A Brief Guide to the Evangelical Free Church
In this series of articles, I am sharing parts of an article written by Trevin Wax on the Gospel Coalition website. In that article, he gives a brief introduction to the various branches of the Christian Church. The original article can be accessed here.
Evangelical Free Church
Name: The term “evangelical” signifies associations of churches that trace their heritage to the birth of evangelicalism in the modern era, while “free” identifies it as part of the “free church” heritage that sought to separate church doctrine and practice from government control.
History: In 1950 the Swedish Evangelical Free Church and the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Free Church Association merged to form the Evangelical Free Church of America. Both groups were started by immigrants in the 1880s.
What Church Is Like: Worship services are much more in line with Baptist churches than high church liturgies like Roman Catholic and Anglican.
Polity: Evangelical Free churches follow a congregational model of church governance.
Distinctives:
The Evangelical Free Church of America allows for some diversity of belief in doctrine within the confines of their statement of faith. For instance, they have pastors and congregations that lean more toward a Calvinist understanding of salvation and others that lean more toward an Arminian understanding of salvation.
Based on a 2018 doctrinal survey, a majority of churches associated with the Evangelical Free Church of America practice elder-led congregational rule.
In 2019, the Evangelical Free Church of America removed “premillennial” from its statement of faith on the end times, confirming it was a nonessential belief in the denomination.
Famous Figures: C. T. Dyrness, L. J. Pedersen, Walter Kaiser Jr., Grant Osborne, D. A. Carson, Fred Sanders, Chuck Swindoll.
Related Groups:
- The Evangelical Free Church of America’s headquarters is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has 1,600 churches in association based upon the EFCA Statement of Faith.
- Evangelical Free Church of Canada (est. 1917) is based in Langley, British Columbia, and has over 140 churches across Canada.
In Christ,
Bret