28 Jul On This Day in UB History: July 28 (the Sherlocks)

Jeff and Joan Sherlock and children (left) with the Luke and Audrey Fetters (middle) and Phil and Darlene Burkett families.

On July 28, 1990, the Sherlock family left for Macau. They thought it would be for four years.

Jeff and Joan Sherlock met at Camp Scioto, the Central Conference camp near Junction City, Ohio. Joan traveled that summer with a Huntington College singing group which ministered at Camp Scioto. Jeff, like just about everyone in his family, worked at the camp. A long-distance courtship began, and Jeff and Joan were married in July l979.

They set up home in southern Ohio, became active in the Avlon UB church in Bremen, and brought three children into the world. For 12 years, Jeff worked for a large printing company, progressing from job estimating to quality control to sales. While working fulltime, he earned a Business degree and a masters in Business Administration from Ohio University.

In 1989, as he approached the end of the MBA program, Jeff began praying about doing something more significant with his life. He said, “I was doing my job very successfully and would have become quite well off. But no matter how efficiently I made catalog inserts, there was no eternal significance. In the long term, I had nothing to gain except money.”

Then along came the Missions Impact newsletter, with an ad seeking a new missionary couple for Macau—specifically, someone with business skills. It ran for several months, and each month Jeff would think, Hmmm, they haven’t found anyone yet.

In March 1990, the Sherlocks went to Huntington, Ind., for an interview with the UB mission staff. The Board of Missions would meet March 23 to make any official appointment. But Jeff also interviewed for a teaching position at Huntington College, something he had long desired. The interview went very well. And yet, it didn’t seem right to him. Macau beckoned.

As they left the college, Jeff asked his wife, “How do you feel about this?”

He thought he knew Joan’s answer. It was a choice between living close to Joan’s family, or going to the other side of the world. A choice between the familiar and the unknown. He knew her desires, and he knew her fears. But Joan surprised him.

“I just don’t think Huntington is where we’re supposed to be right now,” she said.

And so, they sold everything and left behind their life in southern Ohio, and began ministering alongside the Fetters and Burkett families and their Chinese coworkers. Half of Jeff’s job description involved teaching in the English Language Program, and half involved finance—business manager of the mission, and treasurer of Living Water Church and the ELP.

Even before arriving in Macau, Jeff felt his financial duties should be turned over to a national. This was especially important since China would take control of Macau in 1999, and nobody knew if missionaries would still be welcome. So Jeff resolved, during his four years in Macau, to train at least one local person to handle the finances.

As it turned out, three of the first eleven members of Living Water Church were experienced in bookkeeping and finance, and the ELP’s newly-hired administrative assistant had worked ten years as assistant manager of a trading company. Jeff quickly realized finances could be turned over much sooner.

The Macau missionaries had been asking the Board of Missions for more teachers so that the pastors, Luke Fetters and Phil Burkett, could do more actual pastoring. Huntington’s response: great idea, but no money.

Jeff raised the idea of replacing his family of five with several single missionaries. As a result, by February 1993, three single missionaries were in Macau, enabling the ministry to expand in some new directions. That story was told on July 23.

The Sherlocks left Macau in December 1992, shortly after the Fetters family returned from furlough. In the words of Luke Fetters, they “accomplished more in two-and-a-half years than anyone could have expected.”

27 Jul On This Day in UB History: July 27 (Germany)

Pastor Alimamy Sesay (left) and Adama Thorlie, representatives to the 2017 General Conference in Chambersburg, Pa.

In 2006, Germany joined the ranks of countries with United Brethren churches. It represented a full circle of sorts.

William Otterbein, one of our founders, came to America as a missionary from Germany, and the early United Brethren were mostly German-speaking people. When we began venturing into foreign missions in the mid-1800s, we started with Sierra Leone in 1855. But a lot of German delegates lobbied for their home country, and the 1869 General Conference consented. In October 1869—we moved quickly back then—Rev. and Mrs. C. Bischoff of Zanesville, Ohio, sailed for Europe to begin ministering in Bavaria.

By the spring of 1870, the Bischoffs reported that 72 persons had joined the church.
In 1879, a German mission district was organized with six missionaries, 235 members, and 34 preaching points. All of which stayed with the “other” United Brethren group after we split off in 1889.

