INTRODUCTION

The Student Christian Organization of Malawi was officially constituted in 1961 by the then Christian Council of Nyasaland, now known as the Malawi Council of Churches. Like many movements in the world, it was inspired by the Student Christian Movement, which started in the United States and spread throughout the World. It was at a time that the country was going through rapid political change. First elections had just taken place the year before and Nyasaland was now a self-governing country with Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda as Prime Minister. The Churches were also beginning to hand over leadership to Africans. This was true of Presbyterians: Revs. P. C. Mzembe and J. D. Sangaya became General Secretaries of Livingstonia and Blantyre Synods respectively. Secondary education was beginning to expand in order to prepare young people to work in the government. Therefore, the need of having a Christian organization to develop the spiritual potential of the students and to assist in evangelism and provided a Christian presence for witness was felt. Hence the formations of the SCOM.

KAIROS MOMENT

A kairos is an opportune moment for doing something significant that is bound to alter the course of history, and once such a time is missed, it does not come back. The time the SCOM was formed was indeed a kairos moment. Many important things were taking place and it was important that such an organization be formed to meet the challenges of the times. Our forerunners seized the kairos and came up with the SCOM. The Malawi Young Pioneers were a later development. The Catholic organization, the YCS came much later as a response to the presence of the SCOM, and latter the Moslem Youth. The SCOM was from the very beginning an indigenous organization. In other countries such organizations were called SCMs and its leadership was also indigenous. There were many missionaries who assisted in the initial stages to get it underway, but they soon took a back seat. It was largely a student organization even though senior friends played a very significant advisory role, but it was the students themselves who run the programmes. This meant that leadership development was critical to the development of the SCOM and it is in this aspect that the SCOM has probably made its most significant contribution to spirituality and leadership development in the country. Mr. Willie Chokani was already attending a leadership course in Zambia when Dr. Banda appointed him as minister.

ECUMENICAL MOMENT

The Ecumenical Movement found its concrete expression in the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. However, students had been already involved in ecumenical activities for a long time through the World Students Christian Federation, which was founded in Sweden in 1895. It was actually student leaders in the WSCF who later became leaders in the WCC. After 1948 ecumenism, which is a search for Christian unity throughout the whole world, took on a new strength in Africa. A Church Conference met in Ibadan, Nigeria to map out an Africa continental wide ecumenical organization. This effort culminated in the formation of the All Africa Conference of Churches in 1963 in Kampala, Uganda. It was a time when ecumenical efforts were in ferment and missionary organizations were beginning to seek out one another with renewed seriousness resulting into the formation of united institutions, for instance, churches or theological institutions. In Malawi, we have Zomba Theological College, Chilema United Lay Training and Conference Centre, Christian Literature Association in Malawi, Christian Service Committee, and of course the SCOM.

FUNDAMENTALS OF THE SCOM

The fundamentals of the SCOM are enshrined in the aims. The first aim states, "To call students to a personal faith … and to live as true disciples of Jesus Christ." Long before being “born again” became a bone of contention the SCOM had enshrined it in its aims by the expression “true disciples”. The result is that many of us were made aware of the need to accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord through the SCOM and to seek to live a life that made a qualitative difference. However, the question is, Is it still true today?

The second aim speaks of deepening the spiritual life of students. How holistic is this focus? It seems to me we have promoted a partial spirituality that emanated from a Hellenistic culture than from the Biblical world thus undermining and even contradicting the intension of the aim.

The third aim calls attention to witness through the interfacing of faith and academic knowledge. This is one area in which the SCOM has perhaps failed miserably over the years. Engagement in apologetics while necessary to Christian witness, it is not adequate. It is too much playing the role of a defense lawyer instead of being the prosecutor. The Holy Spirit is advocate because he is the DPP. "He will prove the world wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgement" (John 16:8). We are supposed to study in such a way that we can get to the bottom of the basic assumptions of human knowledge and established as to whether they fit into the scheme of Jesus as the embodiment of truth, the truth that sets us free. This is what it means to bring every thought into captivity to Christ.

