It used to be that you knew every Catholic who had migrated to the UMC. Nowadays, it seems to come out inadvertently. I spent five miserable years as the head of the Pastor Parish Relations committee of a Methodist church we no longer attend. (I served part of a departed member's term plus my own 3 year term.) In the UMC (the name can vary to include staff) that's the committee which sets pastor's salary, manages relations between the staff and the church etc. The main problem I had was the pastor was a bit controversial. His sermon delivery was a bit folksy and not to the taste of a lot of the members who considered themselves sophisticates. The problem was that most of the church didn't come from a UMC background. They were continually wanting to vote on everything, including the pastor's tenure. You UMC folk know that, in the UMC, you take who the bishop sends you, just as in the Roman Catholic church. As a consequence, I had the most grief from the former various congregational members, not the Catholics. The pastor once asked the question in the traditional service of how many present weren't of UMC background. About 2/3-3/4 held up their hands. He then said that he had learned to ask the question that way from the early service, where he had first asked how many from a UMC background and only saw about a quarter of the hands go up...
