The 40th anniversary of Good News is coming at a strategic time as General Conference is scheduled for April 2008. Good News has spent a major portion of its ministry dealing with various issues facing the church at General Conference. The origin of the organization was to emphasize historical Christian orthodoxy and to present Wesleyan theology in the process. There have been times when this has not been clearly understood and conversations around the concerns facing the church have been confrontational. There have been other occasions when Good News was viewed as more aggressive than the situation demanded. Having said this is not to deny the fact that the challenges that shall appear before the church in the future and continue to surface in the pew will persist. Consequently, the denomination will still need to be reminded of the historical biblical perspective. This may well be the role that Good News will have to play in the life of United Methodism.

William Morris
Retired United Methodist Bishop

The most successful reform movements initiate reforms that eventually take on a momentum of their own, outstripping the movements themselves. An African American leader in the 1960s wrote, "You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution." Friends, you can measure the extraordinary effectiveness of the Good News movement by this reality: If, heaven forbid, the Good News movement and all its reformers were to pass on to glory tomorrow, this reform would continue to flourish for years to come. You can't stop this revolution. Forty years ago, who could have predicted that the United Methodist Church would have changed so radically in four short decades? And it is near impossible to predict what changes await us in the decades to come. Congratulations, Good News, on this fortieth anniversary.

Rebekah Miles
Clergywoman in the Arkansas Conference
Associate Professor of Ethics
Perkins School of Theology
Southern Methodist University

Stark and Finke, of course, do not comment specifically on the present internal affairs of United Methodism. In their analysis, they conclude that a movement from church-to-sect, and from a religion that moves from "low tension" to "high tension," would most likely come from outside of the official structures as a movement alongside official structures. It would be a new "Holy Club," not unlike the Holy Club the Wesleys established at Oxford.

Stark and Finke suggest that, within United Methodism, the Good News movement, as well as the Confessing Movement, possibly offer that kind of church-to-sect, "low-tension" to "high tension" possibility. These movements have attempted "to increase tension with the dominant culture by reestablishing clear boundaries" (Acts of Faith, p. 267). The question is whether these groups have had any effect on the denomination.

North Indiana Evangelical Fellowship
Stark and Finke sought to answer the question by studying churches pastored by persons involved in Good News and the Confessing Movement. They chose North Indiana to make their study and compared the ministry of the pastors associated with the North Indiana Evangelical Fellowship with other pastors in the conference. Using 1995 statistics, they discovered that of 568 ministers in the conference, 21 percent (121) were on the Evangelical Fellowship mailing list. That number increased to 31 percent among "full connection" pastors.

Their conclusions? First, pastors in the Evangelical Fellowship were younger than other pastors. Sixty-two percent of the Evangelical Fellowship pastors entered the conference after 1980. This was to be compared with 43 percent of the pastors not on the list who had entered the ministry after 1980.

In terms of churches served, the study revealed that in the years 1993 to 1995, churches served by pastors on the North Indiana Evangelical mailing list increased an average of 4.5 percent in attendance, while churches served by pastors not on the list decreased by 1.3 percent. Of those pastors on the mailing list who came into full connection after 1980, the increase in attendance was 7.9 percent.

In terms of church finance, churches served by pastors on the Evangelical Fellowship mailing list increased during the same period by 21.6 percent compared with the 6.2 percent increase of those churches with pastors not on the list. Of those pastors affiliated with the North Indiana Evangelical Fellowship who came into full connection after 1980, expenditures increased 41.4 percent.

Annual Conference Renewal Groups
Mention of the Evangelical Fellowship in North Indiana serves as an introduction to one more piece of the Good News story, that of conference renewal groups associated originally with Good News and later also with the Confessing Movement. If, as this study has suggested, Good News is best understood as a populist, grassroots, bottom-up form of Methodism, displaying, in Stark and Finke terms, "high-tension" faith, then the question can be asked how this has been demonstrated practically.

The North Indiana Conference group will be used as an example since that is the one I helped start and have worked with.

In early January 1971, I was with a number of pastors from North Indiana who attended the Congress on Evangelism held in New Orleans. A rather raucous group of us were at a restaurant one evening when I noticed a single figure over on the side eating alone. It was Charles Keysor. I had shared correspondence with Keysor (and, in fact, was one of the original responders to his article "Silent Minority"), but we had never met. I can remember my first reaction: I wanted to meet him, but he and the group he represented were so controversial that I was reluctant to meet him in front of my fellow pastors. I did meet him when our table scattered, and Chuck Keysor and I made arrangements to have breakfast together the next day.

I discovered the next morning how much Chuck Keysor and I had in common. We had graduated from the same seminary (Garrett); we had read many of the same books, we agreed that the most serious problem of the church was the official Sunday school curriculum. Charles Keysor was informed (in a way other Methodists I knew were not) about the growing renaissance of evangelical thinking and influence. He really believed that evangelicals working together could bring renewal to the Church. He convinced me that I should take the lead in starting a Good News group in North Indiana.

And so a group of five pastors put together a mailing list of persons, lay and clergy, that we considered might be interested in an evangelical group. In our first meeting in spring of 1971, about forty persons showed up.

There was an instant sense of unity. The conference was experiencing stress that in some instances verged on trauma. The Methodist-EUB merger in Indiana sought to re-form five conferences into two. Despite all of the talks about unity and common purposes and a "new day," there was a lot of mistrust and maneuvering based on former conference traditions and loyalties. The merged conference was already in serious decline in membership and attendance (and would remain so for the next fifteen years).

