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McEldowney, James E.

Classical Early 20th Century Mission Story

James E. McEldowney represents the classical missionary story of the early twentieth century. At a student volunteer meeting in Detroit in 1927, he pledged to be a missionary. Stories of the needs of the people inspired him. He continued his education, thinking that he might be going to China when he finished. But by 1935, the Japanese were already there, and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church asked him to go to India. Before he went, he studied carefully what people were saying about missions, both pro and con. He believed that his job was to train Indians to be leaders in the church.

After three years of ministry in a city church, he moved to Jubbulpore, a large city in the middle of the country. He joined the faculty of Leonard Theological School, one of the primary training centers for clergy and church workers in the northern part of India. The school was built on the grounds of the estate of a former British official and formed its own community. Most of the faculty had homes on the school grounds, contributing to a feeling of community or a large family. After two years, he took a furlough to finish his doctorate. When he finished, the Second World War was still raging, but he chose to return to India even though his wife and children had to stay behind.

As he worked among the Indians, McEldowney grew in appreciation of the lives of people of faith, whether Hindu, Christian, or Muslim. At the same time, he was aware that many Christians were not living up to their ideals. He did not believe that his job was to go out into the streets and try to convince people to become Christian.

Instead, he drew on a particular Hindu method to develop a special kind of ministry in addition to his teaching. Hinduism used plays recounting the lives of gods and goddesses to teach. McEldowney began to write scripts of Christian stories to be used for telling the good news. He began to do a lot of photography and arranged to have the scripts made into films. He also worked with students to use flannel boards, taking them out into the villages to provide both entertainment and witness in the large rural area around Jubbulpore.

Working in India presented challenges. In addition to the unreliable availability of electricity and telephones, people often had to make do with a more limited range of materials and supplies. Yet one of the things that impressed him most about the India people was their ability to take what they had and make something beautiful. McEldowney had his own experiences of making do. Scenery for films was made of papier-mache. One day he and his associates worked on a wall, leaving it partially finished when they went home for the night. The next morning they returned to find that termites had already eaten half of it. Eventually they learned that adding sulphur oxide to the paste kept the termites from devouring their work.

Looking back over his life, McEldowney felt great satisfaction in the lives that he touched. He was part of the transitional time for missionaries. When he started, mission work was the outreach of the church, and missionaries were really needed. By the time he was done, missionaries knew that their efforts and gifts were best directed to the development of indigenous leaders.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 50-51.

Lawson, James M., Jr.

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 a good student in predominantly white schools.

He entered Methodist-related Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and became interested in the nonviolent methods of Mahatma Gandhi. He must A. J. Muste, the executive secretary of FOR, and others in the pacifist movement, including James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and Glenn Smiley.

Although he initially registered for the draft, he became a conscientious objector at the time of the Korean War and was sentenced to three years in federal prison. Baldwin-Wallace refused to grant his degree because of his prison sentence. Entering prison in April 1951, he served until May 1952, when he was paroled. He returned to college to obtain his degree, then became a short-term missionary of The Methodist Church to Nagpur, India, where he was an instructor at a Presbyterian school, Hislop College. Lawson was surprised to find that some Western missionaries did not like Gandhi and considered him a troublemaker. But Lawson considered that Gandhi had exemplified Jesus’ teaching of love.

Lawson returned to the U.S. in 1956, did postgraduate work at the Oberlin Graduate School, and also received a degree from Boston University. He met Martin Luther King, Jr., who urged him to find a way to serve in the South. Lawson accepted an invitation from FOR to develop nonviolent methods for African-American students in Nashville, Tennessee. In the fall of 1959, he began voluntary training workshops for college students there, and shortly after the Greensboro sit-ins, Nashville students started sit-ins on February 13, 1960. In the ensuing months, students continued to protest, and the lunch counters were desegregated, but not before Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt and jailed.

Lawson participated with King and others in the civil rights protests throughout the 1960s. He was a founding member of Black Methodists for Church Renewal in 1968. In 1974, he was appointed pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, where he served for many years. He served the denomination as a member of its agencies and continued to articulate concerns for justice in the U.S. and peace abroad. In October 1996, he received the distinguished alumnus award from Vanderbilt University, despite never having received a degree there.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 206.

Knox, Lloyd

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 to happen. Buying a ticket home meant paying in U.S. dollars. But missionaries had no dollars, because their pay went straight to the banks of the countries where they served. Finally the Board of Missions sent U.S. currency to Knox, but by the time the money arrived, the earliest ticket reservation he could make was for more than a year later. Although he thought Castro’s regime might fall during that time, he used connections through an uncle to get a ticket. When it was time for his plane to leave, 250 students and faculty from the school came to see him off. Leaving was emotionally difficult. He had been part of the school and called to the work; he felt like a shepherd leaving his sheep.

