About Us

Rolla Church of the Nazarene is a community of believers. What does that mean, the word community? We believe that together in fellowship we grow closer to God and one another. The bible speaks about iron sharpening iron. We believe that together we grow stronger. We are a community of believers.

Rolla Church of the Nazarene strives to be a church without walls. Jesus calls for us to go outside the walls to reach the lost and the broken. It is there that the lost will be found. Nazarene Church makes an effort to be like the church from the book of Acts, to see our city changed.

Our Church highly values our relationships with one another. We look to grow through fellowship, and ultimately growing closer to God. We value the word of God, and the leadership of the Holy Spirit. We look to extend grace to all of the lost and broken, and lead those with no hope to the hope of Jesus Christ.

We are a Great Commission church. As a global community of faith, we are commissioned to take the Good News of life in Jesus Christ to people everywhere and to spread the message of scriptural holiness across the lands.

The Church of the Nazarene bonds together individuals who have made Jesus Christ Lord of their lives, sharing in Christian fellowship, and seeking to strengthen each other in faith development through worship, preaching, training, and service to others.

We strive to express the compassion of Jesus Christ to all persons along with our personal commitment to Christlike living. While the primary motive of the church is to glorify God, we also are called to actively participate in His mission — reconciling the world to himself.

The statement of mission contains historical essentials of our mission: Evangelism, Sanctification, Discipleship, Compassion. The essence of holiness is Christlikeness. Nazarenes are becoming a sent people-into homes, work places, communities, and villages as well as other cities and countries. Missionaries are now sent from all regions of the world. God continues calling ordinary people to do extraordinary things made possible by the person of the Holy Spirit.

The Church of the Nazarene follows in the historic tradition of the orthodox Christian faith.

We believe the Bible forms a story of God’s self-revelation particularly in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of His son, Jesus Christ. Christ atoned for our sins on the cross so He could set us free from sin (Romans 3:25).

We believe in God’s prevenient grace that goes before and draws us to God. This grace stirs within us a hunger to seek something more in our lives and empowers us to respond when the tender voice of the Spirit draws us to God’s heart. God draws us then lovingly awaits our response (John 6:44; John 12:32).

We believe in God’s justifying grace that no longer counts our sins against us when we ask for forgiveness (2 Corinthians 5:19). God reconciles, pardons, and restores our relationship with God’s self as only a loving parent can do. Christ’s death on the cross makes our justification possible (Romans 5:8).

We believe in sanctifying grace that transforms us by the power of His Holy Spirit working within us from the moment of our conversion until we go to heaven. Continued growth in our relationship with God’s Spirit takes us to deeper levels of commitment.

We speak often of Christian perfection or entire sanctification as a second instantaneous work of grace when God purges a consecrated heart from self-centered control and pride and fills it with divine love to completely control heart and life.

Self-seeking is replaced with holy desire to fulfill the two great commands of Jesus to love God and others (Matthew 22:34-40). Transformation and growth in grace continues to occur over a lifetime as we submit our wills to His will.

Ultimately, we seek to live in close relationship with Jesus Christ and make Christlike disciples as we model the Christian message we say and do as we live in his transforming grace.

Nazarenes are a compassionate people. We believe in serving others.

This is expressed locally through the services of members to their communities. Contributions from Nazarenes make possible the administration of Nazarene Compassionate Ministries (NCM).

Following the example of Jesus, NCM seeks to educate, clothe, shelter, feed, heal, and ultimately empower those who suffer under oppression, injustice, violence, poverty, hunger, and disease.

Through 183 compassionate ministry centers, 101 child development centers, about 100 projects, and many volunteer efforts, Nazarenes are instrumental in assisting people in every part of the globe who have been affected by war, famine, hurricane, flood, and other natural and manmade disasters.

The worldwide network of Nazarene churches makes it possible for the denomination to serve as a conduit of assistance to hurting nations. Nazarenes provide money for food, medical supplies, clothing, and other items to persons in a number of countries where there are pressing needs.

In addition, the denomination’s missionary infrastructure is often used by World Relief and similar agencies when they need assistance in getting supplies to people in remote or troubled areas.

Nazarenes also offer their time and services on volunteer Work & Witness and Mission Corps teams to build churches, schools, and clinics and to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The Church of the Nazarene reaches out to persons around the globe through the power of technology.

Each week last year, World Mission Broadcast aired 140 radio broadcasts in 72 countries and 36 languages.

