Church in Riverton WY Riverton First Church of the Nazarene

ABOUT US

Learn about Riverton First Church of the Nazarene

Riverton First Church of the Nazarene is a life-giving church in Riverton, WY that is committed to a culture of love and generosity in the name of Jesus Christ. We are a community of believers who desire to know God more closely.

Pursuing God, together.

We are a conservative christian church with an emphasis on missions and Christ centered living. We come from the Wesleyan theological tradition. We believe in the Holy Trinity; God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit with an emphasis on the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit. We have the old Hymns as well as contemporary christian music and we usually have both in our services. We are evangelical in nature and believe Jesus came to "seek and save the lost". We believe that Jesus is coming back to take the church, His bride, to dwell with him for all eternity.

 

WE ARE A:

• Christian church with Jesus as the head

• Mission-oriented church and are called to go into all the world

• Holiness church - we profess the saving, sanctifying power of Christ

Church of the Nazarene Statement of Mission

The mission of the Church of the Nazarene is to make Christlike disciples in the nations.

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. 

Statement of Beliefs

TRINITY
SCRIPTURE
SINFUL NATURE
ETERNITY
SALVATION
SANCTIFICATION
THE HOLY SPIRIT
CHRIST'S RETURN

Nazarene Church Core Values

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).

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”

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.

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Riverton First Church Leadership

Meet the Riverton First Church of the Nazarene pastoral team.

Pastor Tim Brown

Pastor Tim Brown and his wife Cheryl were born in Riverton, WY and raised on ranches west of town. After graduating from the University of Wyoming, they moved to Kansas to pursue ministerial training at the Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, MO. Upon graduating from NTS they were called to pastor in North Dakota where they served for 30 years. After leaving ND, they came home to the Riverton area and have been serving the Riverton Nazarene Church. They have two children and three grandchildren.

Riverton First Church history

Serving the Riverton community for almost 100 years

  1. In 1930, a group of Nazarenes rented a tent in Riverton to have a series of services.
  2. In 1931, the Nazarene church was officially organized and started out in a 36' x 50' wooden building
  3. In 1950, as the church grew, the local congregation built a newer, bigger church building at 5th and Jefferson, Riverton.
  4. As the church continued to grow, the Nazarenes purchased land on Sunset Dr and the new stone structure (our current building) was dedicated in 1980.