About Us

"We're still here and we still care." This is a church slogan implemented by our late pastor Earl Hissom many years ago. We have revived this slogan because this church has been here a long time and we do offer compassion and understanding to any who come through our doors in need.

Hissom Tabernacle is first and foremost a mission church. We minister locally to our underfed, underhoused, and underchurched community. We gather at Hissom Tabernacle to work for the glory of God. We minister as we are able to our neighbors, praying that we project the light of God into the world. How? By planting seeds in fertile ground instead of empty bellies. We actively participate in God's kingdom here on earth though our Meal and Outreach program, where we feed people and provide some basic hygiene and other supplies.

We also support the Hissom Inter-City Mission, which operates a food pantry, HUD/MOD apartments and a Thrift Store. We learn biblical servitude from worship service and scripture lessons and then put them in action, right here in our building and on our neighborhood streets.

The mission of giving at Hissom Tabernacle was a way of life for the founder Earl Hissom, Sr. If you travel through the Kanawha Valley for just a day you can hear people tell their stories of Earl Hissom, Sr's ministry and radio program. The Hissom Holiness Tabernacle and Hissom Mission began serving free Thanksgiving dinners in 1933, the same year the tabernacle was founded by the Rev. Earl Hissom. The dinners were served in tents until the current building was completed, at the corner of Spring Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Today, the Thanksgiving Day tradition of free dinners still continues at Hissom Tabernacle. Each generation of Earl's picked up the torch of his father and added to its glow. And, although Earl III passed away in 2007, his wife, Bonnie picked up the torch and carried on service at the tabernacle for many years and still serves as a prayer warrior and the church pianist. The church is still committed to service with the same dedication and caring. We follow the scripture quoted by Earl Sr. "And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled" (Luke 14:23); Earl Jr's favorite verse, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8); Earl III's favorite scripture, "Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14) as our torch. Our outreach team uses Earl III's slogan as a guiding light to remind our community "We're still here and we still care!"

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.

ABOUT US

Learn about Hissom Tabernacle Church of the Nazarene

We gather to work for the Glory of God.

Hissom Tabernacle Leadership

Hissom Tabernacle History

Church of the Nazarene Statement of Mission

Statement of Beliefs

Core Values

A Christian People

A Holiness People

A Missional People