Mary Souders

Mary Frances Souders, three day shy of her 105th birthday, passed away September 29, 2022. She was the widow of Rev. William Merle Souders, a longtime pastor and conference superintendent in Kansas. They married in 1935 and were married for 71 years.

Visitation: 11am Thursday, October 6, 2022.
Funeral: 1:00 am Thursday, October 6, 2022.
Location: Resthaven Mortuary, 11800 West Highway 54, Wichita, Kansas

Rev. Souders pastored the former Grayston Avenue UB church in Huntington, Ind. In the 1950s, he and Frances moved to Kansas to start a new UB church, and spent the rest of their lives there.

Read the online obituary here.

Rachel Graham

Rachel Graham, 92, wife of longtime UB minister Rev. Ken Graham, passed away September 24, 2022. They were married in 1951 and remain members of Mainstreet UB church (Walbridge, Ohio), the church they pastored for many years.

Viewing: 4-7 pm Thursday, September 29, 2022
Viewing location: Witzler-Shank-Walker Funeral Home, 701 N. Main St. Walbridge, Ohio 43465
Funeral: 11 am Friday, September 30, 2022.
Funeral location: Mainstreet UB church, 5465 Moline-Martin Rd, Walbridge, OH, 43465

More information on the Walker Funeral Homes site.

L-r: Jody Bowser, Christopher Little V, Mark Vincenti, Joni Michaud, Kim Fish, Kent Eilers.

In April 2022, the Executive Leadership Team appointed a six-person “Task Force on Human Reproduction.” They will study a wide range of issues and propose Discipline revisions to be considered by the next US National Conference, which will meet July 11-14, 2023, in Fort Wayne, Ind.

The Task Force’s work will focus on three statements in the “Family Standards” section of the Discipline, none of which have been revised since 1985.

  • The “Abortion” statement was adopted in 1969, and was revised in 1981 and 1985.
  • The “Family Planning” statement was adopted in 1969 under the heading “Responsible Family Planning.” In 1985, one sentence was added and the name was shortened to “Family Planning.”
  • The “Genetic Engineering” statement was adopted in 1985 and has never been revised. This statement is probably most in need of updating, as a slew of new reproductive technologies have arisen during the past 30 years.

Bishop Todd Fetters felt that these statements desperately needed to be updated. We need principles which are consistent with Scripture, and which can be applied to new reproductive technologies which may arise in the future.

Bishop Fetters emphasizes that, as was the case in 2017, there is no appetite among the general UB constituency for “liberalizing” our stands. It’s just a matter of addressing current realities and giving sound biblical guidance to UB people.

The Team
This task force is modeled somewhat on the Task Force on Human Sexuality, whose work was approved by the 2017 US National Conference. Two members of this group, Joni Michaud and Mark Vincenti, also served on the Task Force on Human Sexuality.

