Bishop James D. Leggett was reelected on July 26th to serve his third, four-year term as general superintendent of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. Because of the denomination’s term limitations policy, Leggett was required to receive a two-thirds vote to allow his name to be placed on the ballot.

The IPHC held its 25th General Conference (quadrennial) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 26-29. In an unprecedented move for the denomination, delegates voted to increase the size of the church’s General Executive Board (GEB) to 13 members, including one Hispanic representative, two pastoral representatives, and one lay person, the later of which, Mrs. Trish Weedn, is the first lay person and first woman to serve on the GEB.

At a meeting in Sydney, Australia, on May 4, 2005, the Advisory Committee of the Pentecostal World Fellowship (PWF) chose James Leggett as its new chairman. Leggett is the fourth Pentecostal leader to chair the PWF since its organization in 1947 in Zurich, Switzerland. He also co-chairs the Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches of North America (PCCNA) with Bishop George McKinney of the Church of God in Christ.

The 25th General Conference marks 107 years of ministry for the IPHC. The church ministers to a worldwide constituency of 4.1 million. In the United States, the IPHC has nearly 300,000 adherents in approximately 2,020 churches.

The theme for the conference, “Multiply! Disciples & Churches,” underscores the denomination’s focus on church planting and discipleship. Nearly three quarters of the new members are the result of new churches.

Leggett’s “State of the Church Report” spotlighted the years from 1991 to 2000 as the fastest growing decade for the church in the U.S. “So far in this first decade of the new millennium, the church is growing at a pace that easily will exceed the previous decade’s record growth,” he says. “The gain for the last decade was 72,000, and in the first four years of this decade we have already added 37,000 new members.”

During this past quadrennium, 493 new PH churches were opened in the United States (an average of 123 a year). This means the fellowship has started more than two churches each week. Those new congregations accounted for 34,540 new members at the end of 2004.