The Tribune

LAST week the Bahamas District Church of the Nazarene celebrated 37 years of ministry in the Bahamas in its District Conventions and Assembly at the Hilton Outten Convention Centre, Freeport, Bahamas.

Pastors, district leaders, delegates, and members from 13 churches around the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos gathered for a conclave of worship, thanksgiving, and district business.

"Yet, the church of the Nazarene is so much more than what we see here in the Bahamas, " said Rev John C. Wildgoose III, newly elected District Superintendent.

"We are a part of a great church with a rich, well-established, tried and true biblical doctrine, history, and government," he said.

The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelical Christian denomination that emerged out of the 19th century Holiness movement in North America. It is the largest Wesleyan-holiness denomination in the world reporting over 2.1 million members at the end of September 2011.

These members worship in over 27,000 churches in 157 different world areas. Besides this, the Church of the Nazarene supports more than 54 undergraduate and graduate universities and colleges in 35 countries on 6 continents around the world with an enrollment of some 50,000 students.

"Our mission as a church is to make Christlike disciples in the nations," said Rev Wildgoose.

"And as a district, this mission is at the very cortex of our minds and ministry. This is why evangelism, discipleship, and training are such an integral part of what we do as a church. God has called us first and foremost to be Christians: that is, to be Christlike; to be formed, conformed, and transformed into the image of the revelatory Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. And as we witness to this work of the Spirit by our holy lives, he has commissioned us to do our part in the body of Christ to help win a dying world back to God."

Rev Wildgoose, the senior pastor of Faith Church of the Nazarene in West End, was recently elected to the highest office on the Bahamas District Church of the Nazarene at the District Assembly on March 10, 2012. Rev Wildgoose, who has training and background in banking, business administration, theology, counseling, psychology, and teaching, also holds a master's degree in counseling and psychology from the denominations institution of higher learning in Trinidad, West Indies. He is a proud resident of Eight Mile Rock, Grand Bahama.