The International Federation of Free Evangelical Churches — IFFEC — is the worldwide fellowship of national free evangelical and covenant church federations. It is not a super-denomination. It is not a mission agency. It is something more modest and more durable: a family of national church bodies that recognise one another, meet together, cooperate in mission, and share resources, held together by a common theological inheritance rather than a governing structure above them.
The basics
IFFEC currently links 31 member federations plus one associate member and one regional association covering seven additional national churches. Together these represent churches in more than 60 countries. The member federations are national bodies — each the free evangelical federation of its country — ranging from large (the Evangelical Covenant Church in the United States, with over 900 congregations; the Bund Freier Evangelischer Gemeinden in Germany, with over 500) to small (the Free Evangelical Church of Lebanon and Syria, a single congregation of fewer than 200 members in Beirut, an IFFEC associate member since 1990).
IFFEC's constitutional basis (Article 2) states the condition of membership simply: personal faith in Jesus Christ, in obedience to the Word and will of God, as the only condition of membership in the local church. The federation is not confessionally Lutheran, Reformed, or Arminian in any binding sense. It holds the primary doctrines of evangelical Christianity firmly and grants freedom on secondary matters — the Alliance principle embodied at a global scale.
History
The federation's institutional roots go back to 1834 in Bern, Switzerland, where an early gathering of free evangelical bodies first met. Its modern form dates to 1948, when the federation was officially founded in Bern in the aftermath of World War II — a moment when reconnecting the scattered free evangelical family across a devastated Europe had particular urgency. Since then it has expanded steadily beyond Europe and North America to include member and adjacent bodies across Asia and the Americas.
What IFFEC actually does
IFFEC convenes a worldwide assembly every few years, rotating location among member countries. It holds regional gatherings, theological symposia, and ministry-specific meetings (such as the church planting leadership gathering in Budapest in 2026). It publishes resources, maintains a small secretariat, and facilitates person-to-person and church-to-church connections across its membership. It does not direct the internal life of member federations — it serves them.
The 2026 Worldwide assembly in Kenya — the first on African soil — marks a new chapter in IFFEC's geographic expansion. Africa has long been present in the family through the mission work of member federations (the CECU in Congo, planted through EFCA partnership; the Himalayan Free Church in India, grown through SVK Finland partnerships), but formal African membership in the federation has been limited. Kenya 2026 signals that the family is actively addressing this gap.
How to join
Article 8 of IFFEC's constitution governs the application process for new member federations. The process is accessible and proportionate to the size of the applying body — designed to welcome, not to exclude. National free evangelical bodies that share the theological basis and the free-church ecclesiology are eligible to apply.
More information: IFFEC — About
