From its founding, the Free Methodist Church combined Wesleyan Holiness doctrine, especially the teaching of entire sanctification, with a strong institutional commitment to education and overseas missions. Roberts himself founded a preparatory school in North Chili, New York, in 1866 that grew into Roberts Wesleyan College, and the denomination went on to build an extensive network of colleges and mission fields across Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the following century and a half.
That missionary expansion transformed the church's makeup: by the twenty-first century roughly 95 percent of Free Methodists lived outside the United States, with the denomination reporting a worldwide membership of about 1.5 million against only around 60,000 to 70,000 in the United States itself. The church retains the connexional structure of its Methodist origin, governed by conferences and general superintendents under a General Conference, and its ordained ministry has been open to women since 1974, extending a commitment to women's ministry that dates to Roberts's own founding arguments. It also sponsors a network of affiliated colleges founded to train ministers and educators in the Wesleyan Holiness tradition, including Spring Arbor University in Michigan and Seattle Pacific University in Washington, alongside Roberts Wesleyan. Its administrative offices are based in Indianapolis, Indiana.