  • Joni Michaud, the chairperson, is a member of Pleasant Valley United Brethren Church in Lake Odessa, Mich. She holds degrees from Huntington University and the Notre Dame Law School (2008), was admitted to the State Bar of Michigan in 2008, and is now a practicing attorney with Voices for Hope PLC in Grand Rapids, Mich., with a focus on criminal law, family law, and immigration law. She was a member of the Task Force on Human Sexuality.
  • Rev. Mark Vincenti has been a United Brethren minister since 2000, serving on staff at King Street UB church (Chambersburg, Pa.), College Park UB church (Huntington, Ind.), and now Emmanuel Community Church (Fort Wayne, Ind.). In addition to his work at Emmanuel, in late 2021 Mark assumed the role of Campus Chaplain at his alma mater, Huntington University.
  • Dr. Jody Bowser has been pastor of King Street UB church (Chambersburg, Pa.) since 2015. Prior to that, he served in ministry at non-UB churches in California, Washington, and Ohio going back to 1989. He holds an undergraduate degree from Judson College (1985), a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary (1989), and a Doctor of Ministry from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (2003).
  • Rev. Christopher Little V, the son of former UB minister Chris Little, served 2015-2020 as Pastor of Outreach at Mount Pleasant UB church (Chambersburg, Pa.) and is now planting a church in Harrisburg, Pa. He holds degrees in Christian Ministry and Music from Geneva College (2014), and in 2018 completed a masters in church planting from Wesleyan Seminary in Indiana.
  • Kim Fish grew up in a United Brethren minister’s home, the daughter of Dr. Kent and Carol Maxwell. She holds a psychology degree from Huntington University and a masters in social work from Indiana-Purdue a degree in Psychology and went on to earn a masters in social work from IUPUI, a state university in Indiana. She has worked over 25 years in the social service field, and now works in private practice with Clarity Counseling in Fort Wayne, Ind. She is married to Rev. Steve Fish, a United Brethren ordained minister who currently works an associate director of UB Global.
  • Dr. Kent Eilers has been a professor of theology at Huntington University since 2009. He grew up in a Christian home in the Evangelical Covenant tradition, and went on to serve on staff with several churches in Michigan and Colorado. He holds an undergraduate degree from Calvin College, a master of divinity from Denver Seminary, and a PhD in systematic theology from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Timeline
The Task Force held an initial meeting via Zoom on March 30, and then met in person on June 17 in Huntington, Ind. They will present a preliminary report to the October 2022 Executive Leadership Team, and will submit its final report to the Bishop’s Office by March 1, 2023.

In May 2023, regional meetings will be held to prepare people for the upcoming US National Conference. A representative of the Task Force will attend those meetings to present the proposals and invite feedback.

In June 2023, a final version of all proposals will be published for delegates and the entire UB constituency. They will then be acted upon during the July 12 business session of the US National Conference.

Orrstown UB Church, in conjunction with a ministry partner, installed a new blessing box outside the front of the church. The blessing box will be stocked with non-perishable food, tracts, and Bibles. The box will serve as a means for Orrstown UB Church to be a blessing to our community through ways that are meaningful and leaving an impact on our community.

Fonda Cassidy passed away on March 1, 2022. A nurse, Fonda and her husband, Robert, led a number of UB medical teams to Honduras and Nicaragua. Fonda is a sister of Rev. David Rawley, pastor of Otterbein UB church in Greencastle, Pa.

Viewing: 4-8pm Friday, March 11, 2022 at Johnson Funeral Service, 208 South Main St., Bridgewater, Va. 22812

Funeral: 2:00 pm Saturday, March 12, 2022, at Jerusalem Chapel UB church, 314 Chapel Road, Churchville, Va. 24421


Both volumes of All for Christ are now available as epubs for $6.99 each on Amazon. These books, published in 2017, focus on UB history 1981-2017, but go back to the beginning to tell the complete story of our various mission fields, and of our evolving stands on various issues (alcohol, women in ministry, abortion, assigning pastors, and more). Now you can read them on your tablet or smartphone.

Go here to order either the print or epub versions: All for Christ 1 | All for Christ 2.

During the 2017 US National Conference in Lancaster, Pa., many UB people enjoyed attending a production at the local Sight & Sound Theatre. You may be interested in knowing that the S&S production of “Jesus” will be available this weekend–Friday, Saturday, and Sunday–for free over the internet and on the TBN cable network (Trinity Broadcasting Network).

You can view it on TBN at 1:00 pm Eastern Time on TBN.
Or, view it anytime April 10-12 on the TBN app or their website.

You can watch a trailer for “Jesus” on Youtube.

L-r: Greg Voight, Joni Michaud, Victor Mojica, Dale Perry.

The 2019-2021 Executive Leadership Team is now complete. Four members were elected by this summer’s US National Conference, to join four others with continuing terms. That left four persons to be appointed for the next two years. Bishop Todd Fetters has now chosen those persons, and they were unanimously approved by the ELT.

The appointees include one person from each region—two laypersons, two clergy. Three of the appointees are serving on the ELT for the first time. The fourth, Greg Voight, has been an ELT member since 2013. Here is information about each of them.

