Purpose:

Kingman United Methodist Church is dedicated to make disciples of Jesus Christ by connecting, growing, serving, and sharing our faith with others.

History:

Kingman Methodist Episcopal Church began in 1878, four years after the town incorporated. The first Methodist gathering took place on the farm of John Frazier. Within a year the Methodists were sharing space with the Presbyterians in the school house. By 1881, the members of the church decided it was to time to erect their own building. Their first structure, a small wood-framed church was dedicated in 1883, next to the County Courthouse. By 1887, as a result of a population boom that occurred when the Wichita and Western Railroad routed through town, a new church was built at the main intersection in town. The church remained there until 1928. At that time, the church moved across the street so the school district could build an elementary school. Since 1930, 133 E. D Avenue has been home to the Methodist witness in Kingman. With the merger of the Methodist Church and Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1968, Kingman United Methodist Church was officially born.

Today, Kingman United Methodist Church continues the Wesleyan tradition of combining both personal and social holiness throughout the city and county. John Wesley’s understanding of prevenient grace, or the grace that God loves us even before we know there is a God, continues to set the Methodist biblical understanding apart from other Christian faith traditions. Wesley preached that four things combine into our understanding of how God moves in the world: the Bible, which is primary, followed by personal experience, tradition, and reason. This quadrilateral is what Methodists use to discern what God is doing in the world, and in our lives, today.