ABSTRACT
The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, WMMS centenary history, contrasting the failure of the first West Indian Conference with the Canadian. Australasian and South African Conferences concluded: Each of those other countries was occupied by numerous and prosperous British communities, amongst which Methodism had rooted itself with the prospects of large development, supplying the basis for independent Church institutions and aggressive missionary work. It was evidently the common view that for autonomy to work 'prosperous British communities' was required, and so the transfer of authority to Africans and Asians had to wait. But the British Conference did none the less regard autonomy as the natural and logical outcome of church growth and maturity. Russell Chandran of the Church of South India (CSI) asserted that Genuine indigenization takes place whenever and wherever the Church is alive to her mission of proclaiming the Gospel in the contemporary language of the people.
