Special Edition Messenger

The Messenger

Special Edition September 18, 2014 Nationalchurch.org

This Special Edition of the Messenger is being shared with you to highlight three extraordinary moments in the life and history of our church:

In Honor

Dedication of a Plaque Honoring Bishop James K. Mathews and Eunice Mathews on October 5, at our 11:15am worship service at Metropolitan Memorial: we will dedicate a permanent, marble plaque in the sanctuary at Metropolitan Memorial to beloved members of our church family: the late Bishop James K. Mathews and his amazing wife, Eunice Mathews, who celebrated her 100th birthday on April 29th.

Included in this Messenger are highlights of their remarkable lives and the enormous impact that their lives had on our church, our denomination, and the world. We are honored to have this permanent reminder in our sanctuary of the mission-centered lives that they lived.

We are also honored to have as our guest preacher for this service Bishop Marcus Matthews, Bishop of the Baltimore Washington Conference. The Mathews family is hosting a brief reception for the congregation in the Great Hall following the worship service.

Combined Worship Service, October 12, 10am, at our St. Luke’s Mission Center (3655 Calvert St., NW): The Sunday following the installation of the Mathews plaque, all three of our worshipping communities will join together in worship at our St. Luke’s Mission Center, celebrating the many, many ministries that operate out of this facility. Following worship in the sanctuary at the Mission Center at 10am, we will have an opportunity to tour the facilities, Sunday, October 12 including the commercial grade kitchen which processes almost 1,000 pounds of food a week for our Campus Kitchen Project, the St. Luke’s Aim Hire shelter, the hypothermia shelter, the Shalom Place hostel where mission groups stay when they are working on mission projects around our city, the Community garden, and our cooperative work with Friendship Place. You will also have an opportunity to learn more about all of these ministries and programs and to get involved. Note: This single service will take the place of the 9am and 11:15am services at Metropolitan Memorial and the 11am service at Wesley. There will be no Sunday school classes at Metropolitan or Wesley on this Sunday, and childcare will be available during worship at St. Luke’s.

Catching Fire: A Concert for Inclusion and Equality with Special Guest, Rev. Frank Schaefer, October 17, 8pm, Metropolitan Memorial: On October 17, the Metropolitan Church is proud to host a very special evening bringing together exceptional musicians, inspirational leaders and an engaged community of activists. Proceeds from this unique event will benefit the Reconciling Ministries Network, the national organization that mobilizes United Methodists and their congregations to affirm and advance full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in all facets of congregational and denominational life. The concert organizing committee is a collaboration of members of Metropolitan and Foundry churches, and is being sponsored by a growing list of United Methodist congregations in the area. Learn more on page 3!

One of the hallmark features of our Metropolitan community of faith is our heart for and commitment to mission ministries.

We hope that you will join us for all of these wonderful celebrations of mission at Metropolitan!

Blessings,

Rev. Charlie Parker

Mathews Plaque Dedication

Please join us on Sunday October 5, at the 11:15am service for an unveiling/commemoration of a plaque honoring the life and ministry of Bishop James K. and Eunice Jones Mathews – long time members of our church family. We are honored to have our resident Bishop, Marcus Matthews, as the preacher for this service.

Bishop Mathews, who died in 2010 at the age of 97, was one of the longest-serving bishops in the United Methodist Church. His career spanned many continents, including India, Africa, and Asia. Throughout his life, Mathews maintained close ties with India, and remained close friends with Rajmohan and Arun Gandhi, grandsons of Mahatma Gandhi. (continued on page 2).

The Life of Bishop James K. Mathews and Eunice Jones Mathews (Cont. from page 1) Bishop Mathews was first elected Bishop of the Methodist Church in 1956 in Lucknow; however, he declined, suggesting that Indians should be ministered to by their own people. In 1960 Mathews was again elected Bishop by the Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference in Washington, DC. He served as Bishop in both the New England Area and the Baltimore-Washington Conference as well as in Zimbabwe, the Albany Area and New York City.

Eugene C. Blake, Sir Francis Ibiam, and Bishop James K. Mathews meet at the World Council of Churches (1963)

Bishop Mathews was active in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s. As early as 1960, Mathews met with prominent African-Americans to discuss growing racial tensions. In 1963, Bishop Mathews was invited to join President Kennedy at the White House to discuss civil rights. He participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and was present at Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech. On Easter Sunday in 1964, he and African-American Bishop Charles Golden were barred from entering an all-white Methodist church in Jackson, Mississippi -- and subsequently arrested.

