WHEN Edwin Bakker speaks his Dutch accent can throw you.
But what he has to say is universal, living the life of Jesus is good for you.
In Australia, as part of Kerygma Teams Discipleship Training School (DTS), Edwin, 25, is mobilising young Catholics to get out and do mission work and be active in their faith.
Kerygma is a reference to the proclamation of the essence of the Gospel.
DTS is an intensive six month course designed to encourage young Christians, aged 18-30, to personally grow and exercise their faith.
‘We are here to get prayer happening,’ he explains.
‘Throughout the world young people struggle with the same problems.
‘We want to offer them Christian values, a Christian identity.’
Edwin arrived in Australia with five core members of the group to set up a DTS in Sydney.
The group holds one DTS course a year, over 24 weeks, taking on eight or nine students on average each year.
The first 12 weeks comprises lectures, with speakers from Australia and overseas conducting classes.
‘This part of the course is very much focused on the formation of the Christian young person and their personal relationship with God,’ Edwin said.
‘The second 12 weeks is where we go and have a mission trip and where we try to reach out to the young people in schools.
‘We can bring them to a prison to give them an understanding of what it is to do prison ministry or it could be just helping St Vinnies.
‘This gives them an understanding of what it is to reach out to other people.’
Kerygma Teams is an outreach arm of Youth with a Mission (YWAM), a worldwide ecumenical inter-denominational youth organisation which has a membership of 14,000 working in more than 140 countries.
The group’s founder, Pentecostal pastor Loren Cunningham, wanted to get young people to take part in ‘international evangelistic endeavours’ during school holidays.
As YWAM grew in America, opportunities emerged for ministry to, and alongside, other Christian groups including Catholics.
The leaders recognised the need to create separate training methods for Catholics to take part in YWAM’s calling.
Group leaders met in mainly Catholic Dublin in 1992 to lay the foundation for what eventually would become the Kerygma Teams.
Edwin’s fiancee, Emma Humphrys, 22, of Brisbane, grew up in a Catholic family, but like many young people she didn’t participate in the Church.
‘That was the family’s religion,’ she said.
‘I still believed in God but I wasn’t interested in God or didn’t belong to any group.
‘I moved to Sydney where I boarded with some Kerygma Team members.
‘I got accepted for where I was at in my life and they didn’t judge me.
‘There was no ‘you’re mixed up, let’s get you back on track’.
‘It was just, hey, do you want to play soccer with us, no trying to shove Christianity down my throat.’
She reflects on Edwin’s favourite Scripture passage, John 10:10: ‘I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full.’
‘Edwin’s translation of this is I want to live life to the max,’ she explains.
‘One of the things I stress very strongly is that God is fun.
‘Because sometimes young people don’t believe that.
