Release #056 {2920}April 25, 1996
DENVER (UMNS) -- Tom Matheny of Hammond, La., was elected to an unprecedented sixth four-year term as president of the United Methodist Church's Judicial Council here April 25.
Matheny, an attorney and active United Methodist layman, first was elected to the Judicial Council in 1972, when he was a delegate to General Conference for the third time.
Members of the council, the church's supreme court, also elected the Rev. John Corry of Nashville, Tenn., to the position of vice president. Corry, pastor of Patterson Memorial United Methodist Church and assistant general counsel at Meharry Medical College, was elected to the Judicial Council in 1988 and re-elected in 1996.
Sally Curtis AsKew of Elberton, Ga., who also was first elected to the council in 1988 and re-elected in 1996, was named secretary. AsKew is academic law librarian at the University of Georgia School of Law and has served on the governing board of the churchwide Board of Global Ministries and of the board of the National Council of Churches.
Judicial Council officers are elected for four-year terms but election to the council is by the General Conference for an eight-year term.
Also on April 25, members of General Conference elected the following lay alternate members of the Judicial Conference: Daniel Keith Church, Akron, Ohio; Sally Brown Geis, Denver; Jon R. Gray, Kansas City, Mo.; Ed Hill, Amarillo, Texas; Jack W. Plowman, Pittsburgh, Pa.; and T. Terrell Sessons, Tampa, Fla.
Clergy alternates elected are the Rev. Charles Brockwell Jr., Louisville, Ky.; the Rev. Richard W. Cain, Upland, Calif.; the Rev. John Collins, New Rochelle, N.Y.; the Rev. Larry Duane Pickens, Chicago; the Rev. Robert K. Sweet Jr., Reading, Mass.; and the Rev. Jane Tews, Gilbert, Ariz.
-- Joretta Purdue
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