25 Feb On This Day in United Brethren History: February 25

In 1746, the German Reformed Church in Holland sent Rev. Michael Schlatter, originally from Switzerland, as a missionary to Pennsylvania. There weren’t enough German Reformed ministers to go around. So after five years in the New World, Schlatter returned to Europe to find more ministers.

Schlatter started out in Holland, and then went to the Herborn Academy in Germany, where German Reformed ministers were trained. On February 25, 1752, he submitted a list of six ministers he wanted to take to America. On that list, apparently, was the name of Philip William Otterbein, who would become one of the founders of the United Brethren church.

Schlatter and his six missionaries-to-be went to Holland, where they were examined and officially set apart as missionaries. (One of the original six backed out, but somebody else took his place.) Then, at the end of March 1752, their ship sailed for America. Four months later, they landed in New York.

24 Feb On This Day in UB History: February 24

Helen in younger years, and with daughter Maira (far right).

Throughout 2017, as we celebrate the United Brethren denomination’s 250th anniversary, we are looking at events throughout our history

Helen Villanueva was born February 24, 1918, in Belize. This highly-talented and capable woman made significant contributions to the United Brethren work in Honduras.

Helen was the sixth and last child of James Elliott, a minister with the Wesleyan Methodist Church. In 1927, when she was nine years old, the family moved to Honduras to oversee six churches. In the 1940s, those churches became United Brethren–the start of our work in Honduras.

Helen returned to Belize in 1943 and spent the next 14 years working as a nurse. George Fleming, the United Brethren missions director, invited Helen to serve at Mattru Hospital in Sierra Leone, but she was already committed in Belize.

In 1957, Helen felt called to return to Honduras to work alongside her father. Two years later, she became pastor of the church in Puerto Cortes, and faithfully served there for the next 13 years. Along the way, she took in five Honduran children, adding to her own four children.

One of them, Maira Raudales, went on to attend the UB Bible Institute, ran the conference bookstore, and became principal of the Bethel School. Her husband, Francisco, served 1997-2009 as superintendent of Honduras Conference.

“She was an excellent pastor,” Maira said of her mother. “She has all the little details that make a very good pastor. In those days, it was more difficult for a woman to be a pastor, but she had everybody’s acceptance.”

Helen also raised Benulda (Moreno) Saenz, who became a United Brethren pastor and married a United Brethren pastor. Together, Helen and Benulda started another church in Puerto Cortes and planted the first UB church in San Pedro Sula, the country’s second-largest city. Benulda pastored both churches, and went on to plant more churches and become a conference superintendent.

In 1973, Helen went to work for the Honduras Bible Society, traveling and speaking throughout Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Then in 1981 she returned to her homeland to found and lead the Bible Society of Belize, from which she retired in 1986. This remarkable woman, Helen Villanueva, passed away in 2009.

23 Feb On This Day in UB History: February 23

Jonathan Weaver, who served 24 years as bishop, was born February 23, 1824. He was the youngest of 12 children (6 boys, 6 girls). He grew up on a farm in Ohio, which was still frontier territory back then. He received little schooling, and never attended church on Sunday until he was 14 years old. The only preaching he heard came from Methodist or United Brethren preachers passing through the area.

He became a Christian in 1841 during a camp meeting and became active in a United Brethren church. After a few years, he felt God’s call to the ministry. In 1845, he was placed on his first circuit of churches, and in the years ahead he served in various other locations–a couple years here, a couple years there. He also began rising in leadership.

The 1861 General Conference elected Weaver as bishop of the Pacific District. Because of his large family–two children by his first wife, who died after four years of marriage, and nine children by his second wife–it didn’t seem practical to send him to the West Coast. So he resigned. But he was elected bishop again in 1865 and given oversight of churches in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. That would work.

Altogether, Weaver was elected bishop seven times, serving a different district every four years–and changing districts every year starting in 1885. He was elected for the last time in 1889. But there, we part company. Our group split off that year, and though Weaver served another four years as bishop, it wasn’t as OUR bishop.

22 Feb On This Day in UB History: February 22

Peter Whitezel, a United Brethren minister in Virginia, passed away on February 22, 1837. He became a minister at age 28, traveled regularly to serve a circuit of churches under his care, and died four years later at age 32. Bishop William Hanby described him as a “faithful minister” who left behind “a young and affectionate family.”

That’s all we know about Peter Whitezel. We don’t know anything about his spiritual journey, how he became a minister, if he farmed on the side (probably), or anything else. Nor do we know how he died. It could have been an accident of some kind, or cancer. But more likely, he died from something which, today, would be treatable or entirely curable. Such were the times.

Perhaps Peter Whitezel would have gone on to become a United Brethren leader, maybe even a bishop. More likely, he would have spent his life just like thousands of other United Brethren ministers from the 1800s–continually traveling by horseback to remote communities, leaving a mark as he met with small groups of believers and non-believers, and eventually being joined in heaven by many people who were there only because of his influence.

But something struck Peter Whitezel down at age 32. Similarly, numerous other ministers and spouses, not to mention missionaries, passed away too early. They served faithfully, and could have made significant contributions to the Kingdom…but it was not part of God’s plan.

Let’s allow Peter Whitezel to represent the numerous anonymous ministers like him who pepper United Brethren history–men and women who perhaps left no discernible legacy to be recorded in a UB history book, but who served their Lord faithfully during whatever years they were afforded, and entered the gates of heaven to angelic shouts of “Well done!”

20 Feb On This Day in UB History: February 20

On February 20, 1865, Henry Becker joined the Ohio 188th Volunteer Infantry. The Civil War ended on April 9 with the regiment seeing no action. However, by the time the company was mustered out in September, 45 men had died of disease or accidents. Becker contracted an intestinal malady that afflicted him for the rest of his life and required two surgeries. The best treatment was to remain physically active, so he did.

