Nazarenes in the News is a compilation of online news articles featuring Nazarene churches or church members.   

Sargent, Auville inducted into National Nazarene Softball Hall of Fame 

Cincinnati, Ohio

(The Daily Herald,  December 3) If you have attended a service at the Grace Church of the Nazarene during the past several decades, chances are either Jack Auville or Billy Sargent welcomed you in and presented you with a church bulletin.

There are other members of the Grace Church who did the same, but there have been no other person during that time to coach their top men’s slow-pitch softball team. They have guided their team to many local and for that matter national championships.

I should note that at times Grace Church has fielded as many as three men’s teams and a women’s team during a season so they have had more coaches, but Sargent and Auville are in their fourth or fifth decade of making out the line-ups and guiding the players around the bases.

In fact, Sargent and Auville have so dedicated to their sports ministry that the two former Columbia Post 19 Junior American League baseball coaches were inducted into the Nazarene National Hall of Fame in Cincinnati during Labor Day weekend when their team repeated as champs in the 35th annual Nazarene National Tournament hosted by the Springdale Church of the Nazarene.

For the rest of this story, click here. 

True ministry occurs outside walls of church

Sedona, Arizona

(Verde News, December 1) For "Pastor Jim" Cunningham, his ministry happens most often outside the walls of his church. "I spend about three-fourths of my time ministering to the community, and to those outside my church," he says. 

That ministry happens physically rather than with the 30 or 40 people who attend services at the Church of the Nazarene in the Village of Oak Creek. On the day we spoke, he had spent the first of two days helping to move to a new house, but it also means sitting with a family in the waiting room of a hospital, or talking to someone informally outside a local convenience store.

Pastor Jim started out in Sedona in 1983 and he and his wife were the first couple married at L'Auberge. His parents started the church, and after he attended Nazarene Bible College, he returned to the VOC in February 2009 to begin his first official pastorate. "The Sedona area has always felt like home to us, and we love it here. I'm a small town boy at heart."

For the rest of this story, click here. 

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--Compiled by NCN News