Archive: They Chart Our Course

Good News board members direct renewal strategies and give leadership at every level of the church

By Sara L. Anderson

Riley B. Case

Anybody who would dash out of bed at 5 a.m. to run four miles in sub-freezing weather must be (a) training for the Chicago marathon, (b) hard driven or (c) just plain nuts.

In Riley’s case, the answer might be (d) none of the above, although you’ve got to be a little bit crazy to write award-winning parables and satires of church life. He’s an inveterate bird-watcher and sometime sports columnist. And those are only his hobbies.

Riley Case’s job title reads, “District Superintendent, Marion District, North Indiana Annual Conference.” An unofficial description would refer to him as a highly respected spokesman for evangelical views in the church.

As a pastor concerned with youth ministry and disturbed by what he read in United Methodist curriculum material, Case began writing letters to the Sunday school curriculum people in Nashville. The correspondence led to a five-year stint on the Curriculum Resources Committee for the Board of Discipleship. As Case and others influenced denominational materials, he also developed the highly successful We Believe confirmation materials for Good News.

Case has also been a delegate to General Conference and provides a voice for evangelical concerns as a consultant to the Hymnal Revision committee and as a member of two important subcommittees: one on language guidelines and theology, the other on Wesley consultation.

With his broad range of activities and personal disciplines, you might expect Case to be a high-powered, run-over-your-grandmother executive. But in his tweed suit and sweater vest he looks more like a college professor, and an absent-minded one at that. Like Ronald Reagan, he’s been known to doze off during committee meetings (that’s what he gets for jogging at 5 a.m.), only to awaken and offer significant contributions on critical issues. And when he speaks, the church knows it’s hearing one of United Methodism’s outstanding evangelical theoreticians.

Helen Rhea Coppedge

Meet Helen Rhea Coppedge for the first time and you’d be struck by her charm and genuine friendliness. Get to know her better, and you would realize that she is one of Good News’ most fearless partisans.

Now beginning her third year as Good News chairperson, Coppedge guides the board meetings and the organization with grace and firmness developed as a businesswoman and homemaker.

A member of the General Board of Global Ministries, a place where most evangelicals would fear to tread, Coppedge expresses opinions based on the strength of her convictions. Her credibility as a United Methodist is well established; her Ft. Valley, Ga. family has been active in the Methodist church for 200 years, so it seemed natural that she participate in the life of the church on the local, conference and national levels.

Now a nearly full-time activist for the evangelical faith in the church, Coppedge’s agenda hasn’t been hard to figure out. “Many lay people are evangelical and that viewpoint is not represented in the same degree at the national level,” she says. “We [United Methodists] have been so issue-oriented for so long that we have allowed people to become spiritually hungry.” And if you know Helen Rhea, you understand she’ll do her best to see those conditions changed.

Michael Walker

It has been said that there are two types of Texans, the boisterous, back-slapping genre and the strong, silent version. Mike Walker fits the second, self-confident, yet self-effacing variety. ‘I’m not a very spectacular person,” he’ll say; but in a firm and quiet way Walker has left his imprint on Good News.

Although he has been involved with conference activities, most of Walker’s ministry centers around the local church and Good News. Spurred to action by Charles Keysor’s pivotal 1966 article, “Methodism’s Silent Minority,” Walker wrote Keysor supporting the latter’s call for more evangelical expression in the church. When Good News was formed shortly thereafter, Walker became a charter board member.

Walker would again downplay the influence he’s exercised, but it’s obvious in more ways than one. First, there have been his local congregations, including his current appointment at the 3000-member Tyler Street United Methodist Church in Dallas. “I don’t know that my ministry is too different from others,” he says with a subtle drawl. “My emphasis has been on discipling those folks in the church and leading others to Christ.”

A second area involves the editorship of Catalyst, a newsletter for seminary students with the purpose “to try to acquaint them with evangelical options in their scholarship.” After guiding the publication for 12 years, Walker has passed the red pen on to another editor, but is still pleased with its impact. “I think many seminary students have been encouraged to see another voice that speaks more to where they are theologically,” he says.

