The Christmas Conference was an historic founding conference of the newly independent Methodists within the United States held just after the American Revolution at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1784. Asbury had come to America in 1771. Under his leadership, conferences were formed and American preachers appointed, but this did not solve the problem of the administration of the sacraments. John Dickins a pastor in New York proposed the name of the fledgeling church: the Methodist Episcopal Church.