Our Church-Planting Heritage
In the early days of American Methodism, most churches didn’t have full-time pastors; they had circuit riders, itinerant preachers who rode their horses around a cluster of churches. “No sooner was a congregation established somewhere,” writes retired bishop Will Willimon, “than the circuit was reorganized and the traveling preacher sent somewhere that had no church.” The frequency with which the Methodist movement started churches led to the claim that there were more Methodist churches than US post offices. Like Johnny Appleseed, the Methodist movement planted new communities of faith as the English-speaking population increased and spread westward. Today, United Methodist bishops still appoint pastors to churches in an “itinerant system,” a remnant of this missionary heritage.
Early American Methodism also began as a lay movement. “Everyday” Christians, not clergy, were the driving force in organizing new small groups, planting new churches, and preaching to new believers—people with names like Robert Strawbridge and Barbara Heck. Jacob Albright was another such lay member of an early Methodist group. The son of German immigrants, he saw the potential of this new Methodist movement to reach a flood of new German immigrants to America. Soon his followers created a new denomination, the Evangelical Association, which was more tailored to the needs of his ethnic group.
By 1965, Methodists were the most numerous of all Protestant denominations in the United States. In 1968, two centuries after this lay-led, church-planting, missionary movement began, The Evangelical United Brethren Church and The Methodist Church would merge to form The United Methodist Church. Read More
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