Walker’s third area of influence came through his efforts in putting together the early Good News convocations because, he believes, “The convocation has been a tool of encouraging, training and mobilizing Methodist lay people to be agents of reform within the denomination, as well as ministering to them personally.”

But perhaps most significant is the strong leadership he gave the Good News board for four years, presiding at a time when the movement’s quiet, but pervasive presence reminded the 1984 General Conference that evangelicals constituted a formidable movement within the church.

Paul A. Mickey

Over the years as evangelicals have bewailed the illness of liberal United Methodist seminary education, Dr. Paul Mickey has been an outstanding example of evangelical leadership in denominational academics.

As Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Duke University’s Divinity School, the Ohio native possesses degrees from such bastions of educational prestige as Harvard and Princeton.

Far from being stuffy or arrogant, Mickey’s warmth, humor and collegiate-casual dress make him highly approachable. For students seeking advice or counseling, the doctor is in. “I have seen my role as a faculty member, as a teacher, as informal confidant,” he says.

Besides communicating sound doctrine to future pastors, Mickey, a former Evangelical United Brethren pastor, has helped give the evangelical branch of the church direction. “In the early years Good News had not defined what it meant to be an evangelical,” he says.

As head of the Good News theological task force, Mickey helped draft the Junaluska Affirmation, the statement of faith still used by Good News. And in 1980 a commentary he wrote based on that document, Essentials of Wesleyan Theology, was published.

Ever energetic, Mickey combined writing ability and counseling skills to produce a book, Tough Marriage, published last year by a prestigious New York company.

A former Good News board chairman, Mickey believes evangelical piety enjoys more respect today.

Randolph L. Jones

With its tidy white-frame structure, Faith United Methodist Church looks like a little bit of Iowa nestled in the middle of Philadelphia. But Rev. Randolph (Randy) Jones’ congregation does not consist of farmers and Midwestern matrons. Faith is not surrounded by corn rows, but by the Passayunk housing project, a field fertile with crime, violence, drug abuse and prostitution.

With the average per capita income running about $5,000, Passayunk is “a microcosm of the problems facing urban America,” Jones says. He estimates that 98 percent of his congregation lives in the project. The area’s transitory nature leads to an unstable membership list (attendance has run anywhere from 10 to 75).

It was an appointment most pastors would dread, but Jones’ experience uniquely qualified him for the job. Son of an evangelical Methodist pastor active in the struggle for civil rights, Jones grew up with compassion for the downtrodden and a passion for social justice. In college he had an encounter with the Holy Spirit that reinforced those convictions. “I’ve always said that the upper room of ecstasy had to be related to the outer room of responsibility,” he explains, reciting what he calls with a chuckle, “one of my patented phrases.”

Appointed to Bethsaida United Methodist Church in 1969, Jones also began working with former gang leaders and drug addicts in that region of Philadelphia. This led to his founding of Southside Center, sandwiched between the Black Panthers and Black Muslims. An intimidating situation, even for Jones, but, “I had a strong evangelical witness there,” he says.

He even coined another slogan for the situation. “Authentic witnessing has to be prefaced by authentic listening and living.” So, the center’s activities included voter registration, distributing food and addressing international issues such as the civil war in Zimbabwe (then white-ruled Rhodesia). Still, Jones differed from the liberal approach to social change by stressing that transformation begins as people encounter Christ.

The Southside interdenominational Christian ministry’s effectiveness led to Jones’ official appointment to Southside Center from 1972-1983. During that time he trained lay people to carry on the work of evangelism and discipleship. In 1983 Jones was appointed to Faith. He still serves as Southside’s board chairman.

In the middle of all that activity he has taken time to serve on the Good News Board because, “I have always been committed to the evangelical position.” He has worked hard to introduce black United Methodist leaders to Good News, and at the same time has encouraged evangelicals to discover the “outer room of responsibility.” Jones counters those who say that the evangelical position leaves no room for social justice. “I do not see evangelicalism as a reaction against social justice,” he says, “but an impetus for it, within the context of a personal commitment to Christ.”