May, Matthew Arnold (1893-1961)

Obituary from Minutes of the Methodist Conference

Born at Shepley, Yorks, in 1893. He was already a man of mature years, and married, when he entered the Ministry.

Service in the first World War (in which in the Royal Fusiliers he rose to the rank of lieutenant) took him into a vastly different world from that in which he was brought up, but in the army he was able to do much in the service of Christ for his companions.

Upon being demobilized, he gave himself without reserve to local preaching and Church work generally.

In 1927, when the United Methodist Church opened the door of its Ministry to a few well-equipped and older married men, he felt constrained to offer his service. He was accepted for immediate work, and, beginning at Taunton, he travelled in Newcastle-under-Lyme, South Yorkshire Mission, Stoke-on-Trent, Nottingham, Redruth, Halifax, Batley and Hull.

A son of the manse, he entered upon the work of the Ministry quite naturally, and impressed people with his sense of call and fitness for the work. All his gifts, and they were varied and considerable, were offered and used without stint.

He was a hard worker, a faithful preacher and pastor, and one who was thoroughly at home in all matters relating to organization.

Though he served in one District as Chapel Secretary, his special interest was in work among young people. By them he was liked and followed.

Being himself possessed of a buoyant and friendly spirit, he generated among them enthusiasm and optimism. Numbers of those with whom he made contact were confronted with an urgent call to dedication and service for Christ. To the end of his ministry he maintained this distinctive interest, and one of the last public duties he performed was that of reviewing and speaking to a company of Army cadets of whose battalion he was chaplain.

He died on 20 August 1961 at the age of sixty-seven and in the thirty-fourth year of his ministry.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1962

Family

Arnold was born in Shepley, Yorkshire in 1893, to Matthew May, a Methodist New Connexion minister, and his wife Henrietta.

Arnold  was employed as a Clerk to the Registrar of Registers and Births (1911) and then spent the First World War serving in the Royal Fusiliers.

He married Gladys Mary Born (1894- ) during the third quarter of 1918.

Arnold died on 20th August 1961 in Kingston upon Hull.

Circuits

• 1927  Taunton
• 1929   Newcastle, Staffs. Lower Street (received into Full Connexion 1932)
• 1933  South Yorkshire Mission
• 1936  Stoke-on-Trent, Longton
• 1939  Nottingham East
• 194x
• 1949  Redruth
• 1950  Halifax Ebenezer
• 1955  Batley Zion
• 1959  Hull

References

Oliver A Beckerlegge, United Methodist ministers and their circuits: Being an arrangement in alphabetical order of the stations of ministers of the Methodist New … and the United Methodist Church, 1797-1932

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers

Minutes of the Methodist Conference 1962 p191