Aldersgate? Query for Methodists

It's what we call our national gathering, it's our family and community. Aldersgate is Wesleyan, Methodist, evangelical, charismatic, and ecumenical. Aldersgate implies new birth, new power, gifts, grace, sanctification, holiness, and servanthood. Years ago at Aldersgate street, a fire was lit in the heart of John Wesley that ignited flames in the hearts of multitudes. People still have "heart warming" experiences at Aldersgate.

I copied and pasted this from a Methodist web site for your info only. I do not adhere to it.

 

I was about to say, Ps103, that doesn't sound like something you would write!

 

Baptists have their retreats, Methodists have their Aldersgates. Samo! Samo!

 

Apparently from what I could find Aldersgate was a place or a street where Wesley had a life-changing experience. His life seems to be in two parts. Before Aldersgate and after Aldersgate.

The Meaning of Aldersgate

1. It is somewhat misleading to speak of a shift from "ecclesiological primitivism" to "soteriological primitivism" in Wesley, or in connection with Aldersgate. One needs to remember that restoration of the form of life of primitive Christianity was always Wesley's goal, both before and after Aldersgate.

2. Keefer connects Wesley's Aldersgate experience with Pietism, seeing the stress on the New Birth as the connecting link between Wesley, Pietism, and the early church. I believe the sources reveal, however, that the real connecting link was the stress on the life of Christian perfection. It is true that the New Birth was a prominent theme in Spener and Francke, but both saw this as means to the end of Christian perfection. Both before and after Aldersgate Wesley's primary concern was with the holy life, and this is what drew him to John Arndt (often considered the father of German Pietism) and to such early sources as Macarius-all of whom emphasized Christian perfection, with the image of God as an important theological starting point.

3. It is true that after Aldersgate we find a shift from a more static to a more dynamic view of the church in Wesley-but this is not a shift away from ecclesiology. It is a shift toward a more organic and functional view of the church. The concern after Aldersgate is not with life rather than form, but rather with life and with life-nurturing form, with how to enliven the forms. In this connection, it goes too far to say that "Methodism repudiated sacramental theology," unless we are speaking of Methodism after Wesley.

From: http://wesley.nnu.edu/WesleyanTheology/theojrnl/16-20/19-03.htm

Thankyou 3angels, I almost ruined my reputation.