Becker was converted in 1868 and the next year became a United Brethren preacher in Ohio. Five years later, he was sent to the West Coast as a missionary. He started out pastoring in Washington and Oregon, and then pastored in California 1878-1889. In 1888, Becker took a three-month trip through Great Britain, Europe, the Holy Land, and parts of Africa. He wrote extensively about the trip, and for many years afterwards spoke about his travels.

When the denomination split in 1889, Becker joined Milton Wright to start what was basically a new denomination–the United Brethren church of today. Becker was among the four persons elected as bishop in 1889. However, he served only four years. He was re-elected in 1893, but promptly resigned, probably for health reasons.

After his term as bishop, Henry Becker became an accomplished magician as a way to discredit spiritualists, who said they could communicate with the dead. He was even elected president of the Anti-Spiritualist Association of America in 1897.

It’s unclear what exactly happened, but around 1905 Becker was removed as pastor of a UB church in Chambersburg, Pa., and spent the next 20 years pastoring in the Presbyterian Church. It was said that he never again entered a United Brethren church. He passed away in 1934 in Dayton, Ohio.

18 Feb On This Day in UB History: February 18

Around 5:00 in the morning on February 18, 1964, Bishop Clyde Meadows landed in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, a small country in West Africa. It was a Tuesday, and Thursday was the opening day of Sierra Leone Annual Conference. He was supposed to be there.

Meadows wanted to leave ASAP for Sierra Leone, but everyone he encountered at the airport spoke French, the official language of Senegal. He was tired–it was the last stop in a trip around the world–and was ready to just take the next plane to New York.

Then a teenage Senegalese young man, “as black as a black man could be” recalled Meadows, approached him and, in perfect American English, asked, “Could I be of help to you, sir?”

Meadows explained his situation. The young man did some checking, and told him a plane would leave for Sierra Leone in two hours. Sold!

Meadows reached Freetown, Sierra Leone, ahead of schedule. On Wednesday, missionary Russell Birdsall drove him up-country to Bumpe, where the bishop visited with missionaries June Brown and DeWitt and Evelyn Baker, and also took a swim in the river. Then it was on to Mattru, where the 49th Sierra Leone Annual Conference started at 9:00 am.

That year, 1964, Bishop Meadows became the first bishop to ever conduct Sierra Leone Annual Conference. He returned in 1968 to do it again.

Meadows described it as a very complicated conference to conduct. As of 1968, Sierra Leone Conference had 59 churches, making it the largest conference in the denomination (Michigan Conference was then second, with 50 churches). In addition to the churches, Meadows wrote, the conference supervised 33 day schools with 4200 pupils, two high schools, three boarding schools, and a 57-bed hospital.

“This,” Meadows wrote, “is more business to be responsible for than any other annual conference that I have ever held.”

15 Feb On This Day in UB History: February 15

George Weaver, the senior bishop 1969-1977, passed away on February 15, 2002. Over the years, he had weathered a series of heart attacks and cardiac operations.

Weaver was known as a strong, even imposing bishop—a man who got things done, a leader. He was gifted in preaching, administration, and writing. Those privileged to know him at the personal level saw a man of warmth, compassion, and wisdom.

George Weaver was born in 1927 in McCloud, Calif. He was only a couple years old when his mother died. Just after George’s fifth birthday, his father left him and younger brother Rolland with Morris and Maud Weaver. He told them, “George and Rolland, this is your new daddy and mother.” And that’s the last George Weaver saw his biological father.

The Weavers owned a ranch outside of Pixley. A few weeks after George and Rolland arrived, the place burned down—the home, sheds, equipment—everything. Within a month, the family had been forced into a migrant worker existence, harvesting fruit, vegetables, and cotton in California and Oregon. George worked the fields with his parents.

After three years of this, Morris began tending an orange grove in Porterville, near Pixley. The family lived in two tents with wood floors, electric lights, and water carried from an irrigation canal. In 1939, the family moved back to Pixley. “It was the first time in seven years that we did not live in a tent,” George recalled.

It was not a happy or secure childhood. However, in 1943 he became a Christian at the Pixley United Brethren church and began thinking about becoming a preacher. Just before his 18th birthday he joined the Navy to become a pilot, but World War 2 ended just as he was finishing boot camp, and he was discharged in 1946.

He headed off to Huntington College in 1947, married a classmate from Chambersburg, Pa., and in 1950 accepted a student pastorate in Decatur, Ind. Other pastorates followed–in Kansas, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. He was editor of the denominational magazine for two years, 1957-1959, and then began ten years as pastor of Otterbein UB church in Waynesboro, Pa.

In 1969, General Conference elected three new bishops, and Weaver became the senior bishop. He served eight years in that role. Major accomplishments include merger three conferences into what became Central Conference, establishing Camp Cotubic, and building a new UB Headquarters building.

Weaver wrote frankly about those years.

“I remember giving more time and energy to accomplishing the business of the church than being engaged in its mission. ‘Administrator’ is the most accurate description of my tenure as bishop. There was a raging inner tension between my vision of the bishopric and what seemed to be the reality of administering the program and business of the church. There were matters that culminated in an endless progression of decisions. I did not like having to make them, and others did not like their outcome….Many viewed me as caring more for the process than for persons—both the mark and the curse of the administrator….Realization set in that I would be unable to do all that I had envisioned to accomplish.”

In 1977, Weaver became president of Winebrenner Theological Seminary in Findlay, Ohio. The seminary prospered under his leadership. He stepped down as president in 1988, but continued teaching until 1992. Then he and Bette retired in Cincinnati.