About Us

Lanett Nazarene Church understands that we cannot truly serve Christ unless we are serving others. Our mission is to bring people to the Kingdom and to bring the Kingdom to the people. We exist to get people to heaven, but also to bring heaven to earth. We understand that the church exists for a greater purpose than to just host worship services. We exist to worship through our service of others. Our acts of serving others is our greatest act of worship.

Therefore, we are heavily involved in community service. We provide a weekly service for the residents of a local Nursing Home. We also serve them in several other ways. We offer a "Community Closet," which offers necessary items to the needy in our community free of charge. We provide a warming station in the winter to provide a warm place for people to stay. This is just a small sampling of the services we offer as our worship to the LORD.

My name is Harold Henson. My wife Angie and I have had the great honor of being the pastors of this great church since June of 2022. We have been in pastoral ministry since 2002 and have pastored in Indiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Alabama. Ministerially speaking, I have three great passions. I love to dig into and explain the richness, and continuity of God's Holy Word. I do this through preaching and teaching. I also have a great passion to serve, for if we do not serve others, we are not truly serving Christ. The third is prayer.

We are a Great Commission church. As a global community of faith, we are commissioned to take the Good News of life in Jesus Christ to people everywhere and to spread the message of scriptural holiness across the lands.

The Church of the Nazarene bonds together individuals who have made Jesus Christ Lord of their lives, sharing in Christian fellowship, and seeking to strengthen each other in faith development through worship, preaching, training, and service to others.

We strive to express the compassion of Jesus Christ to all persons along with our personal commitment to Christlike living. While the primary motive of the church is to glorify God, we also are called to actively participate in His mission — reconciling the world to himself.

The statement of mission contains historical essentials of our mission: Evangelism, Sanctification, Discipleship, Compassion. The essence of holiness is Christlikeness. Nazarenes are becoming a sent people-into homes, work places, communities, and villages as well as other cities and countries. Missionaries are now sent from all regions of the world. God continues calling ordinary people to do extraordinary things made possible by the person of the Holy Spirit.

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).

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”

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.

Beginning as a cottage prayer ministry in early 1929, Lanett Church Of The Nazarene has a long history of serving the local community.

The first building was completed in 1930 on a donated lot originally a frog pond. While the pond was being drained to prepare the lot for a building, a young barefoot boy came by driving his cows to pasture and asked the workers what they were doing. They replied, “We are preparing the lot to build a Church of the Nazarene.” The barefoot boy reached in his pocket and pulled out six cents saying “I want to make a donation on the church building.” The donation of property and 6 cents donated by the little boy, were the first donations toward the building of the first Church.

In 1953, Rev. W. A. Peck accepted the pastorate of Lanett Church. The tremendous responsibility of building a new church fell into his hands and the present building was erected.

Under the leadership of Rev. Brumbeloe, who started his ministry in 1962, the Tea Room was built and a new parsonage built directly behind the church to replace the earlier building that had been destroyed by a fire.

In May 1973, Rev. Gerald Parmer accepted the pastorate of Lanett Church and under his leadership progress was made with the construction of the Sunday School Annex and the recreational building, now named the Family Life Center.

Under the leadership of Rev. Phillip Sessions in 1981 work commenced to remodel the recreational building adding additional workrooms, a recreation room and a furnished living room. On Jun 15, 1986, the newly remodeled facility was officially dedicated and named the “Messer Memorial Family Life Center".

Rev. Sessions initiated and activated a great bus ministry. Rev. Leroy Shipley, Associate Pastor was given responsibility of Bus Ministry Director and under his supervision the “Caraway Street Puppet Ministry” was begun. The bus and puppet ministry were very effective and a tremendous increase in Sunday School prevailed. Upon resignation as church Pastor, Rev. Sessions accepted the leadership of District Superintendent of South Alabama Churches of the Nazarene. As Superintendent, Rev. Sessions received his Doctorate.

With successive leadership by other pastors the Church has continued to serve the local community. Our current Pastor Rev Harold Henson can be found walking the local streets early in the mornings reaching out to the community.

ABOUT US

WELCOME

LANETT CHURCH LEADERSHIP

STATEMENT OF MISSION

STATEMENT OF BELIEFS

CORE VALUES

A CHRISTIAN PEOPLE

A HOLINESS PEOPLE

A MISSIONAL PEOPLE

LANETT CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE HISTORY

COMING SUNDAY?