His next assignment was at the Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos (ISEDET) in Buenos Aires. Despite the similarity of language, he found many cultural differences. Argentina was a more closed society, a man’s society. He later described his tenure as paternalistic, “The way missionaries were always looking out for people.” The seminary itself was more European in its approach (academic and philosophical) than evangelistic. This perspective mirrored the culture, which also embodied the values of nineteenth-century rationalism. These traits as well as the presence of the established Roman Catholic Church made development of the Protestant churches difficult. But Vatican II and Liberation Theology actually served to bring the two groups closer together.

Argentina was also a society with many immigrants, especially German, Eastern European, and Russian. Services of worship were in English as well as Spanish, though Knox felt that the board was foolish to continue to support bilingual worship. He did preach in Spanish and noted that when he got stuck for a Spanish word, someone in the congregation would call it out.

Despite the paternalistic nature of the culture and the country, Knox worked with many women who became licensed preachers. Unmarried women in particular were sent to rural areas because church leaders with children tried to stay near the better schools. Like most missionaries, Knox found many ways to be in ministry. In addition to his teaching, he wrote and distributed a magazine to support the mission efforts.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 273.

Kawai, Michi (??- 1953) 

YWCA Worker And Educator

Kawai was born the daughter of a Shinto priest in a small village near Kyoto. She became a Christian through the influence of an uncle, going first to a Methodist school at age ten and then as a teenager to a Presbyterian school in Hokkaido, where she mastered English. Japanese friends arranged for her to receive a scholarship to Bryn Mawr. She returned to Japan to teach in a school established by Ume Tsuda, one of the famous seven women who first went to the U.S. in 1971. In 1905, an American friend persuaded her to help in bringing the YWCA to Japan, for which she became one of several secretaries and the first Japanese secretary. On another visit to the West Coast, she saw the possibility of the YWCA in Japan preparing Japanese people who were going to emigrate to the United States. She also met many influential foreigners in her YWCA work, such as John R. Mott and John D. Rockefeller.

Kawai had a gift for appreciating other cultures and learning from them. In her encounter with foreigners, she invariably found something to affirm. For instance, she wrote: “When we first meet Americans, they seem to us to entertain themselves by talking to each other without listening to what is said; but, later, when our reserve has melted away, we can enjoy the American custom of spending a social hour together in the exchange of news and ideas.” She also had a prudent side, such as when she reported with approval that an American friend “came to consider it a favor to rich people to enable them to find worthy causes to help with their money.”

She dreamed of beginning her own girls’ school, a dream that became a reality in 1929. She converted her home in Tokyo into Keisen Jogaku-en school. The school opened with nine girls aged twelve and thirteen. The school was remarkable in being an indigenous Japanese Christian institution. By the time of her death, the school had almost two thousand students and consisted of a junior high, a senior high, and a junior college. She died on February 1, 1953.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 136

Haskin, Sara Estelle

Leader In Settlement Work

When the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS), began its foray into settlement work at the turn of the twentieth century, it asked Sara Estelle Haskin to take up the post in Dallas. With no equipment and no real pattern to follow, she plunged into the work and began a very successful ministry. Her goal was to be a neighbor to those around her in the neglected areas of the city where she settled. She started three settlement houses that provided much-needed services for the area. Afterward, she moved to Nashville, where she worked with Mrs. Sallie Hill, an African-American woman, to start another center to serve the neighborhood. Eventually, her success in such endeavors led her to a position as secretary of literature of the Woman’s Missionary Council, located in Louisville. Biography was important to her, so she used many sketches of persons of faith in the literature she published.

With unification came a new position and title for her. She was elected editor of World Outlook. Reluctantly, for she dreaded the thought of living and working in New York, she went to the city to attend her first executive committee meeting and find a place to live. She accomplished both, giving a report full of hope for the new church at the committee meeting. After the meeting she drove with a friend to the hotel where she was staying. On the way, she was seized with pain and died shortly after she reached her hotel room.

The new church had barely begun life when hers ended, but eight years later, coworkers were still praising the vision she had brought to the union and the influence of her vision, which had persisted long after she died. Haskin was noted for her dedication to the Christianization of social relationships as well as the development of personal mystical relation to the soul of God. She was a crusader for race relations and gave leadership to considerations of labor laws and other concerns when these were issues being discussed by only a handful in the church. She was also remembered as a campaigner for the laity and clergy rights of women.

