Four times a year, Mary Jatutu leaves her husband and children in the city of Jalingo and goes to the rural villages of Nigeria.

Jatutu makes the journey to share information about HIV and AIDS. She takes little but her expertise and her heart.

	John Beale, Post-Gazette
	The Rev. Alice Jean Parker, left, and her husband, David Parker, pray in a prayer tent at the United Methodist Church General Conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. The Parkers are United Methodist pastors from Franklin, Venango County. A prayer room has been set up to give conference attendees a quiet place for reflection.

Though she believes she is sent by God, it is her United Methodist Church in Jalingo in Northern Nigeria that fuels her mission, providing the transportation, education material and support to get her there.

Jatutu, a former midwife and a delegate in town for the 11-day United Methodist Conference, sees such social outreach of the church as nothing but grace, the unmerited love and favor of God toward mankind.

She was drawn to the church by seeing members teaching villagers new planting techniques and improving roads so that they can move goods to the markets. That, she said while taking a break between committee sessions at the conference, was nothing short of "God touching the hearts of people so they can reach out to others."

The United Methodist presence in the villages was enough to move Jatutu away from her Lutheran congregation.

When she became a United Methodist a decade ago, she joined a community of 10 million faithful who believe that God's grace is the core of their personal and social salvation.

Methodists can trace their roots to the early 18th century, when Anglican church leader John Wesley grew dissatisfied with the Church of England's rituals, believing they were spiritually impotent to change lives or society.

"He saw the church as having form, but no power," said Vance Ross, a former minister who now helps to lead the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship, a group that trains congregations to evangelize and train future church leaders.

Wesley's England was rampant with alcoholism, slavery and illiteracy, and he sought an experience that would "re-form the church in a way that enabled people to be their best selves," Ross said.

He wanted to free the enslaved, writing a tract condemning slavery decades before the Emancipation Proclamation. He wanted to teach the illiterate, and he used Sunday school to instruct the poor to read through Bible lessons. And he wanted people to know daily that grace was a gift from God, offered with the sacrifice on the cross.

His ideals were shunned by the power structure of the church, but the people on the ground were drawn to his evangelical ministry.

Wesley went to the people in the fields, in the marketplaces and to the miners on their way home.

His followers were dubbed Methodists because Wesley wanted to teach them that there was a discipline, or Method, by which they could live and to which they could devote their everyday lives.

The discipline includes prayer, hearing the word of God, fasting once a week, doing all the good one could, gathering every week in Christian conference, and receiving Holy Communion as often as possible.

Key to Wesley's belief was grace, and that the sacrifice of Jesus redeems the faithful. In his view, grace could not be measured out by man.

"His teachings tell us it is an amazing gift from God, a redemption from sin," said Ross, who grew up United Methodist after going to church with his grandmother in Bluefield, W.Va.

Methodism spread to the North American colonies shortly before the American Revolution, and in 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in Baltimore. The early church in the United States flourished under the "circuit riders," itinerant preachers who cared for five or six congregations.

	John Beale, Post-Gazette
	Bishop James R. King Jr., of Louisville, Ky., listens during an African American appreciation service, "Celebrating those who remained and led the way," at the United Methodist Church General Conference. King was presiding over the day's events at the conference.

United in their stance against slavery, some were fairly inclusive bodies.

Records from a Methodist church in 1811 in Pittsburgh reveal its congregation was made up of black and white citizens.

They were not perfect bodies, though, and racial friction took a toll.

In 1787, black worshippers in Philadelphia bolted from the United Methodist church, forming the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Ten years later, it happened again when black New York City worshippers formed the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

The fissures continued, first in 1828 to form the Methodist Protestant Church, and then in 1844, over the issue of slavery, to create the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

The North and South factions of the Methodist Episcopal Church reunited in 1939 as The Methodist Church. In 1968, the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren churches merged to create the United Methodist Church.

Today, the nation's second largest Protestant church focuses both on personal salvation and on the good works that members believe should be triggered by it; a personal and social holiness that has become "practical divinity," said Peter Weaver, bishop of the Eastern Pennsylvania conference and former pastor at Shadyside United Methodist.

During its convention session Friday, the United Methodists conducted a worship service to show appreciation for African-American members who remain a part of the church.

In his conference, Weaver claims they have begun 27 new churches by reaching out to Latino, Russian, Vietnamese and other multicultural communities.

In Pittsburgh, the congregation at Smithfield United Methodist, founded the Bethlehem Shelter for women.

United Methodists believe no war is justified and actively seek peace, and adherents are opposed to the death penalty.

"Our evangelical passion must match our social justice passion," Weaver said.

Caring for practical needs and equipping people for fuller lives is what Jatutu saw a decade ago. As a Nigerian living in a part of the world so dominated by paternalism, she was also impressed with the capacity of women to share in ministry.

She smiles when she talks of being president of her church's United Methodist Women's organization for the past eight years. "The democracy means there is less discrimination against women," she said.

"In this church, there is a spirit where everyone is invited. We call it grace."