The Methodist Episcopal Church charters the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society

It was on this date in 1819 that the Methodist Episcopal Church chartered the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society (MFMS) at Tremont Street MEC in Boston, Massachusetts.  The WFMS was the initial missionary society in the Methodist Episcopal Church.  At the time of its organization, the founders had sent invitations to 28 ME churches in the Boston area.  When the time came for the meeting, eight women were in attendance.  They showed up to a locked facility.  But, gaining entrance they prayed and heard reports from missionary wives who detailed the work of missions in foreign lands.

Along with several other groups it is the precursor to the contemporary United Methodist Women.  It was a freestanding organization until the Uniting Conference of 1939 (when the separated ME Church, the ME Church, South and the Methodist Protestant Church came together to form The Methodist Church).

At the time of that conference, the WFMS had supported 1,559 missionaries on four continents and seventeen nations.  It built 20 hospitals, 1,114 schools that employed 3,403 trained teachers and educated over 68,000 students.

At the Uniting Conference, the several Methodist-related mission societies came together to form the Wesleyan Service Guild and the Women’s Society of Christian Service.  For many years people in local churches still referred to these new groups as “The Missionary Society.”  At the constituting of The United Methodist Church in 1968 (where The Methodist church and The Evangelical United Brethren joined together), the WSG and the WSCS came together to form The United Methodist Women.

Denominational boards and agencies have largely taken over the “foreign missions” thrust of the UMW.  But they still work actively in the areas of women’s issues and children’s issues.  It is interesting that The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church (the book of denominational order and organization) to this day says that there “may be” a unit of United Methodist Men in a local church, but that there “shall be” a unit of the United Methodist Women.