By ACNS staff

The Church of North India is urging its young people to consider entering civil service in order to bring a Christian presence to the country’s government and have a positive influence on public policy. 

In a recent Message to the church that followed the announcement of results of civil service examinations for 2014, CNI General Secretary Alwan Masih noted that young people in civil service play an all-important role in framing policy for the nation, including social programmes and development projects. “They are the pillars who are responsible for any change that the country experiences,” he said. 

Masih announced that a candidate from the Church of North India had qualified in the 2014 group, raising hopes that more young people prepared by the CNI would write preliminary examinations in August. 

However, the General Secretary said that in comparison to the overall percentage of Christians in India’s population, members of a Christian church were unrepresented in the number of those who had passed preliminary examinations held by the country’s Union Public Service Commission.

Given the Church’s track record of providing high-quality education, it and its organisations “need to do some soul searching and try to find answers” to find out why candidates from the Christian community were not playing a corresponding role in civil service, he declared.

The CNI Executive Committee had taken an important first step with a resolution to begin a civil services examination preparatory programme for its youth but much more needed to be done, the General Secretary said.

He observed that one reason for the low level of representation was a basic lack of awareness about the significance of civil service. Many of the youth simply were not interested.

Masih stated that the all Christian denominations in India needed to encourage and motivate their youth to “take up the challenge” of writing the civil service examinations.  

“The Church supporting such an effort financially and emotionally will be a great service to the community as well as to the nation.”