<P> During 2016, Nazarene churches received annual income from all sources of US $860,949,037, a decrease of US $941,336 from 2015, and a 3.79% decadal decrease from the US $894,866,142 reported in September 2006 . Worldwide per capita expenses amounted to US $353.04 (a decrease of $198.77 from that reported in 2006). </P> <P> The Church of the Nazarene is the product of a series of mergers that occurred between various holiness churches, associations and denominations throughout the 20th century . The most prominent of these mergers took place at the First and Second General Assemblies, held at Chicago, Illinois, and Pilot Point, Texas in 1907 and 1908, respectively . The primary architect of these early mergers was C.W. Ruth . </P> <P> The First General Assembly held in Chicago, Illinois from October 10--17, 1907 brought together the Eastern and the Western streams . The Western group was the Church of the Nazarene founded in October 1895 in Los Angeles, California by Dr. Phineas F. Bresee, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Dr Joseph Pomeroy Widney, a Methodist physician, and the second president of the University of Southern California . The Eastern group was the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, a denomination formed on April 13, 1897 through the merger of two older bodies: The Central Evangelical Holiness Association (organized March 13--14, 1890) and led by Fred A. Hillery and C. Howard Davis; and three churches organized by William Howard Hoople since January 1894, and formed into the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America . On November 12, 1896, these two groups met in Brooklyn, agreed upon a plan of union, which included retaining the name and Manual of Hoople's group . Prominent leaders included Hiram F. Reynolds, Davis, and Hoople . At the time of its merger with the Church of the Nazarene in 1907, the APCA existed principally from Nova Scotia to Iowa and the northeastern United States . The name of the united body adopted at the First General Assembly was Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, and Bresee and Reynolds were elected the first general superintendents . </P> <P> In April 1908 Bresee accepted Edgar P. Ellyson, president of the Holiness University of Texas of Peniel, Texas, his wife, Mary Emily Ellyson (1869--1943), and many leaders and members of the Holiness Association of Texas into the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, with Emily Ellyson elected pastor of the new congregation at Peniel . In September 1908 the Pennsylvania Conference of the Holiness Christian Church under the leadership of Horace G. Trumbauer merged with the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene . </P>

When did the church of the nazarene start