Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The Free Methodist denomination was founded in 1860 in Pekin, New York, with Benjamin T. Roberts as the first general superintendent. In 1868 the first issue of its magazine, now named “Light and Life,” was published and the Free Methodist Publishing House was founded in 1886 at 104-106 Franklin St., Chicago.
Later, the publishing house moved to a handsome three-story building, erected in 1909, at the corner of May and Washington in what is today’s Chicago West Loop, a stylish, trendy neighborhood. The publishing house subsequently relocated to Winona Lake in 1935, and the Chicago building went through one phase as a casket manufacturing company, another as a museum of holography, and has now been beautifully redecorated and operates as the Publishing House Bed & Breakfast. Featuring décor that highlights various Chicago-based authors, and stocked liberally with reading material from those writers, the facility may now be seen at publishinghousebnb.com.
For years, there had been discussions about moving the publishing house out of Chicago, and so in March 1933, B.H. Gaddis, who became the publishing agent in April 1933, discovered the availability of Mount Memorial on the Winona Lake campus.
Mount Memorial, named for the late Indiana Gov. James T. Mount, had been completed in 1905 as the largest and most impressive building on the Winona Assembly campus. Created originally to house the educational ventures of the Winona Assembly and Summer School, the three-story building had most recently housed the Winona School of Theology, a summer school founded by British theologian G. Campbell Morgan. But now it stood empty, and was in disrepair, and was available for sale.
After considering four other sites, the Free Methodists decided to purchase the Winona Lake property and so they reached an agreement with the Winona Assembly and Summer School for the transfer of the Mount Memorial building, along with 15 acres of land east of Chestnut Street. After extensive remodeling and equipping of the building, occupancy took place in February 1935, under the trade name Light and Life Press.
Later, in 1960, a 23,000-square-foot gray granite building was added on the east side of Mount Memorial, and was connected to the larger building with an enclosed walkway. Today that Light and Life building is the William Male Center, home of Grace Theological Seminary and Grace College’s Worship Arts program.
The next acquisition was the purchase of the Westminster Hotel in 1970. It was renamed “The International Friendship House” and served as a hospitality center for visiting Free Methodist pastors, missionaries and conference attendees. The previous owners were Mrs. and Mrs. James E. Thomas, who operated Homer Rodeheaver’s gospel music publishing business, Rodeheaver Hall-Mack Co., until its sale to Word, Inc., of Waco, Texas, in 1969.
In time, the Free Methodists also built the 35,000-square-foot building on Publisher Drive and College Avenue that today is Grace College’s Gordon Recreation Center. The building was leased to WORD Records to house its shipping department, which had outgrown facilities in the basement of the Westminster.
Over the years, as the ministry of the Free Methodist Church expanded, various departments of the general church gradually moved into the Free Methodist Publishing House. In 1960 the publishing house’s board issued a deed in favor of the general church whereby the church became the owner of Mount Memorial, plus nearly 8 acres of adjacent land.
As the Free Methodist workforce in Winona Lake grew, along with it came the desire for a local Free Methodist Church. Beginning in April 1935, church services were held in the chapel of the publishing house. But eventually the group purchased the Otterbein Women’s Dormitory, which sat across Ninth Street from the Westminster Hotel.
Demolishing much of the dormitory but utilizing portions of the foundation, a larger, more permanent structure was designed. It was patterned after the Martha and Mary Chapel in Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village, and was completed in 1942. A brick parsonage was added in 1958, and in 1964 two additional wings were created with another education wing added in 1978.
In 1979, denominational leadership authorized a study to find a more suitable location for the growing denomination. At the Free Methodist General Conference meeting in 1989, the recommendation was made to relocate the headquarters to Indianapolis. The church leaders had identified Indianapolis as the best option because of the city’s growing importance and because it was within a day’s drive of half the church’s membership. The move was completed and the Indianapolis headquarters were dedicated October 21, 1990.
The Free Methodist move left many vacated buildings and grounds in the heart of Winona Lake. The Light & Life Press building was eventually purchased by the foreign missions board of the Charis Fellowship (formerly Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches) and eventually ended up in the ownership of Grace College & Seminary. Mount Memorial was owned by Winona Restoration Inc. and also became Grace’s property, housing classrooms, mail room and other offices.
As noted previously, the large building on Publisher Drive became the Gordon Recreation Center and Grace College subsequently purchased and beautifully re-purposed the Westminster Hotel to become a women’s dormitory, conference center, and welcome center for the school. Winona Lake Free Methodist Church relocated in late 2024, and Grace College purchased that building with the intent to remodel it as a home for the college’s growing business department.
