In 1852, Roberts was ordained elder and sent to Niagara Street Church, a central church of the district and oldest church in Buffalo, New York. Roberts' conflict with the conference began in earnest at the Niagara Street appointment for he sought to make the church a "free" church, i.e. eliminate the pew system. Roberts here observed the potential problems of the "pew system" in which wealthy families could purchase and/or rent pews for congregational worship. Roberts, along with a number of other would-be reformers, could essentially identify three problems with the pew system: 1) it ended the segregation of the worshiping congregation into male and female (which John Wesley himself approved of), 2) it commercialized the church, and 3) it discriminated against the poor. (Marston, 178ff.)