About Us

AN INTRODUCTION TO OUR DENOMINATION 

The United Methodist Church is a “connectional” church. That means that every local congregation is connected to all of the other United Methodist congregations throughout the world and the principal place where that connection takes place is through an Annual Conference, which is presided over by a bishop. In the Oklahoma Annual Conference alone, there are approximately 700 different congregations.

Our Annual Conference is connected to a jurisdictional conference, the South-Central Jurisdiction, made up of all the United Methodist churches in the Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana. And the five continental jurisdictions of the United Methodist Church (along with others beyond the continental United States) are bound together by a General Conference which meets every four years and which updates The Book of Discipline which defines the polity of United Methodism.

Connectional churches are different from congregational churches. Each congregational church is autonomous and is governed entirely by its own Board of Directors or Trustees. As a connectional church, the majority of the decisions that we make at a congregational level are made entirely by our various committees and boards. However, being a connectional congregation, we also participate in a wider decisional arena that’s simply that of our own congregation and its officials.

United Methodism is a remarkable blending of evangelical Christianity and sacramental Christianity. John Wesley, our founder, was a priest in the Anglican Church in England in the 18th century. He began a renewal movement that quickly beyond the Anglican Church and essentially could be described as evangelical. And as the colonists kept coming from England to America and some of them had been greatly touched by Wesley’s ministry in England, there was a desire to develop a new church here in America as well. With Wesley’s approval, the Methodist Church, which later became the United Methodist Church (1968) came into being in the United States. It contained the sacramental theology of the Anglican Church in which Wesley was a priest as well as the evangelical theology that quickly sprung up on the American frontier.

With our sacramental roots and our evangelical roots, we are positioned right in the middle of the Christian family throughout the world. Some United Methodist congregations will be more evangelical than others. Some are very sacramental and liturgical. But both of those have a place in the United Methodist family as well as many different blendings of those traditions and emphases in between. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why United Methodism has been referred to as the most representative and main stream of all the denominations in America.

At the Gerty UMC, you will find both the evangelical and sacramental emphasis, hopefully a very well balanced blend of the two in all of our services and events.

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