Part 6. MINISTRY AND POSSIBILITIES

1. Ministry

OOKING back over the nearly eighty years of A Free Methodism, it is natural to ask whether this movement has been worth while. The contributions which this church has made are obvious from the following:

     1. Reform is not religion. However, it is the responsibility of the church to take a position on those moral issues which appear in any land. This the Free Methodist Church has had the courage to do.

     In the days when churches were compromising on slavery and side-stepping the issue, this church required of its membership no slave-holding. The position of the Free Methodist Church concerning liquor has always been unequivocal. Not only has the use of intoxicating beverages been prohibited, but support of the traffic by vote or otherwise has been forbidden. The use of tobacco, one of the most popular sins, and one upon which most churches compromise, is forbidden to Free Methodists. Membership in secret societies is forbidden.

     These are but examples of positions which have cost the church thousands of members. However, by such testimony Free Methodism has not only been kept free from the domination of sinners but a standard has been raised which has had its influence far outside the church.

     2. The Free Methodist Church was a holiness church long before the birth of the modern holiness movement and before the birth of most of what are known as holiness churches. We have never run to extremes in teaching the experience. Some movements have taught an impossible, superscriptural standard, and have soon run themselves out in fanaticism. Some have taught holiness and allowed conformity to the world. We have stayed close to the Wesleyan position in both statement and requirements for conduct. Thus our influence has been wide. One well-known preacher and writer who has criticized us a little has yet declared, “The Free Methodists are the cleanest people on earth.”

     3. In any district where Free Methodism is alive and active all of the other churches of the community are affected by the positions which we have taken. One minister of another denomination remarked, “I am glad that the Free Methodist Church is located in this community. They show my members how they ought to live.”

     4. It is well-known that Dwight L. Moody first received his conviction for the experience of holiness by the persistent testimony of two Free Methodist women (see Bush Aglow and other sources). Also a Free Methodist conducting a mission was the principal means in the conversion of Jerry McAuley. In these two men alone this church has borne blessed fruit outside the denomination.

     5. The weekly and monthly periodicals and Sunday school literature circulate outside the Free Methodist Church to the extent of several million pages annually. This reading matter, written by our authors and editors and published at our Publishing House, goes into public libraries, and thousands of homes and Sunday schools outside the Free Methodist Church.

     6. Probably no church of its size on this continent does so much work in Christian education as is conducted by the Free Methodist Church. Not only are the youth of this denomination served here and fitted for lives of usefulness, but thousands of young people from homes that are Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, United Brethren and others have attended these schools and gone forth to affect for good their own denominations and the world in general.

     7. The Sunday schools of Free Methodism have in them tens of thousands of children who are from non-Free Methodist homes. The moral and religious standards of the church are carried by these to homes which would in no other way have contact with spiritual religion.

     8. The Free Methodist Church has given a church home to many thousands of people who have preferred a place of worship where they would be associated with those who were “in earnest to get to heaven” rather than with a group, worldly in heart and life, who are largely without God.

     9. Through this church membership have passed scores of thousands of persons who have gone to join the Church Triumphant.