The Church of the Nazarene

Denomination·Founded 1908 CE·est. 2,724,006 members in 30,747 congregations across 165 world areas, from the denomination's own reporting. Growth is almost entirely outside the United States and Canada — the Africa and Asia-Pacific regions have expanded while the American membership has been flat or declining for two decades.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Church of the Nazarene

Branch
Rite of The Church of the Nazarene

The altar call, and the rail people actually kneel at.

Nazarene churches are built with a rail across the front and it is used weekly, for conversion and for sanctification both. Seekers kneel and someone kneels with them; the meeting waits. It is the tradition's central act and its most exportable one.

⏱ Weekly — the altar call at Sunday services, and at revival and camp meetings through the year◌ Anyone present
What happensPreaching, then an invitation to come forward and kneel at the altar rail; someone kneels with the seeker and prays; testimony follows in a later meeting
What it needsAn altar rail at the front of the church, and a congregation that will wait
What it aims atThat the decision be made now, in public, and not deferred
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this rite is held

The altar call is the Wesleyan-holiness tradition's inheritance from the camp meeting and the Nazarenes have kept it in weekly use when many revivalist bodies have not. The physical arrangement matters: a rail runs across the front, low enough to kneel at, and the invitation is given after the sermon at almost every service. People come for conversion, for sanctification, for rededication, for anything. Someone comes and kneels beside them. The tradition's associated institution is the camp meeting — a week or ten days of preaching in a tabernacle, historically at a permanent campground with cabins — and district camps remain a fixture. Where Nazarene work has grown fastest, in Africa and the Philippines and Central America, the camp meeting and the altar have travelled essentially unchanged.

The same ground, other faiths

rites that share this one's ideas
Puja — the daily offering. Hinduism Go deeper →
Taking refuge. Buddhism Go deeper →
The eightfold offering. Jainism Go deeper →
Tefillin and tallit. Judaism Go deeper →
The sign of the cross. Christianity Go deeper →
The diwan — the gurdwara service. Sikhism Go deeper →

The conversation

argument stays attached to the rite it is about All discussion →

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