Her work increased the communication between women of the MEC and MECS churches long before they became officially one church. In this way, she was truly a founding spirit of the new denomination, even though her physical life was at its end.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 29.

Guerra Olivares, Eleazar

Bishop And Ecumenist Of The Methodist Church Of Mexico

Guerra was born in Reynosa, Mexico, and studied in the U.S. He ordination in the U.S. was in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He became a district superintendent of the Methodist Church of Mexico and was elected the third bishop of the church in 1938. Although bishops served only a four-year term, he was re-elected in 1942, 1946, and 1950. He then served as secretary of evangelism and was elected to a final term of the episcopacy in 1958.

He addressed the first General Conference of The Methodist Church and emphasized the continuing connection between autonomous churches like the one in Mexico and the rest of Methodism: “It is true that an autonomous church has been created in our country. … But we want to take part in this forward movement that this Church has taken, when all forces of Methodism are united for better service.” Guerra spoke at several General Conferences of The Methodist Church and in 1944 gave a comprehensive report on the growth of church membership, the strengthening of institutions, and the good relationships with U.S. missionaries. He again affirmed the need of both the U.S. and the Mexican churches to work together and said the church in Mexico was also engaged in ecumenical work with other Protestant denominations. Guerra died on September 14, 1970.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 106.

Kayeke, Tshangand

Founder Of Lunda Methodism

The following is from an article by Nancy Woodcock Riley, daughter of Congo missionaries Vera and Everrett Woodcock.

In the late 1800s, when Tshangand Kayeke was a young boy, Portuguese slave traders came through his village. He was among the men and boys who were shackled together and marched into Angola. Along the way some died. When the rest arrived in Angola, Kayeke was too sick to be put on a ship. He was sold as a slave to a local chief. Noticing the potential in his young servant, Kayeke’ s Angolan master made it possible for him to go to school at the mission station across the river.

Kayeke studied the Bible and became a believer in Jesus Christ. Following the example of the missionary Walter Currie, he began to fervently pray for God to send missionaries to Musumba in the Belgian Congo, near his home village. When someone from Belgian Congo visited the mission station, he would ask if there were missionaries yet at Musumba. They would say no, and he would continue to pray.

When Kayeke’s enslavement ended, he decided to continue to work as a free man for his master. He went on several expeditions into Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia to trade goods. All the while, he continued to pray for missionaries to come to Musumba. In 1910, when he was about 30 years old, Kayeke was on one of his trading expeditions at a town on the border of the Belgian Congo when he met Methodist missionaries John and Helen Springer. He asked them, “Is it true you have come to open a mission among the Lunda, the people of Mwant Yav at Musumba?” They said yes! It was a happy day for Kayeke.

He went back to Angola for his wife and children and they all moved to Musumba. When they arrived in Musumba, he went straight to the Mwant Yav (the Lunda paramount chief) to announce the good news that slavery was over and that he and his family were back. Kayeke passionately shared the Good News of Jesus Christ and the good news that missionaries would soon be coming to Musumba. Mwant Yav prayed that God would also send a doctor to his people. In 1914, Dr. Arthur and Maude Piper arrived in Kapanga to set up what is now Samuteb Hospital.

Kayeke was a passionate preacher, song writer and strong leader in the Southern Conference of the Methodist Church, serving at Musumba and later in Sandoa, where he passed away.

The full article from which this entry is taken may be found here: https://www.umcmission.org/learn-about-us/news-and-stories/2019/january/remembering-tshangand-kayeke-a-slave-prayer-warrior-and-messenger-of-god-to-the-lunda-people

Golden, Charles Franklin (1912-1984)

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 Philosophy at Philander Smith College in 1938. He served as a chaplain in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946. After serving as director of field service in the Department of Negro Work of the Board of Missions from 1947 to 1952, he became the first African American named to the staff of the Board of Missions. He was associated secretary and later director in the Division of National Missions, where he served until 1960. He was a member of the General Conference Commission to Study the Jurisdictional System from 1956 to 1960, when he was elected bishop in the Central Jurisdiction. He presided over the Nashville-Birmingham Area 1960-1968 and in The United Methodist Church served the San Francisco Area 1968-1972 and the Los Angeles Area 1972-1980.

