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The Evangelical Church was born June 4, 1968, in Portland, Oregon, when 46 congregations and about 80 pastors met in an organizing session. Within two weeks a group of twenty churches and thirty pastors from Montana and North Dakota became a part of the new church. These congregations and ministers had been a part of the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church.

The spiritual roots of The Evangelical Church go back to the ministry of Arminius, the 17th century theologian, and to the Wesleyan revival. Certain distinctives were prominent in motivating the people who formed the new denomination, and those distinctives continue to guide the church's life, program, and devotion, which includes: 

  • Interchurch relationship limited to Biblically sound spiritual fellowship.
  • Faithful, Biblical and sensible preaching and teaching of those truths proclaimed by the scholars of the Wesleyan-Arminian viewpoint.
  • An itinerant system which reckons with the rights of individuals and the desires of the congregations.
  • Local ownership of all local church properties and assets.

Today the Pacific Conference of the Evangelical Church is made up of 53 churches through out Oregon and Washington.