Bishop speaks to students about population issues

TWO challenges that people should address are generation gap and population growth, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea Head Bishop Jack Urame says.
Urame was speaking during the graduation ceremony of 26 students from the Martin Luther Seminary last Tueday.
He said the world was increasingly changing because new ideas, new challenges and new cultures were being brought in.
“There will continue to be a gap between the old and the young generation, become wider and wider, because the young people are now jumping into the age of technology, computer and mobile phones,” he said.
“They are losing the fundamental values that our forefathers stood on. When the church came, it emphasised the values of loving one another, the values of sharing and caring, respect, honesty and obedience.
“These are the important fundamental values we should always try to drive into the young generations because our society was not made up of mobile phones and computers, but our society had been shaped over a long period of time through those fundamental values,” Bishop Jack Urame said.
“We should never let it erode in the face of change.”
Urame said another important challenge church workers and even civil servants should try to address is the population expansion.
“I have been travelling in remote areas, in parts of the city and towns; children are looking for education, for meaning of life, joy, care and love.
“This indicates to me that our society is facing a serious problem.”
“Population growth or expansion will stress out all the available services that we have such as the schools, the health centres and roads, and even the efforts of the church to address some of the issues.
“If the population continues to increase, we will face tremendous challenges,” he said.
“This is one of the things when church workers go out need to emphasise; to provide sex education, to provide information on family planning because this is also our responsibility,” he reminded the graduates.
“We should not ignore it because many years down the line, there will be problems that we will not be able to handle if we do not address these in order to prevent.”