Fourth aim is about social outreach. Jesus went about doing good. The final judgement is decided on our social outreach (Matt. 25:31ff). Paul tells us that we are saved in Christ Jesus for good works that God purposed for us from the beginning of creation (Eph. 2:10) When we look around the Rotary, Lions, Jaycees, Round Table Clubs put the Christian groups to shame when it comes to social outreach. Jesus challenges the Pharisees that if they cannot believe his word, then they should look at his works. Aims three and four should be put together as two sides of the same coin. As it is, they have been split by the head, the mind. We have heart (spiritual), the head (the intellectual, and the hand (social outreach or service). While good works do no lead to salvation, salvation leads to good works.

The fifth aim is about the promotion of the kingdom of God, unity and renewal of the church, and our role as individual members of our respective denominations. Can denominationalism go hand in hand with the unity and renewal of the churches? Is our disunity not only a scandal, but plainly demonic? Paul asks, ‘Is Christ divided?’ Jesus prays over three times that we might be one. How then cam we in the SCOM enshrine in our aims denominationalism? How then do we deal with the evils of regionalism, ethnocentricism, partyism, and sexism? Until as Christians we begin to put no value in our denominational identities, Christ will not mean much, but become a patron saint and an extra-chithumwa.

SCOM AND SPIRITUALITY
The SCOM placed a lot of emphasis on Bible study, prayer, and fellowship as a way of deepening the spiritual life of students. The regular reading and study of the Bible was seen as critical to personal spiritual growth and to meeting challenges paused by the secular world. Therefore, the sharing the of the Word through group Bible studies, the holding of group prayer meetings, and the development of Christian friendships to support us on our walk of faith.

The SCOM had laid the spiritual foundation of many students upon which other organizations have built. The Scripture Union owes a lot to the work of the SCOM. The two organizations have worked hand in hand to meeting the students' spiritual needs especially Bible reading helps. Many also who were active in the SCO in their schools became active in the New Life for All. New Life for All had its origins in Latin America as Evangelism in Depth, which became New Life for All in Nigeria before coming to Malawi. The house groups and prayer cells became natural places for ex-SCO members in urban area of Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu. Perhaps Gospel for All became a working class SCO. It played a very important role in reaching out to young working people especially through Come to Jesus Choir. I would like to pay tribute to late Mrs. Costly Kachale, pioneer in gospel singing in Malawi with the Come to Jesus Choir, Victor Zuze, Brighton Kawamba and many others who were, members of the choir.

The Churches in Malawi have benefited tremendously from the work of the SCOM in terms of people who have entered the ordained ministry, those who are active church leaders, elders, deacons, and Sunday School teachers. Many of these people were called to faith and to ministry through the SCOM. I am one such. Called to faith at the national conference at Chongoni through the testimony of Sellina Chapasuka of Lilongwe Girls Secondary School in 1966. There are many others who look to the SCOM as having performed a formative role in their lives and for what they are today.

THE PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENT
The Pentecostal Movement in Malawi is a convergence of many streams that the Holy Spirit created for the glory of God, and the SCOM is one of them. The other streams are the East African Revival that came with Ugandans who visited Blantyre at one point and planted the seed of revival and renewal. St. Columba Church nurtures that seed, The Keswick meetings that called people to a personal faith and popularised the altar call appeal and the use of chorus singing, the New Life for All and its prayer cells systems - that nurtured many young preachers, Dr. Francis Schaeffer and the many crusades he conducted in the 80s. While the movement has tended towards the renewal of the churches, the process has been aborted for a number of reasons, and it has introduced many more division thus forestalling the earlier ecumenical efforts of which the SCOM was a consequence and also an agent.

