This Week in Texas Methodist History February 4

Snapshot:  Texas MECS Bishops on Eve of Unification   1939

As the Methodist world concentrated on the May 1939 Unification Conference in Kansas City, final statistics were being gathered from the last sessions of the annual conferences of the MECS, MEC, and MP denominations that would soon be a part of history as they united to become the Methodist Church.

I thought readers might be interested in the bishops who had some connection with Texas as unification approached.

One should remember that bishops served more than one conference.   There were 12 MECS Episcopal Districts in 1939.  Two of them were centered in Texas and included churches in other states.  Bishop A. Frank Smith served the 5th District which consisted of five annual conferences:  Texas, West Texas, Louisiana, Indian Mission, and Texas Mexican.  The total membership in those conferences was 257,985.

Bishop Ivan Holt served the 6th District which consisted of North Texas, Central Texas Northwest Texas, and New Mexico.  There were 280,751 members.

  C. C. Selecman who had been at First Methodist Dallas and then President of SMU presided over Oklahoma, North Arkansas, and Little Rock Conferences.  Paul Kern who had served prominent Texas churches presided over Tennessee, Holston, Florida, Cuba, and the Latin Mission (only 585 members in that mission.)

Two bishops who had served Texas churches had far fewer members than all the other bishops but travelled much more than their colleagues.  Arthur Moore who had served Travis Park San Antonio (1920-1926) was assigned to the Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovak, Congo, and China Conferences.   There were a total of 18,410 in all those conferences.   Will Martin served the Pacific, Arizona, Western Mexican, Northwest, and California Oriental Mission.  There were 32,000 Methodists in those conferences.  He had been pastor of Houston Grace and Port Arthur Temple. 

The Uniting Conference shook up these assignments.  Bishops were assigned to newly created jurisdictions.  This meant that usually they would stay relatively close to home. 

The practice of serving several conferences such as Bishop Smith's five and Bishop Holt's four was sharply curtailed in 1960.  It became much more common for bishops to be assigned to a single conference.