Former World Methodist Council chairman dies
8/28/1998 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn. by United Methodist News Service The Rev. Donald English, honorary president and former chairman of the World Methodist Council, died Aug. 28 in a hospital in Oxford, England.
English, 68, was recovering from a July 31 heart operation and had been released from the hospital. However, complications occurred, and he was readmitted.
"Donald English epitomized all that is 'World Methodist Council,' " said the Rev. Joe Hale, general secretary of the organization in Lake Junaluska, N.C. "He made an immediate impact on a world audience in the Bible Studies he presented to the 13th World Methodist Conference in Ireland in 1976. From that time, the enormous respect people had for him grew as other rare gifts he possessed surfaced quickly and the impact of his life and ministry began to be felt around the world."
English was chairman of the World Methodist Council from 1991 to 1996. He also served twice as president of the British Methodist Conference, the only minister since the Methodist Union in 1932 to do so.
He served as general secretary of the church's Home Mission Division until he retired in August 1995 to live in Chipping Norton, England.
The following year, on Oct. 17, Queen Elizabeth bestowed on him the status of Commander of the British Empire, the highest of the three non-knighthood levels of the Order of the British Empire.
English was born in Consett in County Durham. After serving in the Royal Air Force, he worked as a traveling secretary with the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, then began training for the ministry in 1958 at Wesley House in Cambridge. He was a Methodist tutor at the ecumenical Trinity College in Eastern Nigeria, then spent six years in circuit before returning to theological college life.
His career also included serving as moderator from 1986 to 1987 of the ecumenical Free Church Federal Council, now known as the Free Churches Council.
"For many of us, the death of Donald English is like the sudden removal of a whole section of our familiar landscape," said the Rev. Kenneth Greet, a former secretary of the British Methodist Conference and fellow World Methodist Council officer. "His contribution to the life and mission of Methodism, nationally and globally, was phenomenal in its range and depth."
World Methodist Council Chairperson Frances Alguire, who is traveling in Bucharest, conveyed her sympathy to English's family on behalf of the council's officers.
Hale recalled the ease with which English related to Methodists around the world, in places such as Singapore, Jakarta, Lagos and Seoul, and countries that included South Africa, Israel and Brazil. "He knew how to speak 'the word in season,' " Hale said, "whether addressing a head of state, as I recall meetings with P.W. Botha and Frederick de Klerk in South Africa, or world religious leaders like Pope John Paul II in his library at the Vatican, and Billy and Ruth Graham at their home in North Carolina."
English presented the council's World Methodist Peace Awards to Zravko Beslov in Bulgaria, Elias Chacour in Israel and Stanley Mogoba in South Africa, Hale said. "He could just as easily relate to people who were best known in their local communities, including people in the United States, where his name, among Methodists, is a household word."
English's wife, Bertha, 67, died of cancer July 23, 1997, in Shipton-Under-Wychwood, England. Their survivors include two sons, Richard and Paul, daughters-in-law Maxine and Carol, and three grandchildren.
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*The Methodist Recorder, a London-based weekly newspaper, contributed much of the information in this report.
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