Greg Voight has been senior pastor of Lancaster UB church in Lancaster, Ohio, since 2006. Before that, he served two years as an intern at what is now Shoreline UB church in Oak Harbor, Ohio. He is a 2006 graduate of Findlay University (Findlay, Ohio), and was ordained in 2011. Greg and his wife, Debbie, were married in 1995 and have three children.

Joni Michaud is a member of Pleasant Valley UB church in Lake Odessa, Mich. She currently serves there as administrative board chair and lay leader, and teaches junior church and Sunday school. Joni has been a lay delegate from her church to the last four meetings of the US National Conference, and served on the Human Sexuality Task Force 2015-2017. Joni works as an attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich., practicing immigration law, family law, and criminal defense. She earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Huntington University in 2005 and her juris doctor from Notre Dame Law School in 2008.

Victor Mojica and his wife, Margarita, have been members of Clearview UB church (Goshen, Ind.) since 1994. He has been serving as a part-time pastor at Clearview since 1998. Currently, Clearview is made up of an English-speaking congregation pastored by Jim Gillette, and a Spanish-speaking congregation pastored by Victor. He also works in his family business.

Dale Perry served 25 years as an employee of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, from which he recently retired as Manager of the Department’s Land Acquisition Program for highway and bridge construction projects. Dale has since joined consulting firm Arrow Land Solutions, LLC, as Director of Training and Development. He and his wife, Shirley, have been members of Mount Pleasant UB church (Chambersburg, Pa.) for 27 years. Dale is currently chairperson of the Governance Board (since 2016), teaches an adult Sunday school class, and serves on the church Personnel Relations Commission and Worship Media Team.

You can view the complete ELT here. There are three persons from each region, for a total of 12 members. Six are clergy, six are laypersons. The bishop is the 13th member, and he chairs the Executive Leadership Team, which meets twice a year.

Steve Dennie, UB Communications Director

As we enter Memorial Day weekend….The Religious Telescope, our denominational magazine during the 1800s, recorded the obituaries of nearly 900 United Brethren men who died fighting for the Union during the Civil War. They included about 35 UB ministers, and 40 sons of UB ministers. As a denomination, we were fully committed to the Union cause.

On March 11, 1864, Thomas Evans enlisted as a private in the Union army. He was 38 years old, not a young man like so many Civil War soldiers. He left a wife and seven children at home in Newport, Iowa. And he was not, then, a Christian. But he had some kind of United Brethren connection.

Evans was born in Delaware, but made his way west with the growing nation. He and Nancy were married in 1847 in Indiana, but eventually settled in Iowa. Then came war. Thomas said good-bye to his wife and children for the last time, and left home to join the 24th Iowa Infantry, Company D.

Within eight months, Thomas would die of wounds received in the battle of Cedar Creek, the culminating battle of the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of late 1864. It was a costly Union victory, with 644 killed, 3,430 wounded, and nearly 1600 taken prisoner. But it helped seal the fate of the Confederacy.

Evans’ obituary was published in The Religious Telescope, the United Brethren bi-weekly newspaper at the time. Perhaps he was what we called a “Seeker,” a category of membership for persons “giving evidence that they are sincerely seeking the Lord.” Nancy would soon become a United Brethren member, so there was probably a UB church there in Newport, or nearby. The UB presence was fairly thick in that part of Iowa.

If Thomas was, indeed, a Seeker, he had help for that journey while in the army. The Religious Telescope published the obituaries over 90 Iowa men who died serving in uniform. They included several United Brethren ministers, and laypersons from ages 17 to 59. They were spread among 32 infantry regiments and six cavalry regiments. We can assume that, in addition to these 90 fallen soldiers, hundreds of additional United Brethren men from Iowa served in and survived the war.

Six of those fallen men served in the 24th Iowa Infantry alongside Thomas Evans. Two of them were the sons of United Brethren preachers.

