Church of the Nazarene

Church of the Nazarene
Seal of the Church of the Nazarene
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Holiness
Polity	Mixed. Elements of Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal polities.
Associations	Christian Holiness Partnership; National Association of Evangelicals; World Methodist Council; Global Wesleyan Alliance
Region	Global
Founder	Include: Phineas F. Bresee, Hiram F. Reynolds, William Howard Hoople, Mary Lee Cagle, Robert Lee Harris, J.B. Chapman, and C. W. Ruth.
Origin	October 13, 1908 Pilot Point, Texas
Branched from	Church of the Nazarene (1895), Association of Pentecostal Churches of America (1897), and Holiness Church of Christ (1904)
Merger of	15 Holiness denominations 1907–1988
Separations	Pentecost-Pilgrim Church (1917); Bible Missionary Church (1955); Holiness Church of the Nazarene (1958); Church of the Bible Covenant (1967).
Congregations	30,574 (2016)
Members	2,471,553 (2016)

The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelical Christian denomination that emerged from the 19th-century Holiness movement in North America. With its members commonly referred to as Nazarenes, it is the largest Wesleyan-holiness denomination in the world. At the end of September 2016 the Church of the Nazarene had 2,471,553 members in 30,574 churches in 162 different "world areas". The Church of the Nazarene uses "world area" to describe countries and areas that are a part of a country, but may be known by a different name. More than 20 of the denomination's 162 world areas fall into this category, such as Guam, a U.S. territory on the Asia-Pacific Region. With 626,811 members, at the end of 2016 the USA was the nation with the greatest number of Nazarenes,. Other nations with large Nazarene populations include Mozambique (202,118), Brazil (153,002), India (136,079), Haiti (134,236), Bangladesh (123,192), Guatemala (90,101), Mexico (70,700), Peru (67,394), Benin (56,036), and Ethiopia (50,361). In 2016, the Church of the Nazarene had the highest percentage presence in the nations of Barbados (where its members constitute 2.84% of the population), Cape Verde (1.54% of the population), Swaziland (1.42% of the population), Haiti (1.34% of the population) Mozambique (0.82% of the population), and Samoa (0.66% of the population).

The global mission of the Church of the Nazarene since its beginnings has been "to respond to the Great Commission of Christ to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:19)". In December 2006, this was expressed more succinctly as "to make Christlike disciples in the nations". This frames the global mission of the denomination. In 2009 the General Assembly indicated in its revision of Article XI of the Manual the means for accomplishing its mission: "making disciples through evangelism, education, showing compassion, working for justice, and bearing witness to the kingdom of God." Since 2001, the three “core values” of the Church have been identified as "Christian, Holiness, Missional". The denominational vision is: "to be a disciple-making church, an international community of faith, in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition." At the 2013 General Assembly, the Board of General Superintendents unveiled seven characteristics for the Church of the Nazarene: