Methodist Church of New Zealand

[1] The Methodist movement was started by John Wesley, an 18th-century Church of England minister.

Missionaries Samuel Leigh and William White established the first Wesleyan mission, Wesleydale at Kaeo on the Whangaroa Harbour, on 6 June 1823.

[2] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Methodist Church, with its emphasis on personal salvation and social responsibility, played an important part in the temperance movement and other moral debates.

[5] At the 1983 conference the church made a conscious decision to work towards inclusion of all ethnicities and cultures.

[6] Since 2016 the church has participated in an ecumenical platform, National Dialogue for Christian Unity (NDCU), along with Anglicans and Roman Catholics.

Samuel Leigh was one of the first Wesleyan missionaries in early colonial New Zealand.