United Methodist Church in the Philippines

The Philippines Central Conference of The United Methodist Church (Filipino: Kumperensya Sentral ng Pilipinas ng Nagkaisang Iglesya Metodista) is a collection of Annual Conferencess of The United Methodist Church in the Philippines that are organised much like Jurisdictional Conferences in the United States. The Philippines Central Conference is considered a member Church of the World Methodist Council, and independent of The United Methodist Church in the United States. It is also a member of the Christian Conference of Asia and the National Council of Churches in the Philippines as "The United Methodist Church in the Philippines", representing the denomination as its Philippine counterpart.

The Philippines Central Conference is further subdivided into twenty-two (22) regions, called Annual Conference, under the authorities of three episcopal areas. These Annual Conferences are subdivided into "Districts," which provide further administrative functions for the operation of local churches in cooperation with each other under the supervision of the District Superintendent. This structure is vital to Methodism, and is referred to as "connexionalism".

The Philippines Central Conference has a professing membership of about 200,540, but it serves a much larger community of close to 1 million. From six annual conferences in 1968, The United Methodist Church in the Philippines has grown to 19 annual conferences located in three episcopal areas. And now, with 24 Annual conferences.

The first Methodist presence on the islands was that of Rev. Maj. George C. Stull, a minister from the Montana Annual Conference, which was a part of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He originally went to the Philippines as the chaplain of the First Montana Regiment, and established the first ME church. In the Stull letter—a correspondence sent from Stull to his home conference for the annual conference—Stull enumerates several of his accomplishments since coming to the islands. Among them is the fact that he commissioned the first Filipino to preach using his "elder's privilege in an emergency."

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