Nothing better captures the period's mood of "more and more, better and better" than the word missions. Charles J. Little, a Syracuse University professor, saw America as "a missionary nation radiant with beneficent activity, illuminating the ends of the earth with the out-streamings of the Holy Ghost." Methodists streamed out to Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, the Congo, Costa Rica, Cuba, Germany, Japan, Korea, Liberia, Mexico, Panama, and Peru. United Brethren missions were planted in China, Germany, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Sierra Leone. Evangelical missionaries traveled to China, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, and Switzerland.
These missions were guided by denominational boards of foreign missions and by independent women's boards, the first of which was founded in 1869 by northern Methodist women. The idea was picked up in 1875 by United Brethren women, whose stated purpose was not to compete with the denominational board but to allow women to select new areas for missionaries to visit. Women of southern Methodism organized their own foreign mission efforts in 1878, with Evangelicals following suit in 1884. Martyrdom came to seven United Brethren missionaries in Sierra Leone in 1898. These deaths were partly the result of growing nationalism, a sentiment that led elsewhere to the establishment of independent churches. The first independent Methodist church came in Japan in 1907. In 1913 the United Brethren Church declared the supreme aim of its mission program was to establish self-supporting native churches.