Congregational Methodist Church

Congregational Methodist Church belongs to the Methodist family of churches.

Governance: congregational.

Congregational Methodist Church reports 139 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).

Methodist doctrine without the bishop — Georgia Methodists of 1852 who wanted to call their own pastors and hold their own deeds.

Heritage

In 1852, members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in Georgia — many of them rural local preachers and the families they served — withdrew over the episcopacy and the itinerant system, which could move a beloved pastor with no local say. They kept Wesleyan doctrine entire and adopted congregational governance: each church calls its own pastor and owns its own property. The movement spread across the Gulf South, and the denomination is headquartered today in Florence, Mississippi, with Wesley College as its school.

Theological family

Wesleyan-Arminian and evangelical: the standard Methodist doctrines of grace and the new birth, held in a conservative key, with a warm evangelistic temper.

Who decides what

Congregational, as advertised: local churches call pastors and hold property, sending delegates to district, state and general conferences that coordinate rather than command.

What a first-time visitor would find

A visitor will find Southern evangelical worship with a Methodist accent — hymns and gospel songs, heartfelt prayer, and preaching aimed at decision; styles range from traditional to blended by congregation.

What it has always cared about

Local liberty inside Wesleyan conviction; revival and camp-meeting heritage in the rural South; and the long demonstration that Methodist doctrine does not require episcopal machinery to survive.

Its gift to the wider church

Proof, running since 1852, that Wesleyan theology and congregational polity can live together — a combination the larger Methodist bodies said would not hold, and which here has held for over a century and a half.

Commonly confused with

With the United Methodist Church, from whose Southern ancestor it departed; with the Evangelical Methodist Church, a 1946 body of similar temper; and with Congregationalists proper (the New England tradition), with whom it shares a polity word and nothing else of origin.

Range of views inside it

Congregations vary in worship style and in how much they engage the wider connection; the denomination is theologically compact and conservative throughout.

A note from the mapmakers: The 139-congregation figure is RCMS 2020. Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Congregational Methodist churches typically…" and yield to the congregation's own materials.

Sources: Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · Congregational Methodist Church — who we are (Congregational Methodist Church) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)

Where Congregational Methodist Church churches are on the map

1 Congregational Methodist Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

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