As members of the Church Universal, we join with all true believers in proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ and in affirming the historic Trinitarian creeds and beliefs of the 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 united with all believers in proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We believe that in divine love God offers to all people forgiveness of sins and restored relationship. In being reconciled to God, we believe that we are also to be reconciled to one another, loving each other as we have been loved by God and forgiving each other as we have been forgiven by God. We believe that our life together is to exemplify the character of Christ. We look to Scripture as the primary source of spiritual truth confirmed by reason, tradition, and experience. 

Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Church, which, as the Nicene Creed tells us, is one, holy, universal, and apostolic. In Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit, God the Father offers forgiveness of sin and reconciliation to all the world. Those who respond to God’s offer in faith become the people of God. Having been forgiven and reconciled in Christ, we forgive and are reconciled to one another. In this way, we are Christ’s Church and Body and reveal the unity of that Body. As the one Body of Christ, we have “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” We affirm the unity of Christ’s Church and strive in all things to preserve it. (Ephesians 4:5, 3).

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 neighbors as ourselves, and producing in us the character of Christ. Holiness in the life of believers is most clearly understood as Christlikeness.  

Because we are called by Scripture and drawn by grace to worship God and to love Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves, we commit ourselves fully and completely to God, believing that we can be “sanctified wholly,” as a second crisis experience. We believe that the Holy Spirit convicts, cleanses, fills, and empowers us as the grace of God transforms us day by day into a people of love, spiritual discipline, ethical and moral purity, compassion, and justice. It is the work of the Holy Spirit that restores us in the image of God and produces in us the character of Christ.

We believe in God the Father, the Creator, who calls into being what does not exist. We once were not, but God called us into being, made us for himself, and fashioned us in His own image. We have been commissioned to bear the image of God: “I am the LORD . . . your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy”

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.

In 1908 there were churches in Canada and organized work in India, Cape Verde, and Japan, soon followed by work in Africa, Mexico, and China. The 1915 mergers added congregations in the British Isles and work in Cuba, Central America, and South America. There were congregations in Syria and Palestine by 1922. As General Superintendent H. F. Reynolds advocated "a mission to the world," support for world evangelization became a distinguishing characteristic of Nazarene life. New technologies were utilized. The church began producing the "Showers of Blessing" radio program in the 1940s, followed by the Spanish broadcast "La Hora Nazarena" and later by broadcasts in other languages. Indigenous holiness churches in Australia and Italy united in the 1940s, others in Canada and Great Britain in the 1950s, and one in Nigeria in 1988.

As the church grew culturally and linguistically diverse, it committed itself in 1980 to internationalization—a deliberate policy of being one church of congregations and districts worldwide, rather than splitting into national churches like earlier Protestant denominations. By the 2001 General Assembly, 42 percent of delegates spoke English as their second language or did not speak it at all. Today 65 percent of Nazarenes and over 80 percent of the church's 439 districts are outside the United States. An early system of colleges in North America and the British Isles has become a global network of institutions. Nazarenes support 14 liberal arts institutions in Africa, Brazil, Canada, Caribbean, Korea, and the United States, as well as five graduate seminaries, 31 undergraduate Bible/theological colleges, 2 nurses training colleges, and one education college worldwide.

For more information on the history of the Church of the Nazarene, visit Nazarene Archives.

The seven denominations were: the Central Evangelical Holiness Association (New England), the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America (Middle Atlantic States), New Testament Church of Christ (South), Independent Holiness Church (Southwest), the Church of the Nazarene (West Coast), the Pentecostal Church of Scotland, and the Pentecostal Mission (Southeast). Several mergers occurred regionally before regional churches, in turn, united together in 1907 and 1908.

ABOUT US

Learn about Rolla Church of the Nazarene

WELCOME

MEET THE PASTORAL TEAM OF ROLLA CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE

We desire for you to find a place to belong.

STATEMENT OF MISSION

ROLLA CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE

The mission of the Rolla Church of the Nazarene is to make Christlike disciples in the nations.

AGREED STATEMENT OF BELIEFS

TRINITY

SCRIPTURE

SINFUL NATURE

ETERNITY

SALVATION

SANCTIFICATION

THE HOLY SPIRIT

CHRIST'S RETURN

WHY US?

CORE VALUES

A CHRISTIAN PEOPLE

A HOLINESS PEOPLE

A MISSIONAL PEOPLE

ROLLA CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE HISTORY

Faithfully serving the Rolla, Missouri community.

2 Central Themes illuminate the Church of the Nazarene

Unity in Holiness

Mission to the World

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