Excerpts from the Mission21 Newsletter
By Presiding Bishop James D. Leggett

The 4th World Pentecostal Holiness Conference in Vancouver, Canada, has created many exciting comments about the world wide ministry of the denomination. Those attending for the first time were most enthusiastic about what they saw and heard. Over and over I heard the comments, “It is so wonderful what God is doing through the church around the world.”

This was the largest world conference, both in international and USA delegates. It was a joy to hear the excitement of pastors and lay people speaking about the work of the Lord on each of the continents. Let me share a few other comments that were made regarding the conference:

Joe Thomas, a former state senator, came to me on the first day simply ecstatic about what God is doing. He simply could not take in the widespread influence of the church. His comments included:

“This was the first conference that I have ever attended on a global basis. I was first of all impressed with the spirit-filled meeting. It was “mind boggling” to meet people from all over the world so committed to what they were doing in their individual countries and professional. They were “top of the line” in their level of our organization. He was impressed with the organization of the entire conference and how well it was carried out. He was impressed with the leadership of Bishop Leggett and the respect he extended to all the leaders around the world and the level of respect that each gave to his leadership. It was unbelievable.”

Comments by other conference participants included:

• "Taking part in the IPHC World Conference was a truly delightful and enlightening experience for me. I would also like to express my utmost gratitude to you for giving me the opportunity to share the vision of Wing Kwong Church. The presentations of national leaders from around the world are all testimonies of God's great work among us. Thank you for your enthralling sermon at the closing. The message of Joshua is a powerful reminder on faith, which we all need in response to the main theme: to multiply." (JoAnne Wong, Pastor of Wing Kwong Church, Hong Kong)
  

• "I wanted to take the opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to you for the World Conference in Vancouver. It was incredible to hear and witness the tremendous things that are happening around the world through IPHC." (Demetrius Miles, Pastor of Tucson Church International, Tucson, Arizona)
  

• "This conference was one of the best. God spoke to me through the fellowship with others, through what God is working around the globe and personally through a prophetic word in that evening when Pastor Miles asked us to pray for one another. I was encouraged because the word was a confirmation of the great things God will do in Romania through us." (Teo Bulzan, Bishop of the IPHC Church of Romania and senior pastor of the mother church in Oradea)
  

• "The North Carolina Conference Board made and passed a motion - 100% - to commend Bishop Leggett, his staff (especially Mike Gray) for a job well done. “We are better individuals because of the Conference. All total we had sixty-one present at the meeting. Each came home as an Evangel to spread the good news of the “global” IPHC family.” (Chris Thompson, Bishop of North Carolina Conference)
  

• "We truly had a great time and felt very satisfied and proud to belong to the IPHC." (Abel Robles, National Leader for the IPHC Pacific Coast Conference of Mexico and pastor of a local church)

An Overview of The Fourth IPHC World Conference
by Shirley G. Spencer

