Mission
To make Christlike disciples in the nations.
Our Core Values
We value devoted personal and corporate worship of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We value deep love and support for one another spanning our many cultures, backgrounds, and abilities.
We value personal engagement in Christian leadership and service.
We value wise and generous stewardship of the resources God has entrusted to us.
We value Christian discipleship that enables us to share the gospel, make disciples, and live holy lives.
We value extending godly care and hospitality to our neighbours.
We value conveying God’s unfailing love and faithfulness to the next generations.
We value like-minded, missional partnerships with our immediate community, local charities, and the global Church of the Nazarene.
Our Team
Lori Ward
Lead Pastor
Pastor Lori joined the staff as Associate Pastor in July 2017, and has been serving as our Lead Pastor since February 2020. Before coming to Vancouver, Lori lived and worked in the USA and South Korea. She and her husband, Chris, are parents to 5 teenage and young adult sons. Her academic background includes studies in elementary education, English language acquisition, theology, and trauma. She loves tea and food, knitting and crafting, and spending time with friends and family.
Mo Hickman
Associate Pastor of Creative Community
Mo joined VFCN in the fall of 2022. Her passion to build up the church through creativity and the arts has taken her on a journey across Canada. She grew up in Oxford, Nova Scotia, completed a Bachelor of Theology from Ambrose University in Calgary, and a Masters of Arts in Theological Studies from Regent College in Vancouver in 2025. She has served in five churches across four provinces. She enjoys creative writing, board games, trivia, musicals, and roller skating.
Church Board Members
2026-27
Pastor Lori Ward, Chair
Mark Kennedy, Secretary
Charlie Louie, Treasurer
Renée Austin
Nigel Bridgman
Wes Campbell
Gary Galvez
Anabelle Lalantacon
Charlotte Murray
Our History
The Church of the Nazarene in Vancouver, BC was officially organized in 1937, and in 1948 moved to our current location on the corner of East 19th Ave and Windsor. The challenges of our early days were met with the vision, faith, sacrifice, and persistence of devoted pastors and lay people. Some of those early members continue to be vitally part of our church family today, contributing a legacy of faithfulness and longevity.
A variety of ministry initiatives have helped to establish our church over the years: a bus ministry, youth and children’s ministries, choirs, Alpha evangelistic ministries, cross-cultural Work and Witness trips, neighbourhood ESL classes, and more. In the 1980s the Lord enlarged our vision to include multicultural ministries in a variety of languages. This led to the start of Primera Iglesia, our sister Spanish church. In 1991 our members founded Mission Possible in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.
While the methods of our ministries have adapted to our changing community, it is the welcoming love of God extended through the people that has enabled a sense of “home” to flourish over the decades. Our practices of caring for one other and welcoming newcomers into the “family” are well-developed.
Today we are dedicated to worshipping God, developing Christian disciples, and bearing witness to the love of God expressed in the Good News about Jesus.
The Church of the Nazarene is a protestant Christian church in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. We are one of about 30,000 congregations in 165 world areas.
Our denomination was organized in 1908 and is now home to about 2.7 million members.
We heartily believe that the saving grace of God afforded through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is extended to all people everywhere. Furthermore, we are convinced that God is intent on sanctifying us—or transforming our lives to be like Jesus: full of holy love for God and our neighbour.
Our denominational name, the Church of the Nazarene, is a reference to Nathaniel‘s response when he first heard about Jesus, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46). Nathaniel revealed what was commonly known: Nazareth was on the margins of society. Our name represents our desire to identify with Jesus the Nazarene, particularly as he was engaged with the poor and the marginalized. This has been our heartbeat from our earliest days.
Also from our beginning, The Church of the Nazarene has affirmed women in all forms of leadership, including as pastors. We take seriously the testimony of the scriptures and particularly Jesus’ revolutionary inclusion of women in the Kingdom of God.
Like many other denominations, you can find local congregations of The Church of the Nazarene around the world. What is unique about our governance, however, is our ongoing experiment of holding all of these churches together as one body under the leadership of six co-equal general superintendents. Bringing together the expressions of the Church from around the world is one way we try to express the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Learn more about The Church of the Nazarene at nazarene.org.