Bishop Mathews, along with then Archbishop (later Cardinal) William Baum, created an ecumenical initiative called the Inter-Faith Conference of Metropolitan Washington in 1978, which is now the most widely representative such body in the country.

Bishop Mathews was the author of 9 books, including, South of the Himalayas, 1955; Eternal Values in a World of Change, 1957; The Road to Brotherhood, 1958; To the End of the Earth, 1959; A Church Truly Catholic, 1969; Set Apart to Serve, 1985; The Matchless Weapon: Satyagraha, 1994; A Global Odyssey, 2000; and Brother Joe: A 20th Century Apostle, 2006.

Bishop Mathews was married to Eunice Jones Mathews for over 70 years. Eunice, now 100, is the daughter of the well-known Methodist evangelist, E. Stanley Jones, who was described as the “greatest missionary since Saint Paul.” Jones and his wife Mabel Lossing Jones were Methodism’s premier missionary couple of the twentieth century. (estanleyjonesfoundation.com) Growing up in India, Eunice Mathews witnessed her parents plant the seeds of God’s word and nurture them into sizable, self-sustaining Methodist communities. After graduating from American University in Washington D.C., Eunice began her own extensive career in humanitarian work and missionary service. She joined and assisted her father, whose lectures and writings took him around the world, and revolutionized missionary thinking by encouraging individuals to receive Christ within the framework of their unique indigenous contexts. It was while accompanying her father on a lecture circuit in India that Eunice made the acquaintance of James K. Mathews, to whom she was wed on June 1, 1940.

Bishop James K. Mathews and Eunice Jones Mathews

Eunice’s understanding and efficient professional support of her husband’s clerical responsibilities fashioned their marriage as a coequal partnership; as Bishop Mathews wrote in his autobiography, A Global Odyssey, “these very memoirs should be entitled We Did It Together.

And together they tirelessly advocated for peace and goodwill, moving among personages such as President George A. and Mrs. Barbara Bush, President Bill and Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Pope Paul VI, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Indeed, Dr. King once told Eunice of his deep appreciation for her father, “who was a personal friend and biographer of Mahatma Gandhi” because, she said, it was reading Dr. Jones’ biography that prompted him to adopt his doctrine of non-violence in the Civil Rights Movement.

Mrs. Mathews’ lifelong call to mission beckons her still, and she continues to answer it with enthusiasm. As a woman and United Methodist, as a scholar, as a missionary and mother, Eunice Mathews occupies a special place in The United Methodist Church, one where historical legacy and future direction intersect and inform one another.

Following the service, there will be a reception where you can greet members of the Mathews family. Please contact Helen Simon, Executive Assistant to Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Charles Parker, with any questions, at hsimon@nationalchurch.org or 202Eunice Mathews greets her friend Usha Gandhi, wife of Rajmohan Gan- 363-4900, Ext. 109. dhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.

Serve Now!

Sign up for our many ongoing parish service activities! It is easier than ever for you to get connected with our online volunteer scheduling system at nationalchurch.org/servenow!

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The Life of Bishop James K. Mathews and Eunice Jones Mathews Eunice Mathews by Penny Pagano

Eunice Treffry Jones Mathews has lived an extraordinary life that most of us can only imagine.

Born on April 29, 1914, she is the daughter of the preeminent Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones whose work in India brought him in touch with many twentieth century world leaders.

Her mother, Mabel Lossing Jones, who grew up in Iowa, was commissioned as a missionary under the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Church. She set out for India in 1904 as a missionary and started a teacher’s training school in Lucknow, India, where she met E. Stanley Jones.

They were married there in 1911. Their first appointment was to a small city northwest of Lucknow named Sitapur where they spent the next 35 years and where she continued her work as an educator setting up a boy’s primary school. She pioneered efforts to have women as teachers in her boy’s school and corresponded with Mahatma Gandhi about her ideas for primary education.

As a child, Eunice spoke Hindustani before English, and spent her young life deeply seated in Indian culture embraced along with evangelical mission and the social activism of her parents.

As a young woman she assisted her father with his work, often traveling with him. She transcribed and edited 25 of his books.

India was also where she met her husband, the late Bishop James K. Mathews who she married in 1940. He was appointed Bishop in 1960. They continued to make many trips to India, and on her 90th birthday they traveled there to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Sat Tal Christian Ashram, a renowned religious retreat founded by her father.

