YWCG MESSAGE FROM THE GENERAL SECRETARY

Bishop Reuel Norman Marigza
UCCP General Secretary 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth... And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good... - Genesis 1:1, 31 (ESV)

The first verse and last verse of the first book of the Bible shows the Author of life in the act of of creating, from out of chaos into something very good. Human beings, in turn, are turning this very good creation into a state of chaos.

Yet we were given the task of being stewards of the earth, taking care of creation and managing it for the common good, not only for our the present but also for the future generations.

I am very happy that the Christian Youth Fellowship is taking the theme, "Towards a Spirituality for a New Creation" seriously. In a real sense, we are talking about your future. Spiritualities, in the past, tended to see Creation as an object of ex-ploitation and domination. Such spiritualities failed to see that our human life de-pended on a healthy and clean environment. The word "towards" in the theme shows that the spirituality for caring for the earth which in turn sustains us is not yet in the mainstream of Christian consciousness.

The UCCP Declaration of Principles states that "As steward of God’s creation, the United Church of Christ in the Philippines shall protect, promote and enhance the ecological balance and the integrity of creation" (Art II Sec 12 UCCP Constitution).

May the CYF indeed live out and stand by this Declaration.

Yours in Christ's service,


BISHOP REUEL NORMAN O. MARIGZA
General Secretary

YWCG MESSAGE FROM THE NATIONAL PRESIDENT

With the myriad of challenges that we are facing, there lies a single truth, “God is Love” (I John 4:8).
The alarming greediness of humanity have caused the emergence of plastic rice; the start of the declaration of candidacies have opened candidates to be under humor and even unnecessary criticisms.; the unstoppa-ble harassment to our dear mother earth continually kills the planet, and bring about devastations that wiped out many of our brothers and sisters; the declaration of the legalization of same sex marriage in the USA have the gates wide open for the LGBT community to be on the hot seat and even for the Christians to be self-righteous; there is more to be named, yet one truth behind all of these would be the same, “God is Love”.

Eunice Jumalon, CYF National President

As children of God, we do have to play our part, we have to proclaim the un-conditional love that God gave to each and every one of us. Amidst the bitter realities, we have to remind ourselves that we have a God that is stronger than all the problems that we are currently facing. We have a God that never leaves us, nor forsake us. That we have a God that we can rely on and submit ourselves with all His plans. That we are in fact the instruments for building a just and lasting peace through justice. So we have to keep our eyes open, that we may see the harsh realities and work on God’s ways to fulfill His mission here on earth: That all may live abundantly.

In such dreams, we have declared that the Youth Week Celebration will focus on the theme, “Towards a Spirituality for a New Creation” which is an adop-tion of the subtheme of our church. The new creation is the new us, the re-newed people of God who will respond to his call of being the mission work-ers. The renewed people who are willing to sacrifice for the benefit of God’s people. Such vision, is what we want the young people to work on

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