Methodist Protestant Church

Uh, and, and they were excommunicated by the, that Methodist Episcopal Church.

And n- I don't, I'm allowing the dates, 1920s maybe, it was o- over 100 years later, a big chunk of what was then the Methodist Protestant Church, uh, actually rejoined with the Methodist Episcopal Church and it became the Methodist Church.

That's when the Episcopal was dropped.

Uh, then sometime later, I was 20, 30 years, I don't remember my dates exactly, but sometime later they merged with another Wesleyan group and became the United Methodist Church.

Now, what our denomination is unique about is the fact that, well, you know, I'm not a member of my church, I'm a member of the conference, so I answer to the conference.

And then of course at this point I'm a conference officer at this point.

But, uh, the church itself, I mean, if our church decided that we don't wanna be Methodist Protestant anymore, they can send a letter to the conference that's saying six months we're disaffiliating, and that, that's always been an option, and it goes back to that 1820s situation back there.

Well, the reason that was such an issue was they felt that the clergy sometimes were leading in a direction where, to your point, th- everything was so rigid that they couldn't adopt the practices of the church to their individual congregation, and the people in the church, all they could do was sit back and watch.