As she turned 100 this year, she said, “Now as I enter my tenth decade, which seems rather ridiculously impossible, I’ll share a little secret with you, and that is that I do not have to be identified always as the daughter of E. Stanley Jones, as great a missionary and as wonderful an evangelist that he was. Nor do I have to be identified always as a wife of a bishop – and that was very interesting, too. But I do have, and I have had, permission to be myself; and I have done that and may I say that this has been in the freedom of Jesus Christ.”

Eunice Mathews graduated with a degree in English from American University in 1937. (She previously attended the Music Conservatory of Oberlin College.)

She is the author of the book entitled Drug Abuse: Summons to Community Action, co-authored with her husband, Selections from E. Stanley Jones: Christ and Human Need in 1973, and co-edited with her husband the last of E. Stanley Jones’ books, entitled The Divine Yes. More recently, the book A Love Affair with India: The Story of the Wife and Daughter of E. Stanley Jones was authored by Martha Chamberlain.

Bishop and Mrs. Mathews had three children: Anne Mathews Younes, the late Janice Mathews Stromsem, and Stanley Mathews, 6 grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Eunice’s life has been a rich and full one as a missionary, wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother, and now one that has spanned 100 years.

A Concert to Benefit Reconciling Ministries Network

Marking its 30th anniversary as a justice organization of United Methodists advocating for full inclusion of LGBTQ with Special Guest, Rev. Frank Schaefer, Author of Defrocked: How A Father's Act of Love Shook the United Methodist Church

Friday, October 17, 2014 Book Signing & Reception at 6:30pm I Concert at 8pm

Featuring Performances by: Robert Baker, tenor; Millicent Scarlett, soprano; The Friends of Charles Wesley Singers (Eileen Guenther, Director); Combined Choirs of Reconciling Churches; and Rock Creek Singers Ensemble of The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington (Thea Kano, Conductor); Dr. Eileen Guenther, Artistic Director CONCERT TICKETS: PREFERRED SEATING: $50 I GENERAL ADMISSION: $25 | $20 FOR STUDENTS BOOK SIGNING & RECEPTION: $10* Tickets available in advance: visit rmnetwork.org/catchingfire for details. *Book Signing & Reception Tickets available only at the Door Sponsored by**: American University’s United Methodist-Protestant Community; Beverley Hills Community UMC; Dumbarton UMC; Foundry UMC; Grace-St. John’s Co-operative Parish UMC (Baltimore); Metropolitan Memorial UMC; and University UMC (College Park) **As of September 6, 2014

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Worship with a Mission Joint Worship at Our St Luke’s Mission Center 3655 Calvert St NW Sunday Oct 12 at 10am

Worship with a Mission - Past, Present, and an exciting Future As a multi-site congregation, the entire Metropolitan Church will worship together at 10:00 am at our St. Luke’s Mission Center, 3655 Calvert Street NW (just east of the intersection of Wisconsin and Calvert Streets.) Following the service there will be opportunities to tour the facility, learn about the ministries and programs, meet leaders and participants, and get involved! This service will take the place of the 9:00 am and 11:15 am services at Metropolitan and Wesley’s 11:00 am service. Note there will be no Sunday School classes at Metropolitan or Wesley this Sunday, and childcare will be available during worship at St Luke's. This special service will be an opportunity to celebrate the amazing ways we are able to serve the community through our ministries at St. Luke’s, including the St. Luke’s Shelter, Shalom Place Hostel, Campus Kitchen DC, the Hypothermia Shelter, the Community Garden, and our cooperative work with Friendship Place. This work continues the legacy of service begun when St Luke’s UMC opened the St Luke’s Shelter in 1991 and later renovated the building to create the Shalom Place Hostel and a top-grade commercial kitchen to be used for service outreach. In 2008, St Luke’s merged with Metropolitan Memorial, and today offers vibrant ministries around issues of hunger, homelessness, and isolation.

The Messenger is published by The Metropolitan Church - A Multi-site United Methodist Community Metropolitan Memorial - 3401 Nebraska Ave., NW., Washington, DC 20016 Tel: 202.363.4900 St. Luke’s Mission Center (3655 Calvert St., NW)/Wesley UMC (5312 Conn. Ave., NW) Fax: 202.686.2056 E-Mail: jclouser@nationalchurch.org website: nationalchurch.org NEXT ISSUE: October 13, 2014 NEXT DEADLINE: Noon on October 7, 2014