On most nights, LPK Waterfront (Love Passion Karma), the nightclub in Nerul, vibes to club music attracting a heady mix of the rich and would-be famous and hip Russian tourists. Tonight, LPK will play host to a different sort of crowd. The current Top Ten hits and Goa Trance will make way for the sounds of disco Gospel music and a free flow of mocktails. Boni Dias and his wife Yvette, organizersof Khristotheque, are hoping that the unique event will usher in a new wave of worship, and help bring the young back to the Church. “In this technologically advanced era, it becomes necessary to go beyond just Sunday mass and the Church. There is a need to evolve with the generation,” Boni of Faith Works says. His faith event in LPK tonight will feature ‘new age songs, dancing and uplifting messages’ in a disco setting, aimed at capturing the attention of the youth. Out-of-the-box concepts like Khristotheque are however not a novel idea. They’ve been tried in other parts
of the world such as Brazil, where the Catholic Church has seen a huge decline in young followers who moved to other evangelical churches.
Brazil, which was 90 per cent Catholic in 1970, has today 65 per cent adherents to the faith. Evangelicals however have grown five times reaching 15 per cent in 2000. Some Catholic priests worry about how long Brazil will remain a Catholic country.
Evangelical churches like Reborn in
Christ have been re-inventing their ways
of reaching to Brazilian youth with concepts
like fight night, reggae music,
video games and on-site tattoo parlours
generating thousands of participants.
Boni however insists that the Catholic
Church in Goa is under no such threat
from parallel churches, and has nothing
to worry about as conversions to other
evangelical faiths have reduced. He
says Sunday’s Khristotheque is open
to people from other faiths as well,
not to convert them, but as a way of
experiencing God’s love.
“I believe that conversions to other
churches have reduced drastically in
the past couple of years, and people don’t want to leave the Catholic Church,
but are looking for something new
and innovative.”
Concepts like Khristotheque are helping
the Church stay relevant to young
followers, he says, pointing out that
the programme has the complete support
of the Bishop.
Faith Works has organized similar
events in the past which attracted thousands
of the faithful. Worried that
dance festivals like Sunburn were giving
Goa a warped image, the Dias couple
conceptualized Sonblaze! It brought
together over 2,000 people from different
faiths and the focus was on
‘praise, worship and the life changing
word of God’.
Boni, who started Faith Works with
his All India Radio broadcast ‘Good
morning Lord’ back in 2004, says people
are more than open to worshipping in
new ways.
“People are becoming increasingly
bored with Sunday mass and the usual
routine we follow as Catholics. I believe
the decline in the number of priests
also has something to do with it. There
is a need for more lay people to take
forward the word of God,” he says.
His broadcasts have a following even
in Goa’s bars, he says. “I recently
received a call from a bar owner in
Sanvordem who said everyone in his
bar stays silent, listening to my show
at 9 pm. Though that didn’t stop them
from drinking, the message did catch
their attention,” he says.
Dias has two more broadcasts currently,
one in Konkani for which he
claims over 7 lakh listeners. Their real
success, says his wife Yuvette, lies in
the fact that they manage to touch so
many lives,