Among students the SCOM has become the conduit for spreading Pentecostal spirituality through chorus singing, American salesman type of preaching, sensitivity to spiritual gifts, and forces, the overnight prayer sessions, freedom of the spirit, worshipful attitudes, and the many ministries. However, with all these development has come also biblical literalism that objects to historical and cultural study of the Scriptures in order to come up with a message for today. This is what the SCOM should insist upon otherwise everything goes. St. Paul taught that we should test every spirit. This has happened because we have neglected the development of our intellectual faculties for spiritual experience. The taste of food does not tell you of its nutritional value. This is true of spiritualism, that is subjecting everything to spiritual forces whether good or bad.

SCOM AND THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
From the very beginning the SCOM has thrived on organization and experience, but without an explicit theological foundation. While the theology was assumed, it was never articulated. While the SCMs and the WSCF were all inspired by the missionary movements to reach as men people with the gospel as possible, they were overtaken by liberal theological thought and by the turn of the 20th century. In response some formed the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) in order to remain true to the gospel as rediscovered in the Reformation. For many liberal thinkers salvation was interpreted in terms of human political and economic liberation. Those of the evangelical persuasion saw salvation in spiritual terms, liberation from sin. Therefore, two interrelated concerns were separated in a radical fashion, and with that the gospel itself suffered.

In the nineteen seventies, the SCOM was forced to choose between the two. Having been affiliated to WSCF from the very beginning, some felt that the WSCF was too liberal in its orientation and, therefore, had lost the essence of the gospel especially when it championed political and economic liberation as essential to the gospel. It was decided to delink the SCOM from WSCF, and for some time, it remained independent. The University and Colleges Section was allowed to affiliate itself to the Pan African Fellowship of Evangelical Students (PAFES) whose East African wing was called Fellowship of Christian Unions (FOCUS). I do not need to go into the differences between evangelical and liberal theologies. A radical separation of the two can be dangerous both in the separation and the choosing of one over the other. I am a product of both traditions and I consider myself the wiser for it.

What has characterised the SCOM is not its theology, but rather its spiritual experience and practice in the tradition of European and American pietism, but without their theology, and yet both of these need to be informed by theology. Without a clear theology, the organization lacks ideological identity so as to respond to various challenges that come its way. European and American pietism developed a theology of their own to respond to their perceived challenges. In Malawi, the SCOM needed to develop a theology that responded to challenges facing the churches and nation. It failed to do that and the result is that we have not prepared our members to respond to life challenges and other ideologies, for instance, Marxism, Unitarianism of the Bible Believers, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Democracy, Human Rights, Sexism, ethnocentricism, regionalism, globalization, poverty, now HIV/AIDS

WAY FORWARD
After forty years it is time to take a critical look at the SCOM so as to make it a relevant movement for the 21st century. In order to do this, we need to ask ourselves about the relevance of the gospel to the realities and challenges of the 21st century. For us in Malawi, it means issues of poverty, economic non-performance, democracy and human rights, manifestations of human depravity, development, capitalism, materialism, corruption, secularism, spiritual forces, and ideologies. In short, who is Jesus for us today? How does his life and actions challenge us for living today?

We need to come up with a vision and mission statement to guide the movement into the future. We have to be very clear as to what is the purpose of SCOM, that is, how its mission fit into the way the world is like, especially Malawi. To simply maintain and perpetuate the movement without a clear vision and mission is to lack relevance.

We need to come up with a theology that is comprehensive, engaged and engaging, transforming. The youth of this nation are looking for an ideology that is culturally appealing, intellectually meaningful and challenging, and economically productive and profitable. If we do not give them a theology that leads to a blessed and abundant living others will provide their corrupt ideologies and the churches will not be spared. SCOM should produce young men and women of integrity, that is, full of grace and truth, after the umunthu of Jesus.

We need to develop a spirituality that is materialistically relevant and a materialism that is spiritual. We are embodied spirits and inspirited bodies. We do not need to divide the world into spirit and matter. John Robinson, one time Bishop of Woolich said, "Much of our trouble has been that the church has had no thought-out doctrine of matter." (On Being the Church in the World, p. 35) This is why we have problems with Science subjects. Read psalm 139 and you see a scientist worshiping God. This is a scientist hymn of praise. So is Psalm 19.

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