The Church of the Nazarene is a Protestant denomination with nearly 2 million members worldwide. It draws on the Wesleyan Holiness Movement and Arminian tradition of grace. It was formed by the union of the Church of the Nazarene and the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America. Its doctrines center on 16 Articles of Faith, and it is both congregational and episcopal in organization. Its main values are Christian, missionary, and holiness, and it is involved in various missions throughout the world.
The Church of the Nazarene is an international Christian denomination of Protestant tradition. An outgrowth of the Wesleyan Holiness Movement from the mid-1800s in North America, the church grew from approximately 10,000 members at what is considered its official founding in the early 1900s to nearly 2 million members worldwide at the beginning of the 21st century. Doctrinally, it draws on the Arminian tradition of grace and the Wesleyan tradition of holiness.
To understand this denomination, it is helpful to examine it from three perspectives: history, doctrines, and organization. The 19th century Holiness Movement provides an important historical context. John Wesley, who was instrumental in founding the Methodist movement, preached the doctrine of whole sanctification, which meant that for the believer in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit could give the ability to live free from the corrupting influence of sin. This movement has gained wide popularity in North America and has given rise to many churches and church groups.
The church was born out of a combination of these groups. A milestone in its history was the union in 1907 of the original Church of the Nazarene, which was a large group of churches in the western United States, and the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, the counterpoint group in the eastern United States and in Canada. The united group was called the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. A year later, with the addition of several smaller groups in Texas and the Midwest, the merged units took on their current name.
The doctrines of the church are centered on 16 Articles of Faith, which are reviewed and reprinted every four years by the church’s General Assembly in a book titled Handbook: The Church of the Nazarene. In general, the denomination believes in a triune God, threefold grace, complete sanctification, healing, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The threefold grace includes preventive grace, the general grace of God which enables all men to seek him; justifying grace, granting atonement for both a sinful nature and personal sins to those who believe in Jesus; and sanctifying grace, which permits all of the sanctification described above.
Organizationally, the church is both congregational and episcopal, meaning that there are elements of local and denominational control. Women and men can be ordained to serve as shepherds. Individual churches are grouped into districts, districts into regions, and regions into a worldwide general assembly. The three words used to describe the main values of the denomination are Christian, missionary, holiness. Under this organization and with those values, the church is involved throughout the world in missions of evangelism, social work, education, publishing, youth ministry and discipleship.
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