The sense of oneness of the evangelical group crossed all former conference and denominational lines. We got acquainted, told our stories, and prayed and worshiped together. We also talked about the kind of group we wanted to be. Some were prayer and fellowship groups, others were activist groups (with some conservative agenda). Some were angry-sounding, some were not. Some were initiating evangelical programming-primarily in the areas of camping and youth-and others were not. Some were closely aligned with Good News, others were not.

But the interest of the institutional church was not in evangelical renewal. That interest was rather in a radical social and theological agenda-the Secular City, Death of God, Feminism, Black Power, Vietnam, Marxism, and liberation movements of all varieties. The late 1960s and early 1970s were times of great turmoil. In this climate, Good News was viewed by many as a last-gasp sort of fundamentalism. Others expressed a conviction that the evangelical presence was needed, but even these were continually urging caution. The sin to be avoided at all costs was not unfaithfulness or heresy, but "divisiveness."

The result of this climate in the church was that some of the evangelical groups forming found it expedient to claim some distance from Good News. My vision for the North Indiana group was that it would be a study and discussion group that would deal with theological and social issues of the day. It would not be just a front for Good News.

Whether a front for Good News or not, what many craved was evangelical fellowship. The phrase "spiritually starved" was heard not infrequently. The group wanted encouragement. It wanted a place where evangelical concerns could be openly discussed.

And so the earliest every-other-month meetings became praise and testimony meetings. They were basically Methodist class meetings where we spoke about how it was with our souls. We took the name the North Indiana Evangelical Fellowship. And, whether we desired it or not, the group became a "Good News" group. The Good News magazine immediately listed us along with fifty or so other groups known as Good News renewal groups.

One of the first efforts to reach out beyond the group was to offer to sponsor a (7:00 a.m.) prayer and praise service during each of the mornings at annual conference (this effort would become a regular part of the conference program). Because of an expressed concern about the camping program, several of the group volunteered to be camp directors. Some of the group took the leadership of the Bible Conference, an (approved) evangelical alternate conference senior high camp, with emphasis on preaching and Bible study. The group offered a Labor Day weekend (Sunday afternoon and Monday) at Oakwood Park, one of the conference campgrounds. It was called a mini-convocation and was patterned after the regular Good News convocations, with preaching, workshops, and programs for children and youth. For nearly twenty-five years, this group brought in the best-known names associated with evangelicalism within the United Methodist Church and attracted up to three hundred in attendance.

The North Indiana Evangelical Fellowship impact
Did the North Indiana Evangelical Fellowship have any effect in the life of the annual conference? If there was a positive effect, it was in the immeasurable area of changed attitudes and spirit. Angry people became less angry. A number of pastors and churches felt free to pursue an evangelical ministry, believing they would be supported, not hampered, by the conference. Others simply felt better about being United Methodist.

In a period of eighteen years, from 1968 until 1985, the North Indiana Annual Conference had lost fully one-third of its entire membership. Worship attendance had declined by 22 percent. It was obvious that something needed to be done. A decision was made to secure the services of Carl George of Fuller Seminary as a church-growth consultant. Out of those consultations, the conference committed itself to some new goals: to start new churches, to profile pastors in a different way to determine better how they could be deployed, and to revamp the old style of conference staffing. Instead of assigning staff to resource boards and agencies, staff would be deployed to resource local churches.

The conference then adopted a new program that grew out of the consultations with Carl George. One hundred and fifty churches signed up to be part of the New Generation Program, which involved training and a commitment in several areas: ministry to children (primarily establishment of Kids' Clubs); invitation, emphasizing teleministry (phone calls); an emphasis on nurturing of newcomers; and effective worship, emphasizing contemporary worship. For many churches, the conference had suddenly become friendly. It was giving instead of taking.

The argument can be made that when the North Indiana Evangelical Fellowship became less active in the mid- and late-1990s, it was not because of failure but because of success. For whatever reason, the climate of the annual conference had become more evangelical-affirming. Prayer groups and the sharing of testimonies were becoming a part of district activities. The conference began encouraging the very kinds of programs that the Evangelical Fellowship had advocated: Walk to Emmaus, Alpha, John Maxwell, covenant groups, Disciple Bible Study, and church growth seminars. The camping program had renewed its commitment to evangelism and discipleship. In 1995, the annual conference approved a resolution, "To Affirm a Confessional Statement of the Confessing Movement Within The United Methodist Church."

The experience of the North Indiana Evangelical Fellowship is not necessarily typical in the denomination. Every conference evangelical group has its own story. Some are stories of success, others of ineffectiveness. Some groups faced open hostility (and still do).

Are there signs of renewal in the United Methodist Church? One would be hard-pressed to be hopeful if the only knowledge of the church were through contact with its Council of Bishops, its boards and agencies, and some of its seminaries. But the essence of the church is not in the Council of Bishops or the boards and agencies or the seminaries. The essence of the church is in the faith of its people, gathered together in local churches for worship, service, and prayer. In this faith, in many local churches, vitality is found. That is the hope for United Methodism.

Riley B. Case is a retired member of the North Indiana Conference, assistant executive director of the Confessing Movement, and a member of the Good News Board of Directors. He is also the author of Evangelical and Methodist: A Popular History. Adapted from Evangelical and Methodist: A Popular History by Riley B. Case, Abingdon Press, 2004.

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