Our group eventually made it back to Germany. However, we took a very unusual route, going through that original mission field, Sierra Leone.

On July 27, 1997, an independent church started in Berlin with eleven members from Catholic, Methodist, Pentecostal, and United Brethren backgrounds. The church targeted the many African immigrants in Berlin, especially those who had fled the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

In November 2000, the congregation began worshiping at the Magdalene church in Neukölln, a borough in the southeastern part of Berlin in what was once the American sector. Forty percent of Neukölln’s residents were foreign-born, the largest constituencies being Turkish, Arab, and Kurdish, with a much smaller number of people of African background.

The growing congregation recognized the need for a pastor. Along came a Sierra Leonean named Peter Sorie Mansaray, who became the pastor in November 2003. He had just completed two years of theological studies at the Academy of Missions at the University of Hamburg.

After nine years of existence the church, which consisted mostly of United Brethren immigrants from Sierra Leone, felt led to become part of the worldwide United Brethren in Christ Church. So in September 2006, Pastor Mansaray flew to Africa to attend the annual meeting of Sierra Leone Conference. He presented their desire, and the conference accepted the Berlin church as a mission district of Sierra Leone Conference.

“This meant that we had given up our independence, accepted the doctrines and teachings of the United Brethren, and were now directly answerable to the Bishop of the Sierra Leone Conference,” stated the website.

In July 2007, Bishop Billy Simbo of Sierra Leone traveled to Germany to lead the culminating service of the church’s tenth anniversary.

According to the church’s website, “The UBC Berlin is an English-speaking community. However, we are moving in the direction of having bilingual services due to an increase of and desire of opening our church to German natives.” Most members of the church had lived in Germany for over ten years and knew the German language well. Their children, having been born in Germany, spoke perfect German and English, and sometimes the African tribal language of their parents.

Earlier this month, Germany was represented for the first time at General Conference, the international gathering. The current pastor, Alimamy Sesay, and a lay woman named Adama Thorlie, a Sierra Leonean who has been with the church since it started, attended the US National Conference July 12-15 and then the General Conference on July 16-17 in Chambersburg, Pa.

25 Jul On This Day in UB History: July 25 (Clarence and Erma Carlson)

Clarence and Erma Carlson and children.

Erma Burton grew up in a United Brethren pastor’s home, the daughter of Rev. and Mrs. James Burton. While attending Huntington College, she dated a guy named Clarence Carlson. He had started at HC in 1924, but the next spring dropped out and headed to Sierra Leone as a missionary.

Despite the separation, the relationship continued. Clarence and Erma became engaged in 1927, while he was still in Sierra Leone. But it turned out to be a long engagement.

Carlson returned to the States in 1928 and continued his interrupted studies at Huntington College, while also pastoring College Park UB church. But in 1931, education again got trumped by needs in Africa—in this case, a replacement for the departing field superintendent, George Fleming. Carlson was ordained on September 27, 1931, and shortly thereafter left for Africa.

Meanwhile, Erma had graduated from Huntington College. During a special service at College Park church, she was among five students who committed themselves to fulltime missionary service and and who would eventually serve in Sierra Leone: Martha Anna Bard, Mary (Bergdall) Huntley and Leslie Huntley, Emma Hyer, and Charles Saufley. Martha Bard and Clarence Carlson actually traveled together to Sierra Leone in October 1931.

Erma spent four years teaching school. Then the Board of Missions sent out an urgent appeal: they needed a woman missionary to become principal of the Minnie Mull School for Girls in Bonthe, Sierra Leone. Erma applied and was accepted.

Erma arrived in Sierra Leone on June 25, 1932. Clarence met her at the dock in Freetown. The next day, June 26, they were married there in Freetown (a minister from the “liberal” United Brethren church performed the ceremony). Carlson hired an African goldsmith to fashion her wedding band from a five-dollar gold piece which he had saved just for that purpose. After honeymooning for a few days in Freetown, they traveled to Bonthe to begin their assignments as a married couple.

Clarence and Erma served together for two terms—he as field superintendent, she as principal at Minnie Mull (Martha Bard was a teacher there). A daughter was born during their furlough in 1935. Back in Africa, a son was born, but Erma became ill and they were forced to return to the States early, in 1938.

We’ll continue their story on August 4.

