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Evangelical Methodist Church
The Evangelical Methodist Church is a Christian Church that is located in 27 US States and has missions in 20 other countries. It presently has churches in the United States, Mexico and Burma/Myanmar. It was founded in 1946 in Memphis, Tennessee at a prayer meeting. At this time it has approximately 9,000 adherents and began when it broke from the Methodist Church for being too liberal in its beliefs and teachings. The church describes itself as a culturally conservative, evangelical church that is "fundamental in belief, missionary in outlook, evangelistic in endeavor, cooperative in spirit, congregational in government, and Wesleyan in doctrine." The theology of the church teaches a moderate holiness belief in the truth of the Holy Bible and the power of the Holy Spirit to cleanse a Christian from sin and to keep him or her from falling back into a sinful lifestyle. The church teaches free will and the call of a Christian to pursue a holy lifestyle while still being actively engaged in the secular world. The church came into being during a time when many began to believe that the Methodist Church, from which most of the original members came, was becoming a more liberal and humanistic organization, specifically with its denial of the accuracy, authority and all-sufficiency of the Bible. As a result of these theological changes in the Methodist Church, the church was formed in order to revive what it considered the original principles of the founders of Methodism. The Book of Discipline's 1966-70 edition reads: "With a firm conviction that the gulf that separates conservative and liberal thought in the church is an ever-widening chasm which can never be healed, the Evangelical Methodist Church came into being to preserve the distinctive Biblical doctrines of primitive methodism." Both the church and the denomination from which it separated (now the United Methodist Church) share roots in the 18th century English Methodist movement pioneered by John Wesley. They also trace their lineage to the missions of Francis Asbury, Thomas Coke.
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