By Ben Cox
The world found out about the Case family’s talent in early 2024. Isaiah Case auditioned for the 22nd season of the popular television show “American Idol” in Nashville.
He sang an original song called “What Could I Do” and received a ‘yes’ vote into the next round by judges Lionel Richie, Katy Perry and Luke Bryan. His next performances went untelevised and ultimately he did not make the Top 24 of the show. However, his local celebrity never waned.
The music has always been about much more than that. It’s faith. It’s family. It’s the belief in bringing people to a close, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Isaiah Case and his family have graced several stages in the Jacksonville area both before and since Isaiah Case’s television appearance, including headlining the Jacksonville Main Street Downtown Concert Series this summer.
In between, the family and their close friends have been working on a building, as the old gospel song goes. The roots for the ministry ultimately began in the Case family home but things started to take root in South Jacksonville at First Christian Church. Case family patriarch Perry Case says that he and Joshua Beckman, who worked on the production side of First Christian’s worship team helping with lights, video and sound started really working on the idea of having their own ministry in their own building about a year prior to things starting to evolve at Annie Merner Chapel.
From left, Isaiah Case, Josh Beckman, Perry Case, Eric Jokisch and Kayla Jokisch pose in front of the main doors to The Chapel.
“Josh and I, along with Isaiah, who had been leading music ministry at Real Life Church in Springfield for a little over a year, along with Ryan Turner, started praying together for a solid six months about making a transition and planting a church,” Perry Case explains, “We had some specific vision that it was maybe a little different from where we were at and we were praying about asking God’s permission. At the end of that six months, we got together and felt like God was leading us to start something. We envisioned that [idea] being a year down the road or so, and the way it all worked out was pretty amazing. Kayla and Eric [Jokisch] were working on the chapel and library already.”
Perry Case says that he believed the Jokisches had some kind of vision in mind for the chapel but weren’t sure what the idea was at the time. He says that he and the remainder of the group were simply seeking a place to worship with a small gathering of people who felt a tug by the Holy Spirit
“I felt called to get out of the [music] worship ministry and to go into the preaching ministry,”
Perry Case says, “And I really desired to work with my son again. It was something that we had been talking about since he was 10 or 11 years old. Josh and I are like brothers and have talked about a lot of ideas over the years. We just dreamed together a lot since I moved here to work at First Christian in 2017.”
Perry Case says that in March, it was a perfect storm of his group’s ideas, Mike Hayes’ desire to renovate Annie Merner Chapel, and the goals and ideas of the Jokisches that made The Chapel become a reality. “I remember waking up that morning in March and seeing Mike’s plans for the chapel,” Perry Case says, “and I thought, ‘Well, that place is out of the question.’ I had talked with Kayla and Eric a couple of times before that point. Josh and Ryan were already working in the library and the chapel doing things. I just feel like it was kind of just divine intervention and God brought all of them together. Kayla and Eric then put their faith and trust in us and said, we’ll take this building. We’ll buy this building and you put a church in it.”
From March to mid May, volunteers along with Beckman, Turner and the Cases put a lot of sweat equity into Annie Merner Chapel to both make long overdue repairs to the building as well as modernize the building to once again make it a regular house of worship. The United Methodist Church decommissioned the chapel in June of 2020 in a special taking leave ceremony after the closure of MacMurray College. Services returned to a packed sanctuary on May 4. Cars were lined around the block on both South Clay and East College avenues, and they haven’t stopped coming since.
Perry Case says as things progress with The Chapel, as it is now called, the church will continue to grow its Bible studies at all age levels but will also be focusing on local missions.
“We feel like missionary work starts right here in our very local community and then the surrounding communities after that,” Case, lead pastor of The Chapel, explains, “And then after that, we will expand on and do some international missions and that kind of thing, too. We definitely want to put a high priority on local missions and on biblical education. Bible studies will always be a part of what we do. People need like-minded people to gather with.”
Case realizes that music will also always be a part of The Chapel because it’s so embedded in his family, whether it’s Isaiah, his younger brother Max or his sisters Sophia and Lilian. Case says that music and ministry are naturally a part of who they are as a family.
Case also attributes Beckman’s art of recording, video and sound as part of the attraction to their ministry. The two have worked together for 8 years. Case says he’s amazed by the engagement of the social media clips that Beckman, production pastor for The Chapel, posts on The Chapel’s Facebook page. Beckman says that the Case family makes his work easy, “I literally tell these guys all the time, the gospel’s just pouring out of you, and I’m just pointing the camera at what Jesus is doing in The Chapel. I do all the fancy things, editing and all this stuff, but really at the end of the day, it’s been such a breath of fresh air to just point a camera in a place, put a microphone somewhere, go home on the laptop, and when you start editing, it all just falls into place. I didn’t have to manufacture any of this. I don’t have to. It’s just there.”
Beckman, who is also a local musician, says the proof is in the engagement both online and in person. Case says it’s just evidence that people are looking for hope, “It just moves a lot of people and it gets a lot of attention. We’re not going for likes and shares, but [the video clips] take off because we just believe people need hope in this post-COVID world. It’s more evident now than ever that people need to be able to claim hope. We believe that hope is Jesus, and we want to share that in music and we want to share that in sharing the word of God and the gospel with people.”
The video clips have done enough work that The Chapel continues to be filled each week, sometimes out of pure curiosity and others come, as Case and Beckman believe, to share in something at work again in the walls of the church.
Case says that the curiosity hasn’t just been limited to Sundays, “We’ve had a kid’s club going on Wednesday nights, and I do the check-ins so the doors are propped open. We’ve had couples walk up who said they went to school here and ask to come in and look around. I take them in and show them around and tell them what we’re doing. I think that’s pretty unique. Sometimes we have people sneak in the side doors trying to avoid me, but for the most part if they come through the front doors, I’ll stop and talk with them. I’ve had so many of them say they came because they loved MacMurray and they were so excited to hear the building was consecrated again. Many of them have started regularly attending.”
Kayla Jokisch says that one of the biggest pieces to The Chapel is the one-of-a-kind Aeolian-Skinner organ that has sat dormant since 2020. Jokisch says that she has met with both Tim Smith of the Esprit de Corps Academy and Susan Weller to discuss options to have the organ placed back into full working order again after some needed repairs. The hope is to have it making music again in the near future with a candlelight ceremony.
In all, in a place where Eleanor Roosevelt and Fred “Mr.” Rogers once gave convocation speeches and where B.B. King, Minnie Riperton, Taj Mahal and The Association sang for students, or where a young Judy Collins learned the basis of her world-renowned folk music career — the spirits of the 76-year-old chapel have awoken once again to bring joy and hope to the Jacksonville community.
