The United Methodist Church is the product of the 1968 merger of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren.

      

John Wesley						Charles Wesley

John Wesley (1703-1791) and Charles Wesley (1707-1788) began what came to be called Methodism in England while attending Oxford University. They encouraged Anglicans to join in small groups, called classes, for Bible study and mutual accountability in their Christian discipleship. John Wesley encouraged personal holiness—personal habits consistent with biblical teachings—and social holiness—pursuit of justice for society’s oppressed and forgotten people.

Charles Wesley was a prolific hymn writer whose music today can be found in the hymnals of many Protestant denominations.

In the mid-1700s, John Wesley organized a Methodist movement in the American colonies. Though Methodism was never meant to be a separate denomination from the Church of England, the Methodist movement in America was organized into a denomination in the wake of the American Revolution.

Two other churches were forming while the Methodist movement was in its infancy, both comprised almost entirely of German-speaking people.   

Philip William Otterbein						Martin Boehm

 Philip William Otterbein (1726–1813) and Martin Boehm (1725–1812) were the founders of the Church of the United Brethren. Otterbein, a German Reformed pastor, and Boehm, a Mennonite, preached an evangelical message and experience similar to the Methodists.

Jacob Albright (1759–1808), a Lutheran farmer and tile maker, founded The Evangelical Association in eastern Pennsylvania. Albright had been converted and nurtured under Methodist teaching. The Evangelical Association was officially organized in 1803. The Church of the United Brethren and the Evangelical Association merged in 1946.

In May 1837 Methodist missionary Alfred Brunson arrived in Minnesota to preach to the Indians. He and his party settled at Kaposia, a Dakota village at the present-day site of South St. Paul.

The first Methodist congregation, Market Street (left) in St. Paul, was organized on Dec. 31, 1848. Under the auspices of the Wisconsin Annual Conference, more Methodist Churches were founded in Minnesota as the population grew.

In 1856, Minnesota was organized at Red Wing as a separate conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Minnesota Mission Conference of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ was organized at Marion the next year, 1857. Edmund Clow preached to settlers in Winona County after his arrival in 1854 and, with John Fulkerson and John Haney, established the conference.

Andrew Tarnutzer, Minnesota’s first preacher of the Evangelishche Gemeinschaft (Evangelical Association), crossed the Mississippi near Winona in November 1856. He arrived in St. Paul the following February and organized two congregations. After several years of connection, first with the Wisconsin Conference, then with the Iowa, the Minnesota Conference of the Evangelical Association of North America was organized in 1868 at Emanuel’s Church, Castle Rock.

For a list of bishops who served in the Minnesota Annual Conference click here.

The United Methodist Historical Society of Minnesota is dedicated to promoting interest in the history of Minnesota United Methodism.

If you are a member of the United Methodist Historical Society of Minnesota you may want to join the Historical Society of The United Methodist Church - World Methodist Historical Society.

In 2006 and 2007, United Methodists celebrated 150 years of ministry in Minnesota. The theme for the commemorations was "Living Links: Children of the Past, Parents of the Future." The statement was taken from A Story of Methodism, written in 1911 by William McKinley, one of the early Methodist preachers. In Chapter 77, titled "Unfinished Business," McKinley wrote, "We are not isolate atoms in time and space, coming from nothing and going to nowhere, but living links in the endless chain of being which binds together all that is, all that has been, and all that shall be. We are children of the past and parents of the future. The past has made us what we are, the future will be what we make it, and we are bound to both by indissoluble ties."

The logo was designed by Nancy L. Seeger, a Minnesota United Methodist.