Discipleship in The Synoptic Gospels as A Means of Nurturing Integrated and Mature Christian Members of Saint Joseph's Githare-Ini Small Christian Community in Miguta Catholic Church Parish.
Date
2004
Authors
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Publisher
Tangaza University College
Abstract
Miguta Catholic Church Parish is within Nairobi archdiocese located 20 lcms
North East of Nairobi city Centre towards Githunguri town in Kiambu District in Central
province. Miguta Parish has five outstations. The biggest geographically and population
wise among these five outstations is known as Miguta. As the mother center, it caters for
nine Small Christian Communities. One of these Small Christian Communities is Saint
Joseph's Githare-itti Small Christian Community where I come from and the center of
attention in this my paper.
In 2002, I went home for my long holidays. I met with my Parish Priest with
whom I shared a lot about the pastoral work in the parish. Knowing that I am from Saint
Joseph's Githare-ini Small Christian Community, he shared with me on how the
members were faring on. In the course of the discussion the Parish Priest said; "I don't
know your view! Personally, I have experienced a great lack of realization in life about
the implications of living the Christian faith. It is a concrete problem with most of the
Christians here in the parish in general, over the five years I have been here."
My desire to know more led me to ask him what exactly are the problems facing
him on this pastoral issue. He mentioned a good number of things, just to mention a few:
how to let my flock see the relationship of all human issues in life and how they can be
attended by our basic Christian call; how we are here not as individuals but as one whole
body; what role each one has to embrace in relation to his/her neighbor; how a spiritual
journey is not necessarily from the Father-in-Charge; can help in support of each other, how it is not enough to come for the Eucharistic feast on a Sunday then leave with no
gain or change of lifestyle back in the family and village relations in general.
With this situation at hand, I spotted a pastoral challenge to be researched on.
With time, the interest and enthusiasm to research more on this made me to settle on it as
my thesis. Thank God that when we reported back to College, I found among the pastoral
related courses offered, 'Pastoral counseling', "... an intervention for the well-being of a
parishioner, the Gospel made incarnate a response to the need for someone to really
care for the troubled within the Church fellowship and (outside)." I could trace some
elements of help related to the situation of St. Joseph's Small Christian Community.
In fact, among the proposed topics for a research paper was one that read:
'Discipleship as a means of nurturing mature and integrated Christians in Africa'. I
picked on this and wrote a paper, an endeavor that made me more convinced that I should
borrow from the gospel on the call to discipleship and apply this "... as a systematic
method of enabling (St, Joseph's Githare ini Small Christian Community) ... overcome
... (their) problems of ultimate concern within a perspective of faith in order to live a
more creative and meaningful life."2 I have thus chosen to develop this for the good of
our pastoral work now and in the future. For as long as this confrontation of worthy level
of living Christian virtues in practice and the prevailing culture of silence, doing what the
others are doing, Catholic Christians will remain alienated from the Gospel message;
being shy about witnessing to their faith.
Description
Keywords
Discipleship, Synoptic Gospels, Integrated, Mature Christian, Christian Members, Nurturing