Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Montgomery is known throughout our Alabama-West Florida Conference as a church filled with loyal, faithful members that have always supported their church with their prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. Organized in 1895, the church previously bore the name of Forest Avenue where it was located for 70 years. The church moved to their present site on February 9, 1975. Across the past 120 years, the members of this wonderful congregation have always paid their apportionments in full and strongly demonstrated a heart for missions in their “second-mile” giving, both at home and around the world.
While generously supporting our seminary students, the members of Aldersgate have modeled the two-fold mission of our Foundation.
1. Aldersgate has continued to nurture and encourage many of their fi nest young men and women to enter the ordained ministry. Among those presently under appointment include Craig Carter at Lynn Haven; Jay Cooper at Bay Minette; Reed Haigler Hoppe at Saraland; Cecil Jackson at Dauphin Island; Ken Jackson at Trinity, Prattville; Tony Jeck, Auburn Wesley Cooperative Parish; Angie Long, associate at Spanish Fort; Michael Precht at Crestview; Lester Spencer at Gulf Breeze; David Stewart at Murphy’s Chapel; and Rusty Taylor at Frazer. Jayde Rasband, in her first year at Candler, was recommended by the Aldersgate Charge Conference. Lucas Tribble, a senior at Auburn University and now serving as the youth director at Mt. Zion in Smiths Station, grew up at Aldersgate and will be enrolling in seminary in September 2016.
2. Aldersgate has continued to support our seminary students with their generous gifts. Th eir fine senior minister, Brian Miller, and his wife, Christina, have been two of the most generous supporters of our cause. Several years ago, God laid upon the hearts of this gifted couple to make a bank draft each month in which they have channeled a generous gift to seminary students through our Scholarship Foundation. One of Aldersgate’s retired ministers, Jim Dannelly, and his wife,
Bobbie, have also been among our most faithful donors.
Some of our most loyal supporters are members of the Aldersgate congregation that know and respond to the needs of our seminary students. Living up to their name, Aldersgate, this great church has provided a place where the hearts of their members continue to be “strangely warmed” like the heart of John Wesley 300 years ago. In response, they see, like Wesley, “the whole world as their parish.” When their young men and women answer the call of God upon their lives to become ordained ministers, the Aldersgate congregation “walks beside them” every step of the way through
their gifts to our Scholarship Foundation.