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 :*For the sake of consensus I figured that I'd post that sentence here rather than paste it into the lead, since I don't want to get into a revert war. I think it more succinctly summarizes the term ""local"" in the context of the Methodist church and considering that this is ultimately a list, we don't really need a long and flowery introduction. I'd also like to state that I'm concerned that the current state of the article gives undue weight to the UK branches and buildings. We have long paragraphs about the churches in the UK, but not much about the churches in any other country. This is why I really think it'd be better to create articles for each continent rather than lump them all together. If someone is more of an expert on British churches and writes predominantly on that while only writing a few sentences on the Chinese or American churches, it becomes lopsided and uneven. It's not that the paragraphs are bad, just that more emphasis and priority seems to be given to the UK churches.  "