Methodism in Rutherford had a very inauspicious beginning.  During 1868 and 1869, Rev. A. Craig and Rev. E. V. King, Methodist ministers in Passaic, held class meetings in Rutherford in an endeavor to stir up interest in the Methodist denomination.  In December of 1870 the Park Methodist Episcopal Church was organized and Union Hall on Ames Avenue was rented as a worship space.  The church prospered until 1878 when financial reverses occurred and it closed.  Following this failure, the Rutherford Methodist Episcopal Church was formed on March 3, 1880, with a congregation of twenty.

After a sixteen-year period of using several locations throughout the borough as a place of worship, our current church building located at 56 West Passaic Avenue was dedicated on April 12, 1896.  In 1940 the congregation changed its name from Methodist Episcopal to the Rutherford Methodist Church, and in 1968 when the denomination merged with the Evangelical United Brethren, it became the Rutherford United Methodist Church.