Fast Facts: Centennial Growth

As the Church of the Nazarene celebrates its centennial this year, Nazarenes worldwide hope to have 2 million members and 18,000 organized churches by the end of the 2008-9 reporting season. Despite the size of the denomination in 1908, this ambitious goal is well within reach.

	World Areas	Organized Churches	Total Members
1908	10	228*	10,413
1933	18	2,130	101,214
1958	40	5,399	349,847
1983	73	7,694	729,989
Today	151	15,359	1,733,772

*At the time of the Pilot Point merger, statistics were not gathered outside Canada and the U.S. But what about the future? Can such phenomenal growth continue? A study presented by Bill M. Sullivan at the 2005 conference of the Association of Nazarene Sociologists and Researchers (ANSR) analyzed many denominations with much longer histories. Several had significantly better growth in their second century than in their first. The Church of the Nazarene, under God's leadership, intends to make even more Christ-like disciples in the nations during the next 100 years. Sullivan's paper can be found on the ANSR pages at the Nazarene Research website: http://www.nazarene.org/files /docs/OrganizationalModel.pdf. Compiled by Dale Jones.

 

< back to Archives