Brief history

In October 1895, Phineas F. Bresee , D.D., and Joseph P. Widney , M.D., with about 100 others, including Alice P. Baldwin, Leslie F. Gay, W. S. and Lucy P. Knott, C. E. McKee, and members of the Bresee and Widney families, organized the Church of the Nazarene at Los Angeles. At the outset they saw this church as the first of a denomination that preached the reality of entire sanctification received through faith in Christ. They held that Christians sanctified by faith should follow Christ's example and preach the gospel to the poor. They felt called especially to this work. They believed that unnecessary elegance and adornment of houses of worship did not represent the spirit of Christ but the spirit of the world, and that their expenditures of time and money should be given to Christ-like ministries for the salvation of souls and the relief of the needy. They organized the church accordingly.

The Oregon City Church of the Nazarene continues this deep heritage today, focusing our resources not on unnecessary elegance and adornments of cathedrals and sanctuaries, but on Christ-like ministries to save the lost, assist the needy, and foster spiritual growth among the body of Christ.

The international roots of Nazarene compassionate ministry lie in the early support for famine relief and orphanage work in India. This impulse was strengthened by the Nazarene Medical Missionary Union, organized in the early 1920s to build Bresee Memorial Hospital in Tamingfu, China. An extensive medial work has developed in Swaziland, and other compassionate ministries have developed around the world.

Beginning with 228 churches and 10,500 members at the uniting assembly of 1908, the Church of the Nazarene is now represented in over 143 countries of the world and has a membership of well over 650,000 with a wider constituency of perhaps 1,500,000.

The Church of the Nazarene had an international dimension from its beginning. By the uniting assembly of 1908, Nazarenes served and witnessed not only in North America but also as missionaries in Mexico, the Cape Verde Islands, India, Japan and South Africa - living testimony to the impact of the 19th-century missions movement upon the religious bodies that formed the present-day Church of the Nazarene. Expansion into new areas of the world began in Asia in 1898 by the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America. The Pentecostal Mission was at work in Central America by 1900, in the Caribbean by 1902, and in South America by 1909. In Africa, Nazarenes active there in 1907 were recognized as denominational missionaries at a later date.