Our Core Values

What is a Nazarene?

The Church of the Nazarene's name was chosen in 1895 when the first church began among the poor in Los Angeles. The founders aimed to connect their mission with the humble work of Jesus from Nazareth, serving neighbours most in need.

  • As members of the Church Universal, we join with all true believers in proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ and in embracing the historic Trinitarian creedal statements of Christian faith. We value our Wesleyan-Holiness heritage and believe it to be a way of understanding the faith that is true to Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience.

  • We are a sent people, responding to the call of Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit to go into all the world, witnessing to the Lordship of Christ and participating with God in the building of the Church and the extension of His kingdom (Matthew 28:19-20; 2 Corinthians 6:1).

    Our Mission:

    • begins in worship,

    • ministers to the world in evangelism and compassion,

    • encourages believers toward Christian maturity through discipleship, and

    • prepares women and men for Christian service through Christian higher education.

  • God, who is holy, calls us to a life of holiness. We believe that the Holy Spirit seeks to do in us a second work of grace, called by various terms including "entire sanctification" and "baptism with the Holy Spirit"-cleansing us from all sin, renewing us in the image of God, empowering us to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbours as ourselves, and producing in us the character of Christ. Holiness in the life of believers is most clearly understood as Christlikeness.

  • To read more about what we believe, you can go to https://www.nazarene.org/beliefs

    Follow this link for the official articles of faith of the Church of the Nazarene. If you’d rather watch videos that explain what we believe, check out the GlobalNaz Learning Channel on YouTube.

Additionally, the Church of the Nazarene recognizes that, while all believers are called to minister, Christ calls some women and some men to a specific and public ministry as pastors.

For the biblical basis of our theology of the full participation of women, we commend this video:

For more information on Women in Ministry, please go to the Wynkoop Center for Women in Leadership or see The Theology of Women in Ministry Statement for The Church of the Nazarene.