24 Jul On This Day in UB History: July 24 (Bishop J. J. Glossbrenner)

John Jacob Glossbrenner, Bishop 1845-1885.

John Jacob Glossbrenner was born on July 24, 1812, a few months after the death of Bishop Martin Boehm. He was raised Lutheran, became a Christian at age 17 under the preaching of a Methodist Episcopal minister, and joined the United Brethren church in 1830, the year of Bishop Christian Newcomer’s death.

Glossbrenner was among the church’s second generation of leaders—the Builders, who followed the Founders. Other Builders included Bishops William Hanby, Jonathan Weaver, Lewis Davis, and David Edwards. Glossbrenner would serve 40 years as a bishop, longer than anyone before or since. Historians sometimes describe him as a “model bishop.”

From 1831-1845, Glossbrenner served circuits in Virginia and Maryland. Five men helped buy him his first horse. On February 14, 1833, he married Maria Shuey (yes, they celebrated Valentines Day back then). They were married 51 years and gave birth to six children; one died in infancy, but five daughters grew to adulthood and married.

Glossbrenner was elected as a presiding elder (like a district superintendent) at age 22. Biographer Henry Adams Thompson wrote that, because Glossbrenner started in leadership so young, “Those not acquainted with him began to think of him as much older than he really was.” He was a delegate to General Conference in 1837 and 1841, and in 1845 was elected to the first of ten terms as bishop. All three bishops were rookies that year. Glossbrenner, at age 32, was the youngest.

Glossbrenner remained in Virginia—the South—during the Civil War. He sometimes was asked to preach to rebel soldiers, and though folks expected him to side with the North, he prudently avoided anything partisan. Another UB minister, after Confederate troops were driven out of his area, publicly prayed that they would be defeated. When the South recaptured that territory, he was forced to flee. Henry Adams Thompson wrote, “Mr. Glossbrenner would make no such mistakes as that. He was careful and discrete and had the confidence of both sides.”

Throughout Glossbrenner’s tenure as bishop, only ministers were allowed at General Conference. He became a strong advocate for lay representation—not just at General Conference, but at all other levels. He argued from Scripture and church history that laypersons had long been part of governing bodies. He wrote in the denominational paper, “What do the laity lack to justify their exclusion from our councils? Is it a want of piety, intelligence, or a want of loyalty to the church? Emphatically, no.”

The self-educated Glossbrenner, who as a young minister bought books whenever he had the money, also championed higher education for ministers. Since there were no United Brethren colleges, UBs were attending colleges of other denominations…and not coming back. He described this as “grievous neglect” of the persons God had entrusted to us. He wrote, “The loss of so many cultivated minds and pious hearts is irreparable….We cannot spare our sons to others. We cannot innocently neglect to train them for ourselves.”

Glossbrenner was described in many positive ways. Even-tempered. Calm. Dignified. Kind. Persistent in what he believed to be right. Not easily irritated. Modest. Unassuming. Didn’t seek attention or compliments. Wouldn’t disparage other people. Thompson added:

• His sermons were “sound, systematic, and aimed at the conscience and heart of the hearer” in a “plain, simple style.”
• “He sought to win men more by the proclamation of the love side of the Gospel, than by awakening them with its terrors.”
• “He had a warm interest in the welfare of his itinerant brethren. Their troubles were his troubles, and their success his glory.”
• In leading meetings, “He was skillful in preventing trouble, as well as in meeting it properly when it came.”

The title “bishop emeritus” was originally created for Glossbrenner. Maria passed away in 1884, and his own declining health made it clear that this would be his last term. The 1885 General Conference debated giving him a complimentary role on the board of bishops, perhaps as “bishop-at-large.” They settled on the emeritus title, which gave him “all the honors and privileges” of the office. He passed away on January 7, 1887.

There were an estimated 25,000 United Brethren when Glossbrenner entered the ministry, and about 250,000 when he died. Bishop Jonathan Weaver, speaking at Glossbrenner’s funeral, remarked:

He grew up with the growth of the church and was always to be found in the front rank of every advance made by the church….Bishop Glossbrenner was always ready for everything that would add potency to the church that he loved so well. If he erred along any of these lines, it was because he loved the church more than his reputation. The one great question with him seemed to be, “Is it right?”