Our history stretches back to 18th-Century England, where two brothers John and Charles Wesley (along with lots of unnamed ladies) founded the Methodist movement. Although he never broke up with the Church of England, and is probably rolling over in his grave knowing that a whole movement got started after he died ,John Wesley introduced many ideas that were considered revolutionary  at the time and are the foundations of the Methodist Church: itinerant lay preachers (people who traveled and preached sermons, but weren’t ordained by the church), “methodical” study of the Bible (i.e. Methodists), and putting faith and love into action.

A little later on, in 1800, two gentlemen (and lots of unnamed ladies) Phillip Otterbein and Martin Boehm founded the United Brethren in Christ among the German-speaking people of Pennsylvania. The United Brethren were early opponents of slavery, and also relied on circuit riders to deliver the word of God. By the mid-20th Century, the United Brethren and the Evangelical Church decided they were kindred spirits and merged in 1945 to form the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB).

Fast forward to the early 2000s, Northeast UMC was created as a the result of a merger between a United Methodist Church and an EUB church in the early 2000s. Both churches had deep roots in the Northeast Minneapolis neighborhood and were like-minded in their passion for food and housing justice and service, so a partnership to expand reach and reduce costs made sense and has worked out pretty well ever since (at least, we think so!).