L. Faye Short
President of the RENEW network

Faye Short is a former local, district and conference officer for United Methodist Women.  She has been a member of the United Methodist Church for over thirty years, with a four-generation heritage within the denomination.  Her husband, Dennis, has been a local pastor for the United Methodist Church for 20 years.  Faye has served as president of the RENEW Network, a network for evangelical women within the United Methodist Church, since 1989.  RENEW is the women’s program arm of the Good News movement.  Faye is on the advisory committee of United Methodists Organized for Renewal and Evangelism (Iowa Conference) and of UMAction, the United Methodist program of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.  She is a member of the Association for Church Renewal (ACR), an ecumenical organization for mainline renewal group leaders.

Carolyn Elias
Press representative for RENEW

Carolyn Elias, a life-long United Methodist, lives in Hot Springs, Arkansas with her husband Barney.  They are the parents of two daughters and two grandchildren.  The Elias’ attend the First United Methodist Church in Hot Springs.  Carolyn has served on the Salvation Army Board for 13 years, and the United Way Board for 12 years.  She has been lay member to annual conference for 30 years and has served in various local church leadership positions, including UMW offices.  At the conference level she has filled positions as Older Adult Coordinator, Council on Ministries member and Chairman, Episcopacy Committee.  She was a lay delegate to General Conference in 2000 and again in 2004.  Carolyn is a lifetime member of the Good News Board of Directors and a founding member of the RENEW Network.

Janice Shaw Crouse
Good News board director

Janice Crouse is a life-long United Methodist from a long line of life-long United Methodists; her father was an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church for 35 years and her mother has been a United Methodist ordained elder for nearly two decades.  Janice and her husband are members of the First United Methodist Church in Laurel, MD.  Janice has served her church at the local level in numerous capacities (board, worship committee, COSROW, youth counselor, Sunday School teacher and on various task forces on violence against women.  Dr. Crouse, Senior Fellow, Concerned Women for America (CWA), is a recognized authority on domestic issues, the United Nations, cultural and women’s concerns.  She is frequently a guest lecturer on college campuses—including most recently Princeton, Harvard, Tulane, Erskine, Asbury and Georgetown—and at United Nations conventions like the World Congress of Families III in Mexico City and the commemoration of the International Year of the Family in Kuala, Lumpur.  She is the author of “Gaining Ground: A Profile of American Women in the Twentieth Century.”  Her opinion editorials and columns have appears in major newspapers across the nation as well as in journals and magazines. 

Helen Rhea Stumbo
Good News board director

Helen Rhea Stumbo is founder and president of a national mail order catalogue business with headquarters and fulfillment center in Fort Valley, Georgia.  She has been prominent in the renewal movements within the church for many years.  Her family history in Methodism extends back several generations.  She is a life-long member of the United Methodist Church and has served in denominational leadership capacities at local, district, conference and national levels.  Helen Rhea has served in local, district and conference UMW leadership, on conference committees and boards, twice as a General and Jurisdictional Conference delegate and as a member of the GBGM Board of Directors from 1984-88.  She is active in local and national community and civic activities including the Mayor’s Task Force Against Domestic Violence, the Salvation Army Advisory Board, chair of the Salvation Army Safe House Counsel and on the board of Web Wise Kids, a national organization dedicated to keeping kids safe on the Internet. 

Katy Kiser
Press representative for RENEW

Katy Kiser is a life-long United Methodist whose roots in the Methodist Church go back at least four generations.  Land from her family’s original Texas Land Grant was donated to build one of the earliest Methodist Churches in Texas (Salem Methodist Church in Milam County).  Katy has served many years in the North Texas Conference as a lay delegate to annual conference.  Currently she is on the Dallas Denton District Nominating Committee and the North Texas Conference Nominating Committee.  She serves as her church representative to the Dallas Methodist Hospital Women’s Auxiliary.  Katy is former president of her local UMW group and former chairperson of the Missions Committee.  She is currently a member of the Church Council and Staff Parish Relations Committee.  In addition to her involvement in the church, Katy does free-lance writing.  She is a regular press representative for the RENEW Network to various events.  Katy holds a performance degree in piano pedagogy from the University of Texas and teaches classical piano in her private studio.  She and her husband Larry have been married 34 years and have two daughters.

Elizabeth (Liza) B. Kittle
Press representative for RENEW

Liza Kittle is a life-long member of Trinity on the Hill UMC, Augusta, Georgia, where she has been an active member of the UMW for over 15 years holding various offices including that of President.  She previously served as Women’s Ministry Coordinator for Women of the Vine Women’s Ministry at Trinity.  She has been a lay delegate to the North Georgia Annual Conference.  Liza completed her studies at the University of Georgia in pre-med and worked in various positions in the medical profession prior to taking up a profession as a stay-at-home mom to four children, ages 10-17.  Her husband, Bill, is a local physician.  Characterizing herself as a radical feminist in her young adult years, Liza experienced a complete transformation of her heart and life in her early 30s and has a powerful testimony of forgiveness and redemption through a relationship with Jesus Christ.