Iglesia Evangelica Metodista Argentina

Methodism arrived in Argentina in 1836, when a missionary named John Dempster arrived in Buenos Aires from New York. In 1843, the first Methodist sanctuary in all of South America was dedicated there.

But here’s the twist: for decades, it was against local regulations to preach the gospel in Spanish. Methodists could minister to English-, German-, and French-speaking immigrants, but not to Argentines in their own language.

That changed in 1867, when John F. Thomson, a Scot raised in Argentina, preached the first public sermon in Spanish. From there, the movement spread across the country and beyond, into Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and southern Brazil.

On October 5, 1969, the church became autonomous as the Iglesia Evangélica Metodista Argentina.

IEMA isn’t large. The most recent figures put it at roughly 8,940 members in 123 congregations, served by about 60 pastors.

But don’t let the numbers fool you. IEMA describes its presence as reaching more than a hundred places across Argentina: churches, schools, student residences, service ministries, and higher education. It helped give birth to one of the most respected theological schools on the continent. It walks alongside Indigenous communities, and through Argentina’s hardest decades, it has kept speaking up for human dignity and justice.

Just this year, one of its lay members, Humberto Shikiya, was named the recipient of the 2026 World Methodist Peace Award for his peacebuilding work in Latin America.