Abram Hershey, 59, was the son of Rev. Christian Hershey, who had basically started the UB church in Lisbon, Iowa. The Hersheys were from Lancaster, Pa., the birthplace of United Brethrenism. When Rev. Hershey came to Lisbon in 1847, a year after Iowa achieved statehood, he brought a bunch of relatives with him, including his son Abram and Abram’s large family. Other Pennsylvanians also came, enough that histories refer to the “Pennsylvania Settlement.” The Iowa Conference was organized at Lisbon in 1849, with Christian Hershey as one of the charter members, and Lisbon became perhaps the most prominent church in the conference.

Abram’s three oldest sons—Christian, John, and Henry Harrison—all enlisted in the Union army. Christian and John enlisted together on September 3, 1862, in the 24th Iowa Infantry. Christian was discharged for disability in May 1863—perhaps wounds, but more likely, sickness. But his father, Abram, signed up on March 3, 1864, to take Christian’s place.

Thomas Evans enlisted on March 11, 1864, just eight days after Abram. Though they were in different companies of the 24th—Abram and his sons in Company F, Thomas in Company D—we can assume that they at least got acquainted on their journey to join the regiment. But it’s quite likely that they already knew each other, since they lived just 16 miles apart.

Of the three brothers, John Hershey had the more distinguished military career. By May 1863, he had been promoted to sergeant. Then came 1864, quite an eventful year for him. First, his father joined Company F. Two months later, on April 8, John was severely wounded in the battle of Mansfield, La., a Union defeat (it is also known as the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads). Two months later, on June 13, his father, Abram, died of disease aboard a steamer near New Orleans. John recovered from his wounds, and then was wounded again, this time slightly, on September 19 at the battle of Opequon, also known as the third battle of Winchester, Va.

A month later, on October 19, John was taken prisoner at the battle of Cedar Creek, Va., the same battle in which Thomas Evans was mortally wounded. John, fortunately, was soon paroled in a prisoner exchange and would survive the war.

Another UB from the 24th died at Cedar Creek—George S. Smith, 23, who lived 14 miles from Evans. He was born in Germany, but was now living in Mount Vernon, Iowa, with a wife and three children. He had fought for two years before dying on the battlefield. He joined William O. Huyck, another young soldier from Mount Vernon, with whom he had enlisted in Company F in August 1862. Huyck, 30, a native of Ohio, died of disease on January 5, 1863.

Another UB preacher’s kid in the 24th was William Otterbein Miller, who was obviously named after founding bishop Philip William Otterbein. He was the son of Rev. Martin Miller, a pastor in Iowa Conference who, like the Hersheys, had come from Pennsylvania. Miller was wounded on September 19 at the battle of Opequon, and finally died of his wounds on February 13, 1865.

No doubt various other United Brethren served alongside Thomas Evans in the 24th regiment. Western College, a UB school located 18 miles from the Evans home, contributed a large number of students to the war effort. Then there would have been Christians from like-minded denominations like the Methodist and Evangelical churches. In fact, the 24th was sometimes called the “Methodist” regiment.

Thomas apparently sought God as a soldier. And it was as a soldier that he finally surrendered his life to Christ. It happened one night while he was on picket duty. Perhaps he was alone, but probably not. Was another UB with him when he committed his life to Jesus, between glances at the rebel pickets across the way? How might his decision have been influenced through interactions with Abram and John Hershey, George Smith, and William Otterbein Miller?

We don’t know how or when it happened, but it apparently did.

On October 19, 1864, Thomas Evans was severely wounded at the battle of Cedar Creek. His right forearm was amputated and he was hospitalized in Baltimore. But on November 5, he succumbed to his wounds.

A chaplain was there at his deathbed. According to Evans’ obituary in The Religious Telescope, “He told the chaplain that all he had to regret was that his children had never heard their father pray.”

The obituary added that Nancy Evans, Thomas’s wife, subsequently became a Christian and joined the local United Brethren church.