What is the largest Nazarene Church in the United States? In the world?
I’m wanting to know what the largest congregation is for the Church of the Nazarene. It can be based either on official membership, or average church attendance.
Grove City Church of The Nazarene, Grove City, Ohio is the largest in the U.S. In other countries Haiti, then India has largest number of members.
What’s In A Name? (#8)
I am going to end this series with a look at the founder of Christianity- Paul, not Jesus! James the Just (brother of Jesus) continued the family tradition, the Nazarene tradition, and the Jewish heritage by overseeing the Church at Jerusalem while Paul started a new religion now called Christianity. But, was he really a “tent-maker”?
I know how hard it is for someone who has been taught for decades as to what the Bible IS, to suddenly see it differently. It’s a feat much like T. S. Eliot said, “And seeing it for the first time”.
The CHIMERICAL tent-maker vision that was sold to me as a young convert was much different than that which I now see and embrace. Remember now, I am just speculating, trying to THINK (something that most Christians are encouraged to NOT do) through some things. Don’t forget that the Catholic Church leaders and priests spoke in LATIN precisely so that the hearers would not understand the Bible (not so much so today). I can’t tell you how many Catholics, who have converted to some form of Protestantism have never owned a Bible.
But, back to the point.
Does it really seem logical that Paul who was a rabbi, traveling all over the landscape would suddenly become a “tent-maker”? This is quite a break from the unique profession for an aristocratic Jew in the priesthood, who had studied under the most famous of teachers. Could this have been a common name given Saul-Paul so that the truth of WHO he really was got a bit hidden?
Many are surprised when it’s said that Paul is the founder of Christianity- the ARCHITECT!
The Greek word for tent maker is SKENOPOIOS. I know, I know, means Greek to me! This is the same word for TABERNACLE which is essence is saying that Paul belongs to the illustrious line of ARCHITECTS (builders of both the Tabernacle and the Temple). Let’s add to this the possibility that the Hebrew root word is QABBAH. Christians surely don’t want to go “there”.
Qabbah was the word for the esoteric fraternity known as Kabbalah- MASONS!
There’s so much DEPTH and MYSTERY to the Bible and that which we Westerners call GOD! However, main stream Christian religion has wanted to SIMPLIFY and LITERALIZE everything. It reminds me of Thomas Jefferson who took all of the miracles out of the Bible and wrote his own Jeffersonian Bible. What can be taken away from God? Who can box-in God? What religion is so big that it has all of God that there is? Why must we demand that people interpret the Bible from only one paradigm (ours)?
So, what’s in a name? Whatever you want IN a NAME is there and what you don’t want isn’t. It’s most important that one finds LOVE in every name, above all else. Love (God) gives to all FREE WILL. God doesn’t want me, or you, to SEE things exactly the same, because if we did so, that would LIMIT the experiences of God Himself. God loves us so much that he’s given us FREE WILL. May we use it wisely. May we give it away. May we BE it.
And may we demonstrate it with the simple act of not demanding that everyone thinks as we do!
About the Author
As a spiritual-futurist, I have a BA degree majoring in history. One cannot know the future without knowing the past which holds clues to what is on the horizon. The world is in such a rapid expansion of knowledge that we are close to entering a tipping point that will forever change earth as we know it.