Church of the United Brethren in Christ (New constitution). Home Mission and Church Erection Society

Instelling

Church of the United Brethren in Christ (New constitution). Home Mission and Church Erection Society

1841-1946

The General Conference of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ in 1841 created a Missionary Society for missionary work at home and abroad. This organization did not flourish because it was not denominational. That meant it was not part of the program of the whole church, but rather a centralizing organization that coordinated the work of the local church and Annual Conference missionary societies.

The General Conference of 1853 reorganized the Missionary Society and revised its constitution . Its name was changed to the Home, Frontier, and Foreign Missionary Society, and the original society was referred to as the Parent Missionary Society.

Two missions were created in Southern Missouri and Canada and arrangements made to send missionaries to Africa. Home mission work was left to the management of the annual conferences. The General Conference of 1905 ordered the division of the Home, Frontier and Foreign Missionary Society into two separate organizations the Home Missionary Society and the Foreign Missionary Society. In 1869, a Church Erection Society was created. The 1925 General Conference merged the Home Missionary Society and the Church Erection Society into a single agency called the Home Mission and Church Erection Society. When the Church of the United Brethren in Christ merged with the Evangelical Church in 1946 the missionary societies of both churches were formed into a Board of Missions.