This report is a sidebar to story #469. A photograph is available.
A UMNS-UMC.org Report
By Kathy L. Gilbert*
Laurie
Day (center) and other members of the World Methodist Council's youth
committee take time out from meetings in Oslo, Norway, to visit with
United Methodist youth from area churches in this 2002 file photo. A
UMNS photo by Brittany Dodd. Photo number 03-318, Accompanies UMNS #470,
10/1/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
To say that Laurie Day, 26, has been active in the
United Methodist church since she was in junior high school seems like
an understatement.
Her many roles include serving as a presidium
member of the World Methodist Council and on the council's Youth
Committee. She grew up in Idaho and is attending Iliff School of
Theology this fall for a master's degree in justice of peace studies. At
the same time, she is pursuing a master's in community social work at
the University of Denver.
She was the Women's Division 2000
Theressa Hoover Community Service and Global Citizen award recipient.
The grant gave her a chance to travel to Kenya to study the changing
roles of women. She also served as a mission trip team leader,
grant-writing intern, office assistant, youth leader, cook and camp
counselor and mission trip participant.
"I have been called the poster child for the Board of Global Ministries," she jokes.
She
has been active to a degree unmatched by most church members of any
age. Her experiences have led her to conclude that the church must
change its mindset if it is going to reach out to young people and
survive.
"In another 20 or 30 years, the majority of the
membership is going to be gone, at least in the United States, unless we
start looking at alternative models of what is church and how people
are involved in church," she says.
Those different models could include new ways of worshipping, she says.
"Your
11 a.m. Sunday service is not going to cut it, especially for young
adults; we have so many others things we would rather do on Sunday
mornings," she says. "Have church at a different time. There are
different ideas of what church could be."
Day's role in the
church got off to a running start when she was elected to the episcopacy
committee for the Idaho Conference while in college.
"Basically I
became one of the bishop's favorite young adults," she says. Because of
that, she says she has been asked to serve on more committees than one
person can handle.
"I feel like bishops and other people in
leadership positions only have a memory of like one or two people, and
so it is those same one or two people that sort of become named all the
time," she says.
The church is friendly to those who are actively involved, she says.
"We
are a church of boards and committees and meetings, so the church is
friendly to those who go to those things. If you are not involved in
that, I don't think the church is friendly. On the local level, it is
not very inviting. On a national or international level it is only
inviting to a few select people."
The church must provide
activities or resources that allow young people to develop their own
activities, she says. Many young people she knows are turning to
community groups or national organizations outside the church for social
justice work.
"For myself and a lot of my friends, our faith
compels us to work for social justice and social change," she says.
"Unfortunately, right now in the church, there is not a lot of room for
that."
While in high school, a lot of young people attend church
because they grew up in it and their family and friends go there, she
says. "For me it was a social thing, it was fun because my friends went
there."
When she went to college, she says she didn't go to a
church for a variety of reasons, including the lack of transportation
and good campus ministry groups.
"A lot of people say the church
doesn't know what to do with you once you graduate from high school,"
she says. "They just wait until you have young children and come back
because you want your kids to grow up in the church."
Says Day: "We are the church now, not just the future."
# # #
*Gilbert is a news writer with United Methodist News Service.