Registration for Aldersgate Seminar is now open

REGISTRATION for the Aldersgate Seminar, featuring the Rev Dr David Chapman, is now being accepted at the Methodist Centre, but must be received by Monday, April 20, to qualify for the early bird rate.

The seminar will be held at Sophia Blackmore Hall, Methodist Centre, on Saturday, May 23 from 9 am to 12.30 pm.

The Rev Dr Chapman is one of two speakers at the Aldersgate Convention 2009 to address the theme, “The Wesleyan Way of Being Church”. The other speaker is the Rev Dr Ting Gah Hing, who will deliver two talks in Mandarin on May 18 and May 19 at 7.45 pm each evening.

The Aldersgate Seminar is one element in the week-long 2009 Aldersgate Convention. Held every year to mark John Wesley’s experience of assurance, the convention comprises five evening talks (two in Mandarin), the seminar and the Aldersgate Service on Saturday evening. 

An ordained pastor of The Methodist Church in Britain, the Rev Dr Chapman will lead the seminar on May 23 on the topic “The Methodist Experience of Worship”. 

Participants will explore two often conflicting characteristics of Methodist worship.

According to the Rev Dr Chapman, those two characteristics were typified in John Wesley’s The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. Wesley sent this booklet to America in 1784 at the founding of the Methodist Episcopal Church there. An abridgement of the esteemed 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Wesley’s book presented the formal tradition as well as provided for “extempore” prayer and other informal styles of worship.

The seminar will consider various ways in which the forms of our contemporary and indigenous cultures can become bearers of the Methodist worship tradition. The Rev Dr Chapman will help participants to understand the sacramental aspects of worship and the value of using material things and actions, such as anointing with oil, lighting candles, creative arts, music, images and dance.

Registration for the seminar is $15 for individuals, $100 for each group of 10, and $10 for individual early bird registrations received by April 20. Tea will be provided.

Flyers and registration materials, along with posters about the upcoming Convention, have been distributed to local Methodist churches, schools and agencies.

They can also be picked up at the Methodist Centre or viewed online at the Methodist website, www.methodist.org.sg