My son, who is a medic in the US Army based in Hawaii, should be returning any minute now to the states after a few brief weeks in India.  While he did not have much time off-base, I hope he had an opportunity to meet a wallah.

Roy Petitfils recently blog about his experiences with wallahs and called for us to become youth wallahs. He graciously gave permission to reprint it here.

About ten years ago I did mission work in Calcutta, India. One day as I was walking to my work site I noticed a man cooking on the sidewalk as a small crowd gathered around him.  

Never one to let ministry get in the way of food, I walked over for a closer look. Behind a steadily growing number of fan-customers stood a thin, dark, shirtless man holding a steaming pot high in the air. He began pouring a three-foot stream of milkish-brown liquid through a sieve into another pot. “What’s this?” I asked a stranger next to me. “Chai!” he said, and pointing to the man, “Chai-Wallah.”    

Sensing that I wasn’t sufficiently impressed he went on, “Chai-wallah is very important to our culture.” I found that hard to believe. Here was a guy who didn’t deem it necessary to get dressed this morning, yet he’s the bedrock of the world’s second largest country?

I would soon learn the importance of this seemingly common vendor. For starters, they are everywhere—train stations, street corners, store fronts—anywhere the people are, there too is the chai-wallah.

Serving chai is more than a job for them, as most feel they are born to brew chai.   Each chai-wallah takes great pride in perfecting  their own unique blend of tea, spice and milk. There are as many different chai-wallahs as there are unique combinations of these three ingredients.

And while each chai-wallah is distinct, what they hold in common is even greater. As a whole they nurture over a billion people with their stimulating caffeinated nectar. They could earn more money by making and selling other products, such as biscuits or clay cups. Instead, they focus on perfecting their chai, and leave the biscuits to the biscuit-wallah and cups to the cup-wallah.   

In their wisdom the Hindus bestow the name wallah upon a person who combines skill, personality and passion  to perform a specific task that nurtures the whole of society. In doing so they anchor them within their culture, honor their unique contribution and insure the longevity of their service.  

Could we do the same for those who work with kids? What difference would it make if those who offer their lives in service to young people were validated like that of an Indian wallah? What if we regarded teachers, youth ministers and volunteers as Youth-Wallahs whose unique gifts, style and passion sustain our younger generations and nurture their growing faith? 

This would be a seismic cultural shift. We would start by no longer regarding the youth worker as a  babysitter who looks after the “future church.” It would mean that we embrace the reality of a youth-wallah who bridges a widening generational crevasse between the Young and Adult Church, making it possible for each to receive the other’s gift.

If a culture can do that for a guy who serves tea, can’t we do that for the one who serves our kids?