I would not call the C&MA a “holiness” church, and I wouldn’t say that it has its roots in the Holiness movement.
A.B. Simpson, the founder of the C&MA, was a Presbyterian minister who wanted Christian churches to be more aggressive in recruiting and sending missionaries overseas to non-North American countries, to those who have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
He originally founded the C&MA as a non-denominational parachurch organization with the purpose of helping churches of many different denominations to get their foreign missionary program charged up and running.
But he was a dynamic preacher, teacher, and hymn-writer, and as often happens, his movement attracted such a following that it became a separate denomination.
So it would be more historically accurate to say that the C&MA has Calvinist roots, as the Presbyterians are a Calvinist denomination.
The C&MA, as its name suggests, is most notable for its amazing record of sending missionaries around the world, especially to unreached people groups. The C&MA has the highest number of missionaries per percentage of membership of ANY Protestant denomination, including big Protestant denominations like the Assemblies of God, the Southern Baptists, and the United Methodists.
In other words, small churches in the U.S., but many many missionaries are sent overseas by the C&MA.
The C&MA also takes excellent care of their missionaries, unlike some organizations that give their missionaries no money and expect them to raise their own financial and spiritual support. C&MA missionaries are paid by the churches in the U.S. and Canada, and their salaries are commensurate with what a person with a moderate standard of living would make in their mission field. E.g., someone living in Guinea, West Africa, would receive the salary that an average person receives, which isn’t very much, but it’s enough to live comfortably. Meanwhile, someone in Japan might be paid as much as $100,000 year or more, because that’s an average person will make over there! A C&MA missionary will never starve or live in hovel or have to accept clothes from a charity barrel.
One of the reasons why my husband and I loved the C&MA is that it actually had a purpose for existing other than to provide church programs for the American Christians. Our purpose was to fulfil the Great Commission, and to do this, many C&MA churches have budgets in which HALF of the incoming offerings is given to OVERSEAS MISSIONS. I’m putting that in all caps because it is unheard of in many other Protestant denominations, which might designate 2 % of their budget to foreign missions, or maybe 10% if the church is particularly wealthy. But most Protestant churches keep most of their offerings for themselves and use it for programs for people who already have so much opportunity to hear the Gospel and learn more about Jesus.
The C&MA also has a huge charitable relief organization, and 100% of the monies given to this organization go to actually feed, clothe, house, and provide medical care for the poorest of the poor. Their record again is outstanding–many times, C&MA relief people can get past the black marketers and the cartels and the terrorists and get the relief and aid to those who actually need it because the C&MA people LIVE overseas for decades, for their entire lives, and so they are accepted by the locals.
The C&MA has been in the news lately, at least among Christians, because of a horrific scandal in their mission boarding schools. (I’m not exactly sure why the secular media has not picked up this story–usually they are eager for Christian blood and have trashed the Catholic Church repeatedly.) For decades, the C&MA required their missionaries to put their children in boarding schools by the age of 6 and leave them there for months at a time so that the parents could do the work of the mission field. For many kids, this worked out fine, but for many more, it was a nightmare. For years, the C&MA tried to ignore the allegations of sexual, physical, and mental abuse that occurred in some of the boarding schools, but finally, the story broke wide open. (Perhaps the scandals in the Catholic Church made it possible for the people who had suffered abuse to get the C&MA to listen to them and help them.) Here is a link to that section of the C&MA website–
Child Safety & Protection This is not something that the C&MA is hiding, so I don’t consider it gossip or slander to provide this link. The C&MA is committed to openly and honestly dealing with the issue.
. In fact, I think we were a lot less nuts than most of the Baptists in that town. 
