A long, long time ago, a missionary from another land asked why we were trying to write Sunday School materials for the local context. After all, his country produced the best Sunday School materials in the world and we should just continue to use those. Well, this was a long time ago. I think the world-wide church has long woken up to the need to produce contextualised materials that connect the unchanging Scripture to specific local contexts. Which is why Graceworks is working on a local study guide for our FIT groups.
What is a FIT group? FIT stands for Friends in Transition. It is a ministry to help Christian young adults navigate the transition between tertiary education and working life. This is a critical transition. If done well it sets the person on a spiritually healthy trajectory for the rest of his or her life. If not done well a young person may get stuck in values and practices that will hinder him or her from actualising his or her potential for the Kingdom.
The FIT ministry is a mentoring ministry where an older, more experienced mentor leads a FIT group over a number of sessions. We define mentoring in this way:
Spiritual mentoring is guiding someone toward their full potential in Christ through a loving relationship.
Mentoring is relational. The mentor and mentees are committed to walking together. We make it clear from the beginning that the programme is not a book study and the mentor is not primarily a teacher. He or she is a guide who helps the mentee(s) discover truth for themselves through conversation and reflection. But although the FIT ministry is not a book study, a suitable study guide is a great help to ensure the group covers important topics and helps to stimulate thinking.
We have been using Erica Young Reitz’s After College (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016) as our FIT study guide. It is an excellent resource. Understandably, the examples are aimed at an American audience since the book is targeted at American college students who are about to graduate. But the biblical material is sound and transferrable.
However, we feel that it’s time to publish a local FIT study guide which is equally faithful to Scripture but which works out how biblical principles play out in a Singapore context. We suspect the book would also be helpful to similar ministries in other urban centres in Asia. We have started work on the book. And as we normally do, we started by interviewing young adults in transition to hear from them what are the main challenges they face at this chapter in their lives.
We have also assembled a team of writers who have been assigned to write on topics that are their areas of expertise. We hope that this book will be out early next year. We cannot do this alone. We are inviting those who believe in this project to partner with us. Please pray for us. And, if you are so led, please support us financially as well. Details of how you can do this: Click here to partner with us.