Pioneers in Methodism

Note: Bishop Martinez was the bishop who ordained Pastor Charles in the Nebraska Conference in 1996.

Bishop Joel Martinez, born into an immigrant, farm-working family and nurtured in the Methodist tradition, is known as a defender of the poor and advocate for social justice. For more than half a century, he has courageously advocated against abusive labor practices and ethnic/racial discrimination -- while calling for justice for the needs of poor workers. 

Bishop Martinez is the grandson of sharecropper farmers who came to south Texas at the turn of the twentieth century. He was born February 3, 1940, and baptized in the local Methodist church, La Trinidad Iglesia Metodista, in Seguín, Texas. As a young child and through his teenage years, he worked in the fields picking cotton with his grandfather. Working conditions for farm workers were brutal. Men, women and children were required to work long hours in the heat with no regular breaks, no access to clean water or toilets, and for less than forty cents an hour. Children often missed months of school working through the end of the harvest season.

Learn more at this link.