Free Methodist Church in Canada
The Free Methodist Church is a denomination of
Background
The
Today, the Free Methodist Church is considered to be a part of Evangelical Protestant Christianity, and its theology is similar to that of the Wesleyan Church, the Church of the Nazarene and other Holiness churches.[3]
History
Prior to the emergence of the Free Methodist Church in Canada, Methodism had already had a long history in Canadian society. Methodism came to Canada through the influence of Paul and Barbara Heck. Originating in Germany, the Hecks had emigrated first to Ireland, where Barbara was converted at the age of 28 under Methodist preaching, possibly that of John Wesley himself.
In the early sixties of the 18th century, they sailed for New York, along with Barbara's cousin Philip Embury and his family. During the time of the American Revolution, Paul and Barbara Heck and Philip Embury's widow, Mary, and their son, fled to the Prescott area of Upper Canada. Remembering the protection they had received under the British Crown when they had fled from Germany to Ireland, they now joined the movement into Canada of thousands of
The Methodist cause spread rapidly in Canada. Within ninety years, and after two mergers, there were five different non-ethnic branches: the
In the fall of 1873 and winter of 1874, General Superintendent
Reluctantly, Sage came to southwestern Ontario. He was well received by disaffected Methodists, unhappy with the direction in which the larger Methodist bodies were moving. He preached a gospel calling men and women to conversion and the unconverted responded in encouraging numbers.
His preaching took him as far north as the
By 1920, there was an impetus to consolidate as a distinctly Canadian body. The result was the All Canada Conference — a gathering of western and eastern leaders in Sarnia, Ontario. It was a landmark event of praying, planning and dreaming. Out of that meeting came such results as the formation of a Canadian Executive Board to manage distinctly Canadian matters, the launching of the
The Free Methodist Church in Canada was further strengthened in 1959 by a merger with the Holiness Movement Church. This latter denomination was the product of revivals in the Methodist churches of the Ottawa Valley under Ralph C Horner during the waning years of the 19th century. This union, brought about by the labour of strong leaders in both bodies enlarged the world vision of the Canadian church by adding missionary concerns in Egypt, Brazil and Northern Ireland, fields the Holiness Movement Church had established.
In the early 1970s Canadian Free Methodist leaders applied to the Free Methodist Church of North America requesting authorization for the Canadian Church to become a general conference in its own right. Consultation resulted in the establishment of a Canadian Jurisdictional Conference, a halfway step, which came into being in August 1974. At the General Conference of 1989, held in
A further action was taken in December 1994, which merged the four Canadian Annual Conferences. Having become effective January 1, 1995, this action left one centralized location for denomination ministry and the discontinuance of regional offices.
The Bishops of the Free Methodist Church in Canada
- Donald N. Bastian 1974–1993
- Gary R. Walsh 1993–1997; left to become President of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
- Keith A. Elford 1997–2017 (left the denomination on October 3, 2017)
- Cliff Fletcher 2017–
References
- ^ "Free Methodist Church of North America | Protestantism". Britannica.com. Retrieved November 23, 2017.
- ISBN 0-8028-2884-1.
- ISBN 0-9686224-2-9, by Gary Denniss
- ^ "Free Methodist Hill, a Centennial History", 1879–1979, Herald-Gazette, p. 2, 1979, by Gary Denniss
- ^ Hutchings, Rosanne (1993). "Free Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century". Canadian Society of Church History: 43–55. Retrieved October 18, 2013.
- OCLC 615071826.