The Free Methodist Church is a denomination of Methodism, which is a branch of Protestant Christianity. It was founded in 1860 by a group that left the Methodist Episcopal Church for a number of reasons. The Free Methodists are so named because they believed it was improper to charge for better seats in pews closer to the pulpit. They also opposed slavery and supported freedom for all slaves in the United States, while many Methodists in the South at that time did not actively oppose slavery. Beyond that, they advocated "freedom" from secret societies, which had allegedly undermined parts of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

                Today, the Free Methodist Church is considered to be a part of Evangelical Protestant Christianity, and its theology is similar to that of the Church of the Nazarene and other Holiness churches. Members have traditionally abstained from alcohol and tobacco.

               The Free Methodist Church was organized in Pekin, New York, in 1860. The principal founder, Benjamin Titus Roberts, a graduate of Wesleyan University, was a young Methodist pastor who had been expelled from the Methodist Episcopal Church because of his calls for reform and renewal. The denomination adopted the name "Free Methodist" to signify free seats for all (a protest against pew rental), freedom from slavery and slave-holding, and freedom of the Spirit in worship and in daily living. It's mission is twofold - to maintain the Bible standard of Christianity, and to preach the Gospel to the poor. The Free Methodist Church is committed to the doctrines of historic Methodism as represented in the ministry of John Wesley, the father of Methodism, in eighteenth-century England. Its polity is similar to that of other Methodist churches, though from the beginning it has provided for equal "lay" and "clergy" representation in church government -- a reform when the denomination was organized in 1860. The denomination grew rapidly during its first three decades, spread across much of the Midwest and to the West Coast, and established foreign mission work in several countries. Free Methodists founded a number of schools, including Roberts Wesleyan College, Spring Arbor College, Greenville College, Central Christian College, and Seattle Pacific University.

                In 1949, missionaries Walter and Gertrude Groesbeck migrated to the Philippines from China due to the prevalent communist crisis. Upon arrival, Groesbeck decided to begin Free Methodist work in the Philippines. Groesbeck was subsequently joined by Abundancio and Rose Burdeos, national workers of the UCCP that time who had 25 dynamic believers regularly meeting in a "nipa" chapel in Bunawan, Agusan del Sur.

                On September 23, 1949, John Schlosser also came to the Philippines from mainland China. He worked sometime in Manila at FEBC and joined the Groesbecks in Mindanao on 1950.