History & Beliefs

Where We Began

Our Story

In 1929, Robert Warland lived in the Dye community and wanted to start a Bible study. At the time, he was a Flint First Church of the Nazarene member. They met in the Dye Junior High School. On September 5, 1929, the Bible study members voted to organize a church.

Thus, the West Flint Church of the Nazarene was born.

After a while, they desired to have their campus and space. A building committee was established.

In the meantime, a tent was purchased for $100.00 for revivals and services. 

They met at the corner of Corunna and Eggleston roads. After a year of services under the tent and in the Warland home, the “little white church” was opened.

At the time, we began with $32.55 in the treasury, one tent for meetings, and 12 folding chairs. In the 1950’s, the “little white church” was torn down to build a new building (this new building functioned as the Church Fellowship Hall before the current FLC was constructed).

On September 16, 1973, West Flint’s board broke ground on our current sanctuary under Rev. Raycroft. Construction began on October 6, 1973, and was completed in 1974.

Church of the Nazarene

<span style="color: var(--primary-color-bg);">A Christian People</span>

A Christian People

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).

<span style="color:var(--primary-color-bg)">A Holiness People</span>

A Holiness People

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” (Leviticus 11:44).

<span style="color:var(--primary-color-bg)">A Missional People</span>

A Missional People

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.

What We Believe 

Articles of Faith