What is the Nazarene connection to all this?

Long Answer: The Allelon Missional Schools Project was launched after papers were written to explain the teachings of Allelon.  The four papers what were written were by Dr Dean Blevins: Nazarene Theological Seminary - Kansas City, Dr Mark Lau Branson/Dr Ryan Bolger: Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Dr S. Mark Heim: Andover Newton Theological School, Dr J. Nelson Kraybill: Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana (http://www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=335)

The tradition of the Church of the Nazarene is best described as Methodist, or “Wesleyan” to acknowledge Holiness and some Pentecostal movements often framed as renewal movements inside Methodism. … As will be seen; missional proclivities remain woven, to some degree, into the DNA of Wesleyan praxis. (http://www.allelon.org/ARTICLES/article.cfm?id=327)

Of course one has to wonder how you can have a “missional proclivity” long before that concept was even being used.  But this shows that the EC leadership is using the emphasis on praxis already in the Wesleyan churches like the Nazarenes to attempt to ride their false ideas in on that bandwagon.

The 2006 ALLELON SUMMER LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE -- Training and Formation for Missional Leaders was held at Eagle Nazarene Church, 1001 W. State St., Eagle, ID, cost $250. (http://www.churchinnovations.org/05_news/pii_v6_i1/pii_v6_i1_lewis.html)

Notice that Alan Roxburgh was a teacher at this Nazarene church seminar.  Here is part of what they presented.

Forming Missional Leaders
Alan Roxburgh and Mark Priddy will provide participants with a clear, well-tested process for identifying the skills and capacities needed to innovate missional life in an existing leadership context. Because pre-course work is involved, the registration deadline for this course is April 30.

So they are not teaching Biblical concepts but “innovating” missional ideas among the leadership of churches.

They are moving toward “ordered communities” with “communal considerations”?  Sounds like Utopian hippie talk to me.  The term “birthing” is taken right out of the New Apostolic Reformation.  Do Nazarenes want to be innovated into communities where the leadership has total apostolic control over their thoughts, “habits and practices”?  If I were a Nazarene I would be really skeptical of this movement at this point.

On the web site “Emergent Nazarenes” there are a whole list of contributors from the Nazarene denomination who are urging the Nazarenes into the EC. (http://emergentnazarenes.blogspot.com/)

The current general superintendents, elected in 2005, are the following: Paul G. Cunningham, James H. Diehl, Nina G. Gunter, Jesse C. Middendorf, Jerry D. Porter and J. K. Warrick. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Nazarene)  As far as I can tell all of the above are allowing the Emerging Church into the Church of the Nazarene.  On the official Church of the Nazarene site, http://www.nazarene.org they have a whole subset of the site dedicated to Emerging (http://www.nazarenemissions.org/10002/story.aspx). Even their banner on the nazarene.org site uses the words Christian … holiness … missional.  Missional is a term of the Emerging Church, not of Biblical Christian churches.  The Global Mission Conference, though exposing youth to other cultures, is using the terminology of the EC to bring the young generation into line with EC ideas. (http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/MediaView.aspx?mediaId=347e0fe9-5e3f-46e6-8e1a-743ce8db1be7)  Terms like “encountering stories” and making them part of yours, “a conversation in God’s global story”, “experience global prayer”, “discuss responsible compassion”, “engage in conversation”, “join the coversation”, and “join the story” are all expressions that are being used in EC conferences.  The “missional church” is also expounded upon on the Nazarene main site on this page: http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/using the search term “missional”.

An article by Ron Benefiel who is president of Nazarene Theological Seminary is posted on the Allelon site. (Response to Craig Van Gelder’s - “ENGAGING THE MISSIONAL CHURCH CONVERSATION AS A FRAMEWORK FOR DEVELOPING MISSIONAL THEOLOGY” by Ron Benefiel, President, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO, http://www.allelon.org/projects/Benefiels_response_CVG.pdf)  In that article he states:  “I have jotted down some of what I understand to be some of the theological and sociological challenges in moving from the church that “is” toward the missional church that I understand we are called to be.”  The problem is that The Bible has not called us to be “missional”, at least not the way it is being defined in the EC.  We are called to carry out the Great Commission and to encourage and build one another up in the Faith, that is in sound doctrine.  We are to be light and salt to the world, but we are not called to work with every nere-do-well who comes wafting through our churches, denominations or organizations with a “new map”.  But it is obvious to me that Nazarene Theological Seminary is being guided by the EC, not solid Biblical teaching.  Maybe they should just rename the school “Nazarene Missional Seminary” or “Nazarene We Love McLaren Seminary” or some more appropriate name because they are now spouting the same new unbiblical ideas as the EC and have little interest, apparently, in what the Bible says about how we should carry out the task of evangelism or the teaching of sound doctrine.  To be “theological” we must follow what God says, not men who use their imaginations to come up with ways to empower, enrich and make a name for themselves.

So it appears that EC is a done deal in the Church of the Nazarene as it is in many other mainline denominations.  Why churches allow individuals with false teachings to come in from the outside and bombard their churches with unbiblical ideas is beyond me.