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Sawyer, Sallie (1853-1918)

Co-Founder Of Bethlehem Centers Of Nashville

More than 100 years ago, Estelle Haskins, a white missionary with the Methodist Training School in Nashville, and Sallie Sawyer, an African American graduate of Fisk University, teacher and member of Capers Memorial Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, merged their services to start a kindergarten, well-baby clinic, sewing circle and recreation programs.

These two women broke racial and gender barriers of their time to form a ministry to serve those in need. Today, Bethlehem Centers of Nashville is a United Methodist Women-related national mission institution with a ministry that’s still “changing lives and building futures” by helping inner-city working families.

Please view more at United Methodist Women.org

Willard, Frances (1939-1898)

Doing Justice: Women’s Suffrage, Workers’ Rights, Anti-Child Labor Efforts

Courageous Methodist women, such as Anna Howard Shaw and Frances Willard, were leaders in the struggles for women’s suffrage and worker rights, including efforts against child labor.

In 1904 Ms. Shaw became president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She also pressed for women’s right to serve as voting delegates to the Methodist Episcopal Church General Conference.

Likewise, Frances Willard was president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the largest women’s organization in the United States at the time with 150,000 members. Under her leadership the association not only worked for Prohibition, but it also advocated for an eight-hour workday, to raise the age of consent for girls (which was 10-12 years old in most states and as low as 7 years old in at least one state) and for women to have the right to vote in the United States.

Please view more at United Methodist Women.org

Savuto, Jerri and Bill

Faithful Missionaries

Jerri and Bill Savuto represent a pattern of United Methodist missionary service common in the late 20th and early 21st century: long years spent in a variety of places, with occasional time outs. Jerri was a registered nursed and Bill an educator and electronics technician. Their longest service was at Maua Methodist Hospital in Maua, Kenya.

A native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Jerri earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1968; Bill was a native of Edmonton, Canada, who earned a Bachelor of Science degree in photographic science from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York in 1968. He earned a master’s in education from the University of San Diego in 1978 and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Eastern New Mexico University in 1992.

Their first mission experience was at the Navajo Methodist Mission School, Farmington, New Mexico in 1973–74, where Jerri was campus nurse and teacher of health courses and Bill taught math. In 1982, Jerri and Bill were commissioned by the General Board of Global Ministries and initially served in Belize City, Belize, for a three-year term. Jerri established and directed a national breastfeeding program, credited with increasing breast from 18 percent to 52 percent. Bill taught math at Wesley College.

From 1986 to 1989, they served in Jos, Nigeria, where Bill was field treasurer for the Nigerian United Methodist Church and Jerri she did school and rural health nursing. The couple worked at Maua Methodist Hospital in Kenya from 1998 to 2003 and again from early 2007 to mid-2012 when they retired. Jerri died in late 2016.

In their initial placement at Maua, a facility of the autonomous Methodist Church of Kenya, Jerri was a tutor in the hospital RN program. Her responsibilities included teaching nursing students in the areas of anatomy, physiology, nutrition, pharmacology, medical and surgical nursing, pediatrics, and community health.  Bill kept busy with the maintenance and installation of computer hardware and software as well as training students and staff in computer use. Bill was also responsible for work teams, hospital construction, a street boy’s ministry, and he worked closely with the hospital’s AIDS Orphan Program.

The second stay at Maua began in January 2007, Jerri served as quality improvement and staff development officer and the hospital became a model for others in Kenya. Bill continued to work with the Information technology unit and serves as chairperson of the IT committee.  He also worked with work teams and was an assistant to the hospital administrator overseeing construction projects.

Jerri and Bill served as missionary interpreters in residence for the South Central Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church from 2004 to 2006. This entailed interfacing with annual conferences, districts, and congregations, work at which they excelled.

The lives of Jerri and Bill Savuto illustrated a theology summed up by Bill:

To fulfill God’s call for us as a Christian Church, we must be in mission. Jesus said the two Great Commandments are: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your strength; and love your neighbor as you love yourself. We must ground our faith in worship, prayer, Bible study, and reveal and practice our faith in mission throughout the world by giving the Good News of God’s love to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Faith and works go together in God’s plan for our lives here on earth – we must do both.

Jerri and Bill Savuto retired to Irving, Texas, where they belonged to the Plymouth Park United Methodist

Church. They and continued to be strong mission advocates, maintaining ties with local churches to which they had developed ties across the years.  The couple was noted for their diligence in communicating with support churches. They wrote hundreds of plain, down-to-earth letters, often about the people with whom they ministered. A typical excerpt from September 2011 gives the flavor:

Last Saturday was an AIDS Orphan’s Day and about 300 children/teens came to the compound to worship, play, learn, eat and share together.  As always, the day began in the chapel with worship, singing, preaching and teaching.  Following this, the group had tea and then was split into age/class groups to discuss a question and then come together to share their answers.

