wfn.org | Church of Nazarene joins World Methodist Council

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Sept. 20, 1999 News media contact: Tim Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
10-21-33-71B{478}

By Tim Tanton*

HONG KONG (UMNS) - The Church of the Nazarene, a 1.3 million-member
denomination with Wesleyan roots, has joined the World Methodist Council.

The WMC's executive committee unanimously approved membership for the Church
of the Nazarene on the first day of the committee's Sept. 19-23 meeting. The
committee, meeting in the Chinese Methodist Church, stood and applauded
after WMC Chairperson Francis Alguire announced the vote.

The Rev. Joe Hale, top WMC staff executive, had told the committee before
the vote that the Church of the Nazarene's application was significant.

"It is not only the largest Wesleyan body to seek membership for many years,
but the largest church in our tradition that is not a member church," he
said. 
 
The executive committee also approved renewing the membership of the
Primitive Methodist Church of Wilkes Barre, Pa. Its membership in the
council had lapsed following a change of leadership.

The Church of the Nazarene has 1.3 million members in 150 countries. About
half of those people, 665,000, are in the United States, said Jack Stone,
top staff executive of the denomination, with offices in Kansas City, Mo.

"We bring a passion for world evangelization and are anxious to experience
and share the ethos of the great association of World Methodist Council
members," Stone said.

"Our doctrine is Wesleyan," he said. "Therefore, we hope our involvement in
this organization will illustrate our intentional effort to acknowledge our
roots in the wider world of Methodism and remove any appearance of
self-imposed insularity from this significant arena of global witness for
Christ and his church."

WMC membership also means the church and council can pull together for a
greater and more forceful witness, he said. 

Discussions between the Church of the Nazarene and the WMC have been ongoing
for decades, Hale said.

Stone cited three areas in which the council and church have worked
together.  The first is world evangelism, in which the Nazarene church has
worked with the WMC's evangelism director, the Rev. Eddie Fox, and his
staff. A second area of involvement has been the Oxford Institute of
Methodist Theological Studies, where Nazarene theologians have worked since
at least 1972. Third, the Church of the Nazarene has supported the World
Methodist Historical 
Society.

The Church of the Nazarene was created in 1908 with the merger of the
Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, the Church of the Nazarene
and the Holiness Church of Christ. The denomination grew out of the 19th
century Wesleyan holiness revival, according to the WMC handbook. The
original name, Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, was shortened in 1919. 

The Nazarene church has a Wesleyan understanding of grace and recognizes the
two sacraments of baptism and communion. It also has drawn the concepts of
general and district superintendency, quadrennial legislative meetings and a
book of discipline - known as the Manual -- from American Methodism,
according to the WMC handbook. Its ordination practices are similar to those
of Methodist churches. It supports Bible and liberal arts colleges, operates
seminaries in Kansas City and Manila, the Philippines, and has a publishing
house, also based in Kansas City.

With the Church of the Nazarene's membership in the WMC, the largest
Wesleyan church that currently is outside the council is the Pentecostal
Methodist Church of Chile, Hale said. That church, the Iglesia Metodista
Pentecostal de Chile, has almost a million members. 

# # #

*Tanton is news editor for United Methodist News Service.

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