On October 5th 2008,  we will celebrate 100 years as an established, organized denomination.  Over the next few weeks, you will hear and read some of the passion that started the Church of the Nazarene. You will read and hear things that mark our identity as Christian, Holiness and Missional people. Prepare yourself to celebrate the passion of our founders and how Christ birthed a small flame in some that has spread into a bon fire of evangelism and sanctification.

The Nazarene Centennial is an anniversary, not a birthday. It marks a marriage that linked existing families and created a new one. A century ago, the Nazarenes were a predominantly American family with relatives in other countries. Today we are an international family of congregations on every inhabited continent. No single language, race, or nationality claims a majority of our members. As an expression of the Holiness Movement and its emphasis on the sanctified life, our founders came together to form one people who then went forth into the world to become a people of many cultures and languages.

The Church of the Nazarene was neither the invention of one person or group nor the expression of merely one idea. A unique child of the Wesleyan-Holiness Movement, it arose from a widespread yearning among a portion of the Holiness people who had become estranged from the Methodist Episcopal Churches and sought new connections and united action beyond their local ministries.