From its beginnings the denomination combined a warm-hearted revivalism with a strong commitment to education, missions and social ministry among the poor, the very name "Nazarene" was chosen to evoke the lowly associations of Jesus of Nazareth and a ministry to the marginalised. It built a network of colleges, universities and seminaries, and an energetic overseas mission programme that made it, over the twentieth century, a genuinely global church. Governed by a representative polity that blends episcopal, presbyterian and congregational elements, with general superintendents, district assemblies and local congregations, it holds a quadrennial General Assembly that sets doctrine and discipline.
Today the Church of the Nazarene reports a worldwide membership in the low millions across more than 160 world areas, with much of its growth now outside the United States, in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. Scholars place it among the principal denominations of the Holiness movement, alongside bodies such as the Wesleyan Church and the Salvation Army, and note its close historical and theological kinship with Methodism on one side and with Pentecostalism, which drew heavily on Holiness teaching about the Spirit, on the other, even as the Nazarenes declined to adopt tongues-speaking as evidence of Spirit baptism.