Dr. Jamie Jenkins: You Might Be a United Methodist If...

You might be a United Methodist if...

• You don't take Rolaids when your heart is strangely warmed.
• You know that a circuit rider is not an electrical device.
• The Upper Room" is as essential to your bathroom as the toilet paper.
• You've ever owned a pair of cross and flame boxer shorts.
• You sit while singing "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus";
• You've ever sung a gender-inclusive hymn.
• Tithing is encouraged but widely ignored.
• Half the people sitting in your pew lip-synch the words to the hymns.
• The word apportionment sends a chill down your spine.
• You realize pluralism isn't a communicable disease.
• Names like Aldersgate, Asbury and Epworth are familiar.
• You consider the monthly potluck a sacrament.
• The only church camp song you know by heart is "Kum Ba Yah"
• You've ever attended an Annual Conference and actually enjoyed it.
• You have an unexplained yearning to visit Wesley's chapel in London.
• Your church is named for a geographical location rather than for a saint.
• You've never heard a sermon on Hell and don't feel you're missing out.
• You realize that VBS isn't a sexually transmitted disease.
• Your pastor moves every four or five years and you like it that way.
• Your pastor responds to you with, "I hear what you are saying...."
• There's at least one person in every church meeting who says, "But we've never done it that way before"
• Your congregation's Christmas pageant include both boy and girl wise men.
• You accept the fact that the hymn, "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing" has almost as many stanzas as tongues.
• You know that the Wesleyan Quadrilateral isn't a trick football play involving four lateral passes.
• You realize that the "Book of Discipline" is not a guide to getting your child to behave.
• You understand that an "appointment" has nothing to do with keeping a lunch date.
• You know "UMW" stands for United Methodist Women rather than the United Mine Workers.
• You know the difference between a "diagonal" minister and a "diaconal" minister.
• You feel a twinge of guilt when you sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" with gusto.
• You say "trespasses" instead of "debts" in the Lord's Prayer and have no idea why.
• Your annual conference spends most of its time debating resolutions that nobody reads.
• You would rather be branded with a hot iron than serve on the Nominating Committee (or SPRC, Trustees, Finance, etc.)
• You have ever sipped Welch's grape juice out of a plastic shot glass during Communion.
• The members of the Friendship class are always fighting among themselves.
• You realize that sprinkling, pouring and immersing are not ways of seasoning food.
• You are asked to donate money to a "special offering" every other Sunday.
• You pour over the Conference Journal with the same intensity you would read a John Grisham novel.
• You have to fight through a cadre of "designated greeters" to get into the sanctuary.
• When the worship service lasts for more than one hour the beeping of watch alarms drowns out the final hymn.

What other suggestions do you have that indicate that you are a United Methodist if...?

Jamie Jenkins

[Taken with permission from "Monday Morning in North Georgia," Jan. 9, 2012. North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church.]