Just before the 1964 General Conference, Golden went with white Bishop James K. Mathew to worship at Galloway Methodist Church in Jackson, Mississippi. They were turned away, and their rejection was reported in the national news media. After the 1966 conference adopted an omnibus resolution proposing specific steps for merger of black and white conferences, the three annual conferences over which Golden presided failed to give approval. Golden emphasized through his articulation of issues and his episcopal leadership that Methodist African Americans would not settle for anything less than full and complete integration. Golden was noted as a forceful and even authoritarian bishop, but he was respected as fair and a person of integrity. He died in 1984.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 150

Ewing, Betsy (1923-2013)

Leader Of Deaconesses And Women’s Mission Work

Ewing came out of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, although it became part of The Methodist Church when she was a teenager. As she was growing up, she planned to go to Scarritt College. She not only completed her education there but stayed on for fifteen years to work with alumni well.

Even though she went to a high school where students were segregated by gender and worked most of her life with women’s organizations, Ewing and her work are part of the church’s struggles with gender and gender roles.

When the Board of Missions went through its major restructure in 1964, it “radically changed the internal workings of the board and relationships.” Before men had “done their thing” at their headquarters in Philadelphia, women had “done theirs” in New York. She accepted the invitation to head up the deaconess program. The deaconesses had always been women, but as the board integrated various programs, it also opened this field of service for men, calling them “home missionaries.”

She also saw the differences as two systems of missions were brought together. The men had always been part of helping to raise the money through developing lists of friends and donors. Women had raised money through the local church groups and the structures that were in place at every level of the church. She saw the positive way the structuring helped to unify missions. Once of her concerns was communication. When she was growing up, she always her people complain, “Oh, those people in Nashville!” She wanted to be a liaison, to continue to communicate with people, even those who seemed to feel that the board was always dictating all the decisions.

Always a leader, she attended her first international meeting in West berlin in 1963. She wanted to host a meeting in the U.S. and invited the organization to come. That meant, however, that she had to bring together a national organization to prepare for the 1966 meeting. Later she went on to be president of Diakonia, an ecumenical experience that she felt really helped and enriched her work on the board, where eventually she became an administrative executive in New York.

Ewing appreciated the variety of organizations she worked with during her ministry—Scarritt-Bennett, the Board of Missions, Diakonia—all doing the same thing in different ways. As she looked back over her work, she noted how rewarding it had been. She was committed to what she was doing, got a lot of support, and found people to be very gracious. The challenge of working with people was one that she took on and mastered.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 289.

Diffendorfer, Ralph (1879-1951)

Leader Of Board Of Foreign Missions

Diffendorfer claimed that as a Sunday school student he was inspired with such a passion for mission by British missionary David Livingstone that it lasted his whole life. But his mother claimed that his personality had elements of P. T. Barnum as well. The passion and the leadership became apparent early, and after his education he began to work for the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

He moved into leadership just when the Interchurch World Movement in 1924 was failing, leaving a host of financial difficulties. Diffendorfer’s abilities allowed him to gain stature and prestige among his colleagues. Bishop Francis McConnell marveled at his active mind, commenting wryly, “He’s got more ideas than any other fellow I ever knew, and most of them aren’t of any account. But once in a while he gets a hold of one of them that we accept, and it is worth more than any of the others.”

J. W. Reid evaluated his tenure as covering some of the most difficult times for “foreign” missions. The excitement was over, the money was scarce, and support was diminishing. Worldwide depression followed by war put unending strain on the creativity and resources of the leadership. Such circumstances made Diffendorfer’s tenure and accomplishments all the more impressive.

While Diffendorfer could be brusque, insistent, and even thoughtless of the feelings of others, he was also remembered for his honesty, his ability to listen to others, and even his willingness for his staff to differ from him. Openness to other ideas meant that he was able to change his mind if necessary, measuring his decisions not by popularity or expediency but by what he discerned to be the will of God. Frank Cartwright praised him as well for his willingness to help colleagues who needed to “get out of a mess.” On holidays Diffendorfer invited students or even lonely bishops who were in town to share in his home and hospitality.

Like many of the leaders of his generation, Diffendorfer was influenced by Gordon Parker Bowne and Edgar S. Brightman and the school of Boston personalism. Diffendorfer believed that Christ was relevant for the whole person as well as for every person. This belief helped lead his passion for Christian service to projects that were interfaith and interracial. When the Second World War ended, he emphasized that relief of human need should have first place in all plans, with reconstruction of property second.

Following his retirement in December 1949, Diffendorfer served as executive for the Japan International University Foundation, living out his commitment to education in yet another way. He tenure lasted until 1951, when he died suddenly from a heart attack.

Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), 74.