Congregational Methodist Church

Methodist church

The Congregational Methodist Church (CMC) is a Methodist denomination of Christianity based in North America. It is aligned with the Holiness movement and adheres to Wesleyan Arminian theology. As of 1995, the denomination reported 14,738 members in 187 churches.

The Congregational Methodist Church was founded in Georgia in 1852 when several churches split from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, out of a desire to blend Methodist doctrine with congregational polity. The Congregational Methodist Church is Wesleyan Arminian in doctrine, congregational in its system of worship, republican or representative in its system of government, connexional in nature, missionary in outlook, evangelistic in endeavor, and cooperative in spirit. Each local church calls its pastor, owns its property, and sets its budget. Its congregations are located in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi. Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, plus the Mexican states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas and the Canadian province of Québec. It also has missionaries in the United States, Mexico, Belize, Haiti, Bolivia and Japan. In 1944, the Congregational Methodist Church, then headquartered in Dallas, Texas, established The Dallas Bible School, an institution of higher education. The school was moved to Tehuacana, Texas, for several years, and was renamed Westminster College and Bible Institute. The school was permanently relocated to Florence, Mississippi in 1972, and was renamed Wesley College, a name that more reflected its Wesleyan Arminian tradition. Wesley College was closed in July 2010. The church's denominational headquarters is located in Florence, Mississippi, serving churches and programs of the denomination. In 2023, a few congregations of the United Methodist Church left that denomination to join the Congregational Methodist Church due to a polarization that occurred between traditionalist Methodist clerics and those with progressive tendencies.