I love used bookstores. I picked up a copy of Russell E. Richey’s Early American Methodism today. I just got started, but it looks like an interesting read.
Fresh off annual conference, I was intrigued to read about an additional meeting that Methodists used to have.
The early American Methodists staged quarterly meetings that were part business meeting, part revival.
All the Methodists in a given area would gather for two days. On Saturday, they’d do whatever business had to be done and hold a preaching service aimed at improving the internal order of the community. Then on Sunday they’d have a love feast, communion, public preaching, memorial services, marriages, and baptisms, throughout the morning and afternoon.
As I was reading this, I had this vision of United Methodists in a county or a few counties getting together three or four times a year in one big group for worship and sharing. Wouldn’t that be cool?
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
In the Circuits of which I was a part in the UK, we had a quarterly circuit business meeting as well as a quarterly circuit service. This sounds a lot like a similar thing – modified for 18th century transportation over long distances.
Lester Ruth has written an excellent book on the quarterly meeting in early American Methodism. I highly recommend it, if you want to learn more:
I highly recommend Richey’s The Methodist Conference in America for a great historical analysis of the role of the conference in Methodist common life and polity. A really interesting book and it makes (or perhaps just implies, its been a while since I’ve read it) a wonderful case for conference as constitutive of Methodist religiosity that pushes against tendencies toward congregationalism.