What is Aldersgate Sunday?

In the Methodist Church calendar, Aldersgate Sunday is the Sunday nearest to 24 May (also known as 'Wesley Day'). It recalls the day in 1738 when John Wes-ley, the most prominent of the founders of Methodism, had a life-changing ex-perience in Aldersgate Street, London. 

In Wesley’s own words, 

In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.1 About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.2 

Wesley’s heart was ‘strangely warmed’ as he experienced God's love in a most personal and life-giving way. Until then he had known God in his mind, but not in his heart. Now he understood the value of a personal experience of God that would bring assurance of salvation to the believer. 

After the Aldersgate experience, it took Wesley a while to learn how to live the life of faith, for he was not always pos-sessed of joy and thought he had fallen from salvation. He would learned to see that it is not Christ and good works, but Christ alone who saves, resulting in good works. 

As time went on, John Wesley was mightily used of the Lord to reform England. His Methodists became a national force. John rode thousands of miles (as many as 20,000 a year) preaching as only a man filled with the Holy Spirit can preach, telling the gospel to all who would listen. He acted "as though he were out of breath in pursuit of souls." 

Wherever he preached, lives changed and manners and morals altered for the better. It is often conjectured that his preaching helped spare England the kind of violent revolution that occurred in France. 

Aldersgate Sunday is a great opportunity to celebrate the work of God in our lives, and to reflect on how we should respond to everything that God has given us. 

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1 “Faith is a work of God in us, which … makes us completely different people in heart, mind, senses, and all our powers …” (Extract from Martin Luther’s Preface to the Letter of St Paul to the Romans (1552). 

2 “John Wesley the Methodist: Chapter VII – The New Birth". wesley.nnu.edu/. Wesley Center Online / Northwest Nazarene University. Accessed 21 May 2016.