Methodist Educators, Relief Leader, Bishops J. W. Ernst Sommer was born to a German Wesleyan minister father and British mother in Germany. He went to Kingswood, Cambridge University, and the university at Lausanne for his education. He taught in London and married a Briton, Beatrice Dibben. From 1907 to 1912, he was a missionary in...
First United Methodist Bishop in Russia When Bishop Rüdiger (Ruediger) R. Minor became the first United Methodist bishop to reside in Moscow, he was uniquely qualified to head a mission to oversee the denomination’s fledgling congregations there and in other parts of the former Soviet Union. As a child, one of his earliest memories was...
The First German Methodist Missionary Wilhelm Nast is appropriately known by German Methodists today, by the title of “The First German Methodist Missionary,” as well as the founder and organizer of the German branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Nast was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1807 and confirmed in the Lutheran Church at fourteen...
