Educator and Leader for Abolishing the Central Jurisdiction Thomas was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and was ordained and became an elder in the South Carolina Conference of the Central Jurisdiction in 1944. After serving as a pastor, he taught at Gammon Theological Seminary. He became associate director of the Department of Education Institutions of...
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...
Church and Community Worker Serving as Parish Nurse My journey into Church and Community ministry began (without my knowledge), when I was a young teen. I enjoyed going to the local school on Sunday after church to help register community residents for oral Polio vaccinations. I thought it was an honor to be asked by...
Church and Community Worker with Native Youth My call to ministry formed in my local church. I served as a worship leader, a Sunday school teacher, as chair of the administrative board—I was active. Then one Sunday our District Superintendent came to church and asked me if I was interested in going to lay-speaking school....
Holistic Rural Ministry The Bennettsville-Cheraw Area Cooperative Ministry (BCACM), established in 1966, is a specialized ministry with rural residents of South Carolina’s Marlboro and Chesterfield counties. With four pastors and a combined church membership below 2500, the cooperative includes one station church (Trinity UMC), two parishes (Cheraw and Bennettsville), and one circuit (Bennettsville Circuit). All...
Ministry of Hope with Hispanic Youth Do you take the things you have for granted? Carmen, a 35-year-old Mexican woman who lives in Hamilton, Ohio, can answer that question with an absolute no! A single mother with three children, she came to the United States with a desire to find a better future for her...
Interfaith Efforts for Economic Justice As a Church and Community Worker commissioned as a missionary by the General Board of Global Ministries, I work with Interfaith Arkansas and the Interfaith Arkansas Alliance. I am also an ordained elder of the Arkansas Conference of The United Methodist Church. The original predecessor of Interfaith Arkansas, the Arkansas...
Theological Educator Lloyd Knox used his skills and leadership in two different societies. He and his family had gone to Cuba, where he taught in the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Matanzas. In September 1960, the U.S. embassy sent word to all U.S. citizens to leave Cuba. But the embassy did not provide assistance for that...
Advocate of Integration in Methodism Born August 24, 1912, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Golden received degrees from Clark College and Gammon Theological Seminary, both in Atlanta. He was ordained an elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) in 1938. He served several congregations in the South before becoming professor in the Department of Religion and...
Advocate for Peace and Justice Deats grew up in a Methodist family in Texas and attended McMurry College in Abilene, Texas, in the early 1950s. There he became active in the Methodist Student Movement which was beginning to voice concerns about civil rights and racial justice, holding its first interracial meeting at McMurry. A visit...
