Cushing, George Irvine James (1895-1962)

Obituary from the Minutes of the Methodist Conference

Born in Shipdham, Norfolk, in 1895. He early heard the call to preach, was soon welcomed into local pulpits, and without delay offered himself for the Ministry of the United Methodist Church.

After being trained at Ranmoor and Victoria Park Colleges he went on probation in 1917, first to Matlock then to Louth. His ordained ministry was spent in Holt, Rochdale, Salford, Nottingham, Chesterfield and Barton-upon-Humber.

He prepared thoroughly and prayerfully for the pulpit and became an authoritative preacher ; from the beginning he was a successful administrator ; and as a pastor he was greatly loved for his deep understanding and self-giving compassion.

He was a modest man, unconscious of his own worth, self-effacing, and seeking no high place. His was a world not of abstractions but persons, and this explains his regular attendance, even after retirement, at the conferences of the Society for Medical and Pastoral Psychology.

His giving of himself was unending. often going beyond the limit of his physical powers.

After forty-three years in the full work, he went back home to Shipdham and continued to preach frequently in the East Dereham and other circuits.

He was contemplating still more work, but he died on 29 March 1962, in the sixty-seventh year of his age and the forty-fifth of his ministry.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1962

Family

Irvine Cushing was born in 1895 in Shipdam, Norfolk, the son of George and Ellen Anne Cushing. His father was a grocer.

He married Mary Emily Hutchinson (1892-1952) During the 3rd quarter of 1921 in Louth. They had three children

• George Frederick (born 1923)
• Gwendoline M. (born 1927)
• Geoffrey I. (born 1929)

His second marriage (1954) was to Florence Jane Giles in Penzance

Irvine died on 29th March 1962 in his home town of Shipdham.

Circuits

• 1915 Ranmoor College
• 1916 Victoria Park College
• 1917  Matlock
• 1919  Louth
• 1921  Holt (received into full connexion)
• 1925  Rochdale Baillie Street
• 1928  Salford
• 1933  Nottingham Parliament Street
• 1935  Nottingham East
• 1940  Nottingham North
• 1948  Chesterfield
• 1954  Barton-on-Humber
• 1960  East Dereham (supernumerary)

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, page 212