LRY: A Brief and Subjective Introduction

The story of LRY is rich and rocky. If you ask a youth now to describe LRY, she or he will probably tell you that it was a youth organization before YRUU and that the youth stopped observing the rules, got into too much sex and too much drugs, and, as a result, were finally disbanded by the UUA. I used to say that. To some extent this is true, but it is less than half the story. This fragmented history is problematic in several ways. One, it uses past programming as a threat instead of an inspiration. Not once in my four years as a youth leader in my church was I encouraged to look at the resources developed over the 30 year history of LRY. Another problem is that it fails to explain why so many of the graduated youth who have continued their affiliation with the denomination (many have not) seem somewhat distrustful of either their church, national youth programming, or both. Still another difficulty is that it creates a secret club of people who were in LRY, those who understand references to Joe Taco and Suzy Creamcheese and say, yes, YRUU is okay, but LRY was better. It creates division between two church generations that desperately need each other. Fortunately, this division is fading from the youth scene as that generation and the one following it begin to age out, but it leaves one of the richest and strongest programs in denominational history so smeared with dirt that few people see the beauty behind it. There are three basic stages to LRY history:
bullet early LRY (LRY before the UUA merger)
bullet LRY from 1961 to 1969 (LRY between the merger and autonomy)
bullet LRY from 1969 to 1983