Essuakyi (C/R), Sept. 8, GNA - The head pastor of Atomic Hills Baptist Church, Pastor Oheneba Badoo on Monday advised the youth to use their energies to render community service instead of indulging in vices that could ruin their future.

He noted that the youths in any community or nation are invaluable assets because young people constitute a tremendous human potential by virtue of their numbers, energy, dynamism and significant contribution to national development.

Pastor Badoo was speaking to the Ghana News Agency at Essuakyi, near Winneba, at the end of a three-day Vacation Bible School for over 800 youths.

He said the youth deserved to be purposefully and effectively mobilised and their varied talents and energies appropriately harnessed and judiciously utilised to speed up national development. Pastor Badoo noted that any religious, ethnic, or social group that toys with its youth, is sure to encounter difficulties in the implementation of its socio-economic development programmes. The Vacation Bible School, he said, is instilled in the youth Christian virtues and offered the rural pupil the opportunity to attend holiday classes.

On the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the church's response, Pastor Badoo said that the Church must respond to the problem with a holistic compassionate programme and move away from the "judgment theory", which has characterised statements of many conservative Christians. He said that the judgment theory left many questions unanswered. These included why should innocent wives; husbands; haemophiliacs and infants suffer from the infection if God is using it to punish homosexuals and the sexually promiscuous?

Pastor Badoo expressed regret that the Church, which must respond to the global pandemic in a helpful way, has unfortunately continued to judge, condemn, chastise and reject those suffering from the disease. What is needed is a compassionate programme that would engender practical caring response to HIV/AIDS patients, he said, adding that Christians should not make the dying feel rejected.

Rev. Badoo asked the youth to avoid promiscuous lives that could result in their contracting the HIV/AIDS disease.

The Coordinator of the Vacation Bible School, Pastor Ohene Kumi, appealed to teachers to assist in raising moral standards by giving serious attention to good character training.

He advised parents to invest in the education of their children to enable them to acquire the necessary qualifications and skills for national development.