Missionary to Korea and First Woman Fully Ordained in the Methodist Church In 1956 the General Conference granted full clergy rights to women by voting that they could be admitted into full ministerial membership in Methodist Annual Conferences. On May 18, within a month of this action, Ms. Maud K. Jensen, a missionary to Korea,...
Civil Rights Leader and Short-Term Missionary to India Lawson was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1928, one of nine children of a U.S. Methodist pastor and a Jamaican mother. He took much of his attitude toward others from his mother, who did not believe in violence. Lawson grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he became...
Generations of Mission Service In this audio file, collected at the 2018 Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference, Northeast Jurisdiction Mission Advocate Becky Parsons speaks to Nancy Miller about her family’s experience in mission.
Disaster Response Coordinator, Eastern Pennsylvania Conference In this audio file, collected at the 2018 Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference, Northeast Jurisdiction Mission Advocate Becky Parsons speaks to Bob Simcox about his experience in mission.
A Model Community Center Driving through Harrisburg, the capital city of Pennsylvania, today, one would hardly guess that in 1907 the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church declared the region a “foreign mission field.” They urged the greater church body to recognize and acknowledge the influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and...
Pioneer Methodist Missionary to Korea Henry G. Appenzeller, together with his wife, Ella, and in company with Presbyterian Horace G. Underwood, set foot on dry ground at Chemulpo (present day Inchon) on Easter Day, April 5, 1885. From that time until his tragic death in a steamship collision off the coast of Korea in June,...
Generous Mission Benefactor Everell Stanton (E.S.) Collins was an American lumberman and Methodist laymen who at this death in 1940 left the income from vast forest tracks in Pennsylvania and California to the Methodist Board of Foreign Missions; today, the Collins Forest income provides health and retirement benefits for qualified missionaries who serve through the...
Mission Bishop and Founder of Relief Agency Herbert Welch (1862-1969), the longest serving Methodist bishop, played multiple roles of lasting significance in the mission and social history of the church. His accomplishments included: Originator and first executive (1940 to 1948) of what is today the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the disaster response and development...
Pioneer Methodist lay preacher in the United States Robert Strawbridge ( ? -1781) emigrated from Ireland to Frederick County, Maryland sometime between 1760 and 1766. A Methodist preacher in Ireland, he began preaching in Maryland soon after his arrival, making him the pioneer of Methodism on the American continent. He preached in his log cabin...
First female medical missionary to China Coombs graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and was sent to China by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Possibly the first female medical missionary of any denomination in that country, she arrived in Peking (Beijing) in September 1873; two years later...
