On 1 November 2003, The Church of England and The Methodist Church entered An Anglican-Methodist Covenant.
From 2003 until 2014, the Joint Implementation Commission (JIC) monitored and promoted the implementation of the Covenant. In 2014, the Methodist Conference and the General Synod of the Church of England voted strongly in favour of three recommendations made by the Commission.
Recent developments
In June 2017, the Faith and Order Commission of the Church of England and the Faith and Order Committee of the Methodist Church published a report called Mission and Ministry in Covenant. Read more about the report and how the churches are engaging with it.
In June 2019 a further report from the faith and order bodies of the two Churches was made available. This explores some aspects of the work in more detail.
21st Anniversary of the Covenant
November 2024 marks the 21st anniversary (‘coming of age’) of An Anglican-Methodist Covenant, and local Methodist and Church of England churches are invited to share in this celebration during the course of this anniversary year. Churches are welcome to use these prayers as part of their worship, as a way of marking this. The prayers are based in part on those that were said at the occasion of the Covenant’s signing in 2003, and also include a new prayer marking this anniversary. Apart from the anniversary itself on 1st November 2024, an appropriate occasion for this might be ‘Wesley Day’, 24th May, in 2025, or the Sunday following (known in the Methodist Church as ‘Aldersgate Sunday’).
