Free Methodist Church in Canada

Entidad colectiva

Free Methodist Church in Canada

• Église méthodiste libre au Canada

• FMCiC

1927-

The roots of the Free Methodist Church in Canada can be traced back to 1860, the year a number of leaders excluded from the Methodist Episcopal Church formed the Free Methodist Church. (The word "free" signalled, among other things, an opposition to chattel slavery and a belief that pews should be free of rent.) 16 years later, General Superintendent B.T. Roberts announced the appointment of C.H. Sage to Canada on behalf of the North Michigan Conference. Sage travelled to southwestern Ontario where he was received warmly by disaffected Canadian Methodists. By 1880, the Canada Conference of the Free Methodist Church consisted of two districts, 11 societies, and 324 members.

As time went by, there arose among Canadian Free Methodists a desire to establish a national body. This desire came to fruition with the establishment of the All Canada Conference, which coincided with the institution of a Canadian Executive Board, the launching of the Free Methodist Herald, and the creation of Lorne Park College. This progress was formalized in 1927 when an act to incorporate the Free Methodist Church in Canada was given royal assent. In 1940, the church opened Aldersgate College in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

The church acquired a number of new congregations in 1959 as a result of a merger with the Holiness Movement Church in Canada, itself a product of Wesleyan holiness revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1970s, Free Methodists in Canada continued to push for greater autonomy for the Canadian church. A compromise was reached in 1974 with the establishment of a Canadian Jurisdictional Conference. Greater autonomy still was won in 1989 when said Conference was permitted to reorganize itself as a General Conference. The inauguration of a Canadian General Conference in Mississauga, Ontario was followed by the British Columbia District of the Pacific Northwest Conference becoming part of the Free Methodist Church in Canada in 1993.

The Free Methodist Church in Canada is led by a National Leadership Team made up of a bishop and five directors, each corresponding in their responsibilities to the following committees: Administrative Services, Global and Intercultural Ministries, Church Planting, Personnel, and Church Health. The bishop, in turn, is elected by the General Conference, which constitutes the governing body of the church. The General Conference is made up annual conferences, which constitute Free Methodist organization at the regional level.