therefore you are part of the church today. You bring with you skills and gifts, some of which you heard demonstrated, but you bring the life to the body of the church, and each one of you, your place is there. Without you, we will miss you.
And I was at St Andrew's Church on Sunday, and it's in the areas known as ‘spare parts’, and it's known as the Church of the spare parts. Well, in the body of Christ, in the church, there are no spare parts. Each part, each of you has a role to play.
You are in a country where such a large percentage of people are young, and we need you because you are the people that talk their language. You know where they are. You know the struggles, the situations, and the anxiety. The people of your age are going for it, and therefore you are able to share the love of God with them. And each one of you has the ability to share the love and the hope that you have come to know in Jesus Christ with them.
And you don't have to be a great theologian. You don't have to be a great evangelist. All you need is the confidence to tell your story, of how God has changed your life. And one of the things I've learned is people love stories. They love to know about people. So tell people your story, the difference that Jesus makes in your life, day after day. Tell them that and have the confidence to invite them to something. The church will only grow if we invite people. And then we welcome them and we make them feel at home. And then the Holy Spirit can do its bits and God can add to our numbers those who he is saving.
I became a Christian at 16, and since then, one of the verses that has always stayed with me, and is of great joy to me today, comes from Isaiah 43. Isaiah 43 is the verse that says ‘God has called you by name and has made you his own.’ It's the verse that I use when I confirm people as they stand up to proclaim that they want to follow Jesus Christ, and I remind each one of them, and I remind you, and I remind myself that God has called you by name and has made you this home.
And of course, name in Scripture isn't just Sarah. It's not just the five letters that make up that name. It is everything about me. It does all those things that you've spotted about me on the internet or somebody's told you, it's all the things that my husband, Eamonn will know about me. It's all those things that only I know about me. God calls us by name, and He has made us his home.
And the challenge for each one of us is, first of all, to respond to that, to say, God, I will respond. I know that you have made me. I know that you have created me, and I know that you have saved me. And then the second choice is to say to him, I will follow you. And what we need to know is that if we follow Christ, God is faithful. He is always there. Friends will let us down, parents may let us down, the church made us down. But God never lets us down. He is always there, walks with us.
And the verse I talked about from Isaiah, Isaiah 43, also talks about the fact that actually we will not be consumed by fire. We will not drown in water. Why not? Because God will be with us and is with us.
And then the daily challenge that we have is to work out what does it mean to follow Jesus. What does that look like? And often the only way we can work that out is by studying the scriptures, by spending time in worship and prayer, and by spending time talking and listening to those people in our youth groups, our Sunday schools, and in our churches, so that we can have an ear for what God is calling us to do.
All those things that you've spoken about - your networks and the work that you do, the way you mentor, the way you support, the way you befriend people on campus - all of those are things that look like Jesus. They are what it is salt and the light of the world. But as you do them, remember that God walks with us. Christ is faithful. He is always there.
God is good! All the time!
Now, in following Christ, there may be sometimes he invites us to step out in faith into a new path.
So I want to challenge you today: Is God calling you to be a leader? Is he calling you to be a catechesis? Is he calling you to lead a youth group? Is he calling you to be a mentor? Is he calling you to be a deacon or a priest?
And if you sit there thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, I couldn't do that’, if you ask any of those that ordained here today, they will tell you that the day they responded to God's call, they weren't sure they could hear him either.
But God is good! All the time!
And actually, the one step you have to make is to say to Christ: ‘I will follow you. I will do what you are asking me to do’, and then God does the rest. And if you're being called to be a deacon or a priest, there are theological training programmes to help shape you. There are people that will mentor you. And if you think, 'I can't see anybody like me in that role’, know that we all think that, and the truth is there may just be a shape that is just you shaped.
God may be calling you to step out, a leap of faith into something that is new. So if today God is prodding you to do something else in your Christian life, maybe it's a leader of a Sunday school, maybe it's being a mentor, maybe it's being a youth leader, maybe it's being a priest or a deacon, don't go today without talking to somebody that's sitting here in a collar, because that's the first step to Christ. Maybe you are called.
And here's a challenge as well to those that are sitting here in a collar. If we believe today that you are the church, we have to listen to you. We have to change. And I would encourage you to have a persistence of voice to influence the leadership of your churches, to say what it looks like for us to be a body of Christ that properly includes you, that properly sees you, because then it'll enable you to ask your friends, the people you work with, or are at college with, or at school, to come and join and see what it looks like to find the hope we have in Jesus Christ.
So may the Lord bless you. May the Lord keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you. And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you always. Amen.