We were so glad to see Jeffrey back teaching and sharing with the orphans.  He was in the program since it began and was sent to teacher’s college and is now awaiting the results of the exam he recently took and then will hopefully be hired by the government to teach school.  He told us that he so wants to help the other AIDS orphans as he was helped and to inspire and encourage them along with teaching them how to behave and how to succeed.  He is such a wonderful role model and we thank God for his commitment to help the AIDS orphans as he has been helped

Jerri and Bill had one daughter, Corrie Lyn, and two grandchildren.

By Elliott Wright. Elliott Wright is information consultant for Global Ministries.

Sheperd, Helen

Pioneering Missionary To Mongolia

Helen Sheperd was a Global Ministries missionary nurse from 1992 to 2015, specializing in hospice ministries, first in Korea, and from 2002 through her retirement in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where she also founded the Mongolia Mission Initiative that developed into a network of congregations and social programs.

A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Helen earned her diploma in nursing from Bronson Methodist Hospital School of Nursing in Kalamazoo, Michigan; a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Park College in Parkville, Missouri; and an Master of Science degree in social gerontology from Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, Missouri. Bronson existed as a hospital and nursing school of the Michigan Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1919 to 1999 when it was succeeded by the Bronson School of Nursing of Western Michigan University. From her student days, Helen maintained close ties with United Methodist congregations in Missouri.

Prior to her assignment to Mongolia, Helen served in Seoul, South Korea, as director from 1992 to 2001 of Severance Hospice (home-care program), a project of Yonsei University College of Nursing, a school with mission roots. The university, formed in the 1950s by merger of earlier institutions, is today related to the Methodist Church of Korea.

Helen worked in hospice home care, psychiatric nursing, and at a children’s home prior to her commissioning as a Global Ministries missionary.

In 2002, Helen was transferred to Mongolia to start a hospice movement there. Grace Hospice, its staff and volunteers, notably provides care for members of the Ulaanbaatar community living with advanced cancer.  She managed day-to-day operations and performed patient visits in coordination with a student nurse practicum program at a local nursing school.

In addition to launching and administering Grace Hospice, Helen established a United Methodist and Global Ministries presence in Mongolia, obtaining property for a mission center and helping to organize congregations. She taught preschoolers on Sunday morning, led a weekly Bible study in English for young women, and worked with two senior citizen groups. She felt that teaching children while working with the elderly and dying was important to maintain a healthy balance in her life.

“Serving in Mongolia was an exciting, challenging assignment, fostering relationships and allowing for relationships and evangelism to be possible through providing healthcare,” Helen once said. “I thank God for providing these experiences.”

Helen Sheperd retired from missionary service on June 30, 2015, having spent her last several months in Mongolia helping to equip others—indigenous United Methodists and missionaries—to carry on and expand the work.

By Elliott Wright. Elliott Wright is information consultant for Global Ministries.

Showers, Justina L. (1885 – )

EUB Mission Leader

(This profile is adapted with excerpts from a profile by Mary McLanachan in the November, 1983 issue of New World Outlook magazine.  Mrs. Showers was 98 years old at the time of publication. She was born on January 4, 1885, into the family of Dr. and Mrs. E. S. Lorenz, founders of a music publishing company. Her mother was from the Kumler family that produced two United Brethren bishops.)

“At the time of her birth, her father was a United Brethren minister serving a Dayton congregation. As was then customary, an annual revival was held in each church early in the calendar year. Her father was preparing for this revival which began on the Sunday of her birth. Because he thought the women of the congregation might be so excited over a baby arriving in the parsonage, he kept her arrival a secret until after the opening session of the revival…. Her mother was active in the Women’s Missionary Association (United Brethren in Christ), both in the local and national organizations, so it was natural for her to join the Gleaners Band, the children’s missionary organization, at age five; to teach a Sunday school class at age 14; sing in the choir of Summit Street Church; and progress to membership in the Young Women’s Missionary Society and later the women’s organization.

