Talk:Church of the Nazarene

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of the Church of the Nazarene WikiProject, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to the Church of the Nazarene. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

Seglea, I think your addition about the origin of the name Nazarene is a good idea for this Church of the Nazarene article. But I am also of the opinion that the amount of detail you give about the sect is too much, some of which is irrelevant to the piece. Just my thoughts; I don't plan to change it. Rlvaughn 01:25, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

General: I cleaned up the article using mostly information from the Church's website; the original article felt very fractured, had sections that were written in an unencyclopaedic style, and wasn't consistently wikified. If I've eliminated anything important feel free to put it back, but as someone who is not involved with the church at all, I tried to clear up some of the confusion I found trying to read the history, especially. Cobaltnine 16:45, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 agreed but no action yet 2 Messianic Jews 3 "holiness people" 4 Colleges and Universities 5 Education 6 Added Ministerial positions and worship style 7 Links to local districts/churches 8 Moved "Articles of Faith" 9 Please use the discussion page! 10 Strong recommendation on local church websites

[edit] agreed but no action yet

RIvaughan: On the whole I agree with you - I shifted this stuff over from Methodism, where it was hopelessly over-detailed and out of place, but it still seems over the top even here, where it connects more sensibly. Also I had to make it longer to get rid of a NPOV approach that whoever put in originally had taken. It seems to me what we really need is an article on the original Nazarenes, which all this could go in, and then just a reference to it from the Church of the Nazarene. But I don't know enough about them to write that - do you?

I've been admiring your work on all the subdivisions of the Baptists, by the way - are you going to do the same for the Methodists? I would do the bits of UK Methodism, but I am away from my usual base and don't have the reference books to hand.

seglea 06:09, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think you're right about needing an article on the original "Nazarenes". Those comments in more detail would be relevant there, and a short reference to the reason for the name of the "Church of the Nazarene" could be made here (and link to the "Nazarene" article). I don't know enough about them to undertake an article without restudying. Maybe at some later point I would have time. Thanks for the compliment on the Baptist subdivisions. I am a Baptist, and the sub-groups of the Baptists in the US is my area of interest. After finishing them, I branched out into some related groups - Brethren, Amish, & Church of God. Several pentecostal holiness bodies are "Baptist descendants". Many people may not realize that some of the "holiness" traits were common among the Separate Baptists (informal unprepared worship, shouting, testifying, impromptu sermons, etc.). It was teachings like entire sanctification, speaking in tongues, apostasy, etc. that caused the division. I've written one article on the Methodists (the Fundamental Methodist Conference) because my grandmother was born in that area and I actually have some relatives that are members. Beyond that, I don't have a lot of expertise on the Methodists, but I'll try and pitch in when I can. - Rlvaughn 22:43, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, that should read "a POV approach" in my comment above (of course)!

I'll try and get together a stub on the original Nazarenes if I can find any well-referenced material on the web.

seglea 22:46, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Ah well, I find we already had an entry on Nazarene. It was a tad POV, and sparse, but I have tidied things up somewhat, put in a link, and reduced the discussion of the name in the present article. seglea 00:21, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Good rewrite and improvement to the 'Church of the Nazarene' article. Rlvaughn 01:30, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Messianic Jews

The article currently says that there are groups of Messianic Jews within the Church of the Nazarene. Is this really true? Sounds implausible to me, and it could easily be an error. Can anyone confirm, and preferably document? seglea 06:17, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The Chuch of the Nazarene has Beth Simchat Hamashiach as one of the Church's multicultural ministries: http://www.multiculturalministries.org/scmessianic.html

I've met Messianic Jews in the Church of the Nazarene in Maine. That's just anecdotal, but there it is. dchasteen 08:50, 21 Sep 2006 (EST)

[edit] "holiness people"

Does "holiness people" = "Christian believers"? --Menchi 16:18, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC) There unfortunately is a "Messianic Jewish" congregation from the Church of the Nazarene in Arizona called Beth Simcha Hamashiach. The "Messianic Jewish" movement is merely an attempt by Christians (started by the Anglicans and the Presbyterians) in the 1800's to convert the Jews, and is dishonest in its treatment of the Jewish people.

[edit] Colleges and Universities

Several external links to Nazarene universities have been added. Personally, I think this is unnecessary as long as we still have the internal link to the category for universities and colleges affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene (it seems like we're duplicating the link unnecessarily). I'm going to take them out as long as there aren't any objections. If anyone else wants to add links to these universities, I would encourage you to check the specific articles for them and put the links there. Cswrye 03:10, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Education

In the 'Activities' section, I replaced the text 'Education (Childcare, Primary, Secondary, Higher Education)' with the original 'higher education'. The Church of the Nazarene does not run primary or secondary schools in the United States; those primary schools outside of the United States do not have websites to link to. The education section of their website has more info at [1]. Since this is a revert to an earlier phrasing, I thought I'd include an explanation here so nothing's misconstrued. biriwilg 03:42, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added Ministerial positions and worship style

If there are any disagreements with my additions, feel free to make neutral changes, but leave me a note on this discussion page or My Talk Page --Mphamilton 06:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

If running the aisles is what it sounds like, take it out of quotes, or otherwise define it for people unfamiliar, because it's kind of sticking out (this is such a little detail).

I did some more cleanup from an external POV using official websites and statements as a guide. Some of you who are Nazarenes who are editing this keep slipping into the first person, which should be avoided. In one example, there was no need to bold 'homosexuality' and 'sin' in the sentence from the Board, as it was not done that way on the Board's website; there are also a few 'we' statements that float in.

Someone who knows about the structure of the church's organization should lay it out - the page for the United Methodist Church is the one I was sort-of following. By this I mean 'the head church is Here, this is the structure of reporting upwards, who directs who,' etc. Cobaltnine 02:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I used quotations for running the aisles because that is the terminology used by Nazarenes. People actually run up and down the aisles of the church. It is not a common occurence anymore.--Mphamilton 08:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thank you for clarifying. Cobaltnine 23:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links to local districts/churches

I see that one person has added his or her local links in a "local" section at the bottom. While something like that could make a viable separate page if enough such links arose, it seems out of place on the overall CotN page, especially with only those three links. I will probably remove those links and the heading at some point if I don't hear a better idea from someone.--Grinik 01:47, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Could someone create a map of the disrict boundaries and regions and such? Moonraker0022 19:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moved "Articles of Faith"

I moved the "Articles of Faith" to its own separate article. It was too large to be included in this general topic, summary article on the Church of the Nazarene. It is now placed at Church of the Nazarene-Articles of Faith. Mphamilton 18:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please use the discussion page!

Mr. (or Mrs.) "71.79.37.118," I have yet to notice "vandalism." In any case, though, such supposedly major questions of content should be discussed here, not fought over with edits. I am certainly not a long-time Wiki contributor, but I have been able to look around on discussion pages and see how good articles come about. Please help the community by working with an attitude of cooperation.--Grinik 03:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Strong recommendation on local church websites

I strongly suggest that all links to local church websites and district websites be moved onto a separate page. My reasoning is that everyone will start adding their own local church's website one-by-one until the list reaches into the hundreds. Moving the links now would forego this possibility. Mphamilton 08:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

As I mentioned in my comment above, I pretty much agree with you, although it's more just because the local information doesn't seem to fit on this page. No one commented on what I said above, and a few new links have been added, so I hadn't yet done anything about it. I say go for it now, though.--Grinik 20:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)