The Seeds of a Generational Transformation Movement

The Spirit of God is moving upon the global church to recognize the seeds of a move of God as we start this second decade of the 21^st century.  It expresses God’s dream for transformation, with a clear mandate for implementation.  

Indeed it is with joy, fear, and trembling that we declare what we observe.  At this Lausanne gathering in beautiful Capetown, South Africa, we convoke the global church to affirm that the “kairos” moment has arrived. “Children, a mission field, are now empowered to become a missionary force.”  This will be a continuous demographic challenge impacting the mission of the church to all the spheres of society during the next decades of the 21^st century.

Towards this end, it is important for us to encourage next generation ministry to children.  There are two aspects to transformational ministry that we can consider in the next few minutes.   

Transformation Requires Information

The reconstruction of the wall of Jerusalem by Nehemiah, was preceded by a query.  “I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem,” (Nehemiah 1:1)  It is in this spirit that we gather information about youth culture today.  There are two types of research we are summarizing in evaluating the life of children in Latin America:

1. Social research documented by the UN and other recognized international sources.
2. Attitudes and Behaviors of Youth (ABY), a 50 nation quantitative research project being conducted by the Metadigm Group on behalf of OneHope. Of the 8 Latin countries where this research has been completed, we are summarizing the information of the countries of Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, and Mexico.

The Children of Latin America (ABY)

The Metadigm research confirms that Latin American youth have “inherited”  a high value for faith and family, as illustrated in the following statistics: 

A strong legacy of faith

• An average of 77% of youth believe the Bible has values
• An average of 83% believe Jesus was a real person.
• An average of 76% believe God created the universe
• An average of 77% believe that forgiveness is through Jesus

A strong sense of family

• An average of 88% believe marriage is for life.
• An average of 61% are frequently proud of their fathers.
• An average of 79% are frequently proud of their mothers.
• An average of 67% believe their parents set a good example for them.

Six  social challenges to children living in poverty and violence in a global context.

4. Accroding to UNICEF 2009 figures, 30,000 children die daily from illnesses that are preventable. The majority of these are in the global south, of which Latin America is part. 
5. Poverty gap:(Less than $2 a day): In Latin America 17% of the population lives in poverty.
6. Extreme poverty gap:(Less than $1.25 per day) In Latin America 8% of the population, lives in extreme poverty. 
7. Violence: Violence starts in the home in Latin America.  Mexico leads the world in rapid kidnapping statistics.  Colombia has from 11,000 to 20,000 child soldiers recruited by rebel and paramilitary groups.
8. Refugees: There are over 3.5 million internally displaced people in Colombia alone, due to the civil conflict.  Of these approximately half are children.
9. Sexual trafficking: 2 million children are trafficked every year; this is in addition to the millions already held captive by trafficking ¹
10. By 2010 Sex Trafficking will be the number one crime worldwide ⁵
11. People are trafficked from 127 countries to be exploited in 137 countries³
12. Every 2 minutes a child is being prepared for sexual exploitation ¹
13. The average victim is forced to have sex up to 40 times a day ⁵
14. The average age of a trafficked victim is 14 years old ⁵
15. Approximately 30 million children have lost their childhood through sexual exploitation over the past 30 years ¹
16. The total market value of illicit Sex Trafficking is estimated to be in excess of $32 billion ²
17. 27 million – Number of people in modern-day slavery across the world.⁶

Issues such as child labor and immigration abuse also have the names and faces of children in Latin America.