“After graduation from Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pa. she returned to Dayton. She was elected as the first Secretary of Young Women’s Work, which became a distinct department of the Women’s Missionary Association. The first Young Women’s Band was formed on the campus of Otterbein College in 1883, with the other United Brethren colleges following this pattern. It was not until 1908, however, that the national organization began with Justina Lorenz as the secretary. This organization was the forerunner of the Otterbein Guild, which developed over the years into a strong arm of the women’s work. In April, 1911 , she married J. Balmer Showers, then a professor of New Testament Greek at Union Biblical Seminary (now United Theological Seminary), Dayton, Ohio. As a young professor, plans were made for him to have a year of study abroad where he concentrated on the study of Greek in the University of Berlin. This year abroad also gave them an opportunity for travel in Europe. A later sabbatical included the Holy Land, Egypt and the area of the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys.

“In 1915 Mrs. Showers was elected president of Miami (Ohio) Conference Branch, Women’s Missionary Association (W.M.A.), a responsibility which she ably filled for ten years. At her request, she stepped aside, but after another five years when she was not in attendance at the annual convention, she was re-elected and again served as Branch president, this time for eleven years. For twenty-five years, she also served on the Board of Trustees of the Women’s Missionary Association, some of those years as vice-president. In 1941 she was elected national president.

“The Evangelical and United Brethren Churches merged in the fall of 1946. In the reorganization of women’s work, Mrs. Showers was elected as the first president and continued in that office for two terms (eight years), the allotted time to serve in that office. While mergers are never easy, the working together of Council and staff chosen from the former denominations from the beginning was harmonious, largely due to Mrs. Showers’ wise and sensitive leadership. J. Balmer Showers was elected a bishop in May, 1945. In 1954, Bishop and Mrs. Showers were sent by the Evangelical United Brethren Board of Missions to Latin America to study the work there. On this assignment Bishop Showers was impressed by the fact that missionaries had problems as to where to live during their furloughs. Thus was planted the seed of an idea. When he retired in 1954 and they returned to Dayton to live, they bought a house large enough to accommodate several missionary families. Mission Manor was dedicated on October 25, 1960, at 201 E. Schantz Avenue, in Oakwood, a suburb of Dayton, Ohio.

“The Bishop lived only a few years to see this dream realized, but Mrs. Showers has had the joy of being a volunteer hostess to many missionary families in the two apartments the house provides (one quite large enough to accommodate a sizeable family).”

By Mary McLanachan. Mary McLanachan was editor of The Evangel (later World Evangel) of the Evangelical United Brethren Church and associate editor of Response, the magazine of United Methodist Women, for two years.

Sunamoto, Teikichi (1857-1938)

A Founder Of Methodism In Japan

[The Rev. Sunamoto was a Japanese Methodist pastor and evangelist working with members of the missionary Lambuth family and others in establishing the Methodist Church in Japan in the late 19th century. Following his death in May 1938, World Outlook magazine, then a publication of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, said Sunamato “was really the founder of our work in Japan.” The magazine in August of that year published by following profile by S.E. Hager, a missionary in Japan. Sunamoto died on the 57th anniversary of his conversion to Christianity. The Methodist Church in Japan would go through a range of transitions and in 1942 became part of the United Church of Christ in Japan.]

The Rev. Teikichi Sunamoto was born September 30, 1857, at Koi, Hiroshima. When sixteen years old he applied for enlistment in the navy, and served on gunboats until 1880. In October of that year, he sailed as second mate in a merchant vessel to San Francisco. His purpose was to get an education and support his mother. In San Francisco he became a faithful attendant at the preaching services of the Gospel Society. On May 7, 1881, he was baptized by Dr. Otis Gibson.

Mr. Sunamoto worked for the Gospel Society until August 1886 when he returned to Japan with the one purpose of leading his mother to Christ. He went to Kobe and presented a letter of introduction from Dr. McClay, of Tokyo to Dr. J.W. Lambuth [a missionary]. Then he went on to his home in Hiroshima and was warmly welcomed by his family.

Shortly after this Dr. Lambuth went to Hiroshima and held quiet meetings in his hotel. In February 1887, Mr. Sunamoto’s mother and eleven others were baptized; among these were M. Matsumoto, G. Ota, and K. Mito, all three of whom became prominent preachers. The first chapel, located on Daiku Machi, was used also for a girls’ school with forty students enrolled in 1887 and conducted by Mr. Sunamoto. Miss N. B. Gaines became the principal of this school, and under her leadership the present Hiroshima Girls’ School was developed. Mr. Sunamoto was married to Miss Watanabe, August 8, 1887.

For three years Mr. Sunamoto constantly itinerated with Drs. J. W. and W. R. Lambuth [later bishop] and Dr. O. A. Dukes, aiding in opening work in Tadotsu, Iwakuni, Yanai, Hirao, Shobara, Uwajima, Yawatahama, Oita, Matsuyama, and Himeji. Then he was abroad again until 1894 engaged in Christian work in Hawaii and San Francisco. Returning to Japan, he became pastor of the Kojiya Machi Methodist Church in Nagasaki under the Methodist Episcopal Mission.

After six years there and having made that church self-supporting, in August, 1900, he returned to the Southern Methodist Mission, and from that time until he was superannuated in 1927, he did successful work as pastor in Iwakuni, Mitajiri, Kure, Shimonoseki, and Oishi.

Even since his retirement he has continued to travel and in many ways to encourage pastors, missionaries, and other workers and to win souls. comfort those in distress, and point the way to heaven.

He initiated a movement for the erection of a memorial church to Bishop Lambuth and has raised nearly 12,000 yen for this important enterprise.

In his eightieth year he was still going in and out among us, radiating faith and a holy influence over all. At the recent celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Hiroshima Girls’ School, the school faculty, students, and assembled guests took delight in honoring the aged founder, and now well on to his eighty-first our friend lays down his armor and passes to his rich reward.

From World Outlook, Volume XXVIII, No. 8, August 1938, p. 8.

By S.E. Hager. S.E Hager is a missionary in Japan.

Bennett, Belle Harris (1852-1922)

President of Woman’s Missionary Council, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and founder of Scarritt Bible and Training School

Born near Richmond, Kentucky, Bennett began outreach among the Kentucky poor while in her twenties. Concerned that southern Methodist women were going to the mission field without adequate training, in 1889 she proposed founding a missionary training school and then raised the money to open it in 1892 at Kansas City, Missouri. In 1892 she also joined the central committee of what became the Woman’s Home Missionary Society, serving as president from 1896 to 1910. Under her leadership, southern Methodist women founded settlement houses, conducted industrial work among African-Americans, opposed racism, and organized a deaconess movement. In 1910 the women’s home and foreign missionary boards of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, were combined into one organization at the insistence of the men. Bennett took on the leadership of the resulting Woman’s Missionary Council even as she led a fight for women’s laity rights in southern Methodism. Of ecumenical spirit, she attended the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, 1910; chaired the Commission on Woman’s Work for the Panama Congress on Christian Work in Latin America, 1916; and was elected to the first International Missionary Council in 1921 at Lake Mohonk, New York.

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved. By Dana L. Robert.

Bibliography

R.W. Macdonnell, Belle Harris Bennett: Her Life Work (1928, 1987)
Carolyn Stapleton, “Belle Harris Bennett: Model of Holistic Christianity,” Methodist History, April 1983, pp.130-142.
Alice Cobb, “Yes, Lord, I’ll Do It”: Scarritt’s Century of Service (1987)
Sara Estelle Haskin, Women and Missions in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1920)
John Patrick McDowell, The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman’s Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1886-1939 (1982).

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Called To Justice

“The field is wide, the need is great. God loves us. Let us do the work he has committed to our hands, and let us be much in prayer for wisdom and guidance.”  —Belle Harris Bennett, from an address to the Woman’s Missionary Council, c. 1920

Belle Harris Bennett, born to a wealthy Kentucky family in 1852, had a strong sense of egalitarianism and social justice; she was passionate about anti-racism work and full inclusion for women in the church. Through sheer tenacity, Bennett founded the Scarritt Bible and Training School to equip Christians for mission, in conjunction with the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society.

One of eight children in a close-knit religious family, it was in the church that Bennett found the opportunity to pursue her work for justice. In the late 1880s, Bennett felt called to create a training school for the southern Methodist church, a place where women who aspired to be missionaries could prepare for their work. In 1889, Bennett presented the idea to the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, which was excited by her idea and resolved that she should begin raising money. Though nervous, Bennett committed herself to the task and traveled over 20,000 miles over the next two years, raising funds. Despite last-minute opposition, Bennett persevered, and Scarritt Bible and Training School opened in 1892.

According to Elaine Magalis, author of Conduct Becoming to a Woman, Bennett was committed to addressing the concerns of African-Americans 10 years before it became an interest of the Woman’s Society. She began Bible study classes for black pastors, worked with black leaders to create a Chautauqua-style convocation for black men and women, and persuaded the Woman’s Home Mission Society to open an industrial school for black women in Augusta.

Bennett holds the distinction of being the first woman to address a General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, in 1910. As early as 1902, Bennett was petitioning the conference to create an office of deaconess, and in 1910, when allowed to speak publicly, she spoke eloquently on behalf of the Woman’s Home Missionary Society, urging the conference to give full laity rights to women. Sadly, her petition failed then, as well as in 1914. The conference finally agreed to allow women to be elected to the conference in 1922, and Bennett was one of these, but she was too ill to attend. She died that year.