The Church of God (Holiness) is an association of autonomous holinessChristian congregations.
The Church of God (Holiness) began in 1886 with the founding of a church in Centralia, Missouri. The movement grew out of disaffected Methodists that had been participating in the Southwestern Holiness Association. The leading cause of their departure from the Methodist Church was their zealous propogation of the doctrine of entire sanctification, and Methodist opposition to it. The churches were originally referred to as Independent Holiness People. One of the early leaders was John Petit Brooks (1826-1915), who was editor of the Banner of Holiness, and later The Good Way and The Church Herald. He left the Methodist Episcopal Church circa 1886.
The doctrines of the Church of God (Holiness) are revealed in a ten-article statement of faith, emphasizing the triune Godhead, the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, the sinfulness of man, salvation by grace through faith in the blood of Christ, and entire sanctification as a second work of grace. Two ordinances are observed - water baptism and the Lord's supper.
The Church of God (Holiness) has about 120 congregations in the United States, with the majority in Missouri and Kansas. Additionally they have ten congregations among the Navajo Indians and 11 Spanish-speaking congregations. Ministry departments of the church include Home Missions, World Missions, Harmony Hill Youth Ministries, and the Herald and Banner Press. Headquarters are located in Overland Park, Kansas. A general church conference is held annually. World missions works are found in Bolivia, the British West Indies, the Virgin Islands, Nigeria, and the Ukraine.
External links
Church of God (Holiness) (http://www.cogh.net/) - unofficial Web Site
God cannot be classified or defined, as contingent beings are classified and defined; for there is no aspect of being in which He is perfectly similar to the finite, and consequently no genus in which He can be included.
That God is not subject to spatial limitations follows from His infinite simplicity; and that He is truly present in every place or thing -- that He is omnipresent or ubiquitous -- follows from the fact that He is the cause and ground of all reality.
God first destines a man to glory antecedently to any foreseen merits, and consequently upon this decrees to give the efficacious grace by which it is obtained.
It would be an awful reflection on the holiness of God to have many wives and separate rival families, and they of the nude and lude character Bishop Foster ascribes to the modern sects.
The church, compared with a human body, is required to have but one mouth, which means perfect harmony in all her teaching.
When a non-professing sinner is converted to God and born of the Spirit, he is thereby made a member of the church of God, but is in no sect at all.