According to the Deed of Foundation, Methodist Church in Kenya grew out of the United Methodist Free Churches, whose Missionary Committee in 1860 agreed to send a mission to East Africa and whose missionaries first reached Mombasa in 1862. In 1907 the United Methodist Free Churches became part of the United Methodist Church, which in 1932 became part of the Methodist Church. In 1967 Methodist Church in Kenya became autonomous from the British Methodist Church.
The doctrinal standards of the Methodist Church in Kenya are: The Methodist Church claims and cherishes its place in the Holy Catholic Church which is the Body of Christ. It rejoices in the inheritance of the Apostolic faith and loyally accepts the fundamental principles of the historic creeds and the Protestant Reformation. It ever remembers that in the Providence of God Methodism was raised up to spread Scriptural Holiness through the land by the proclamation of the Evangelical Faith and declares its unfaltering resolve to be true to its Divinely appointed mission.
It is the universal conviction of the Methodist people that the office of the Christian ministry depends upon the call of God who bestows the gifts of the Spirit, the grace and the fruit, which indicate those whom He has chosen.
The Methodist Church holds the doctrine of the Priesthood of all believers and consequently believes no priesthood exists which belongs exclusively to a particular order or class of men [or women] but in the exercise of its corporate life and worship special qualifications for the discharge of special duties are required and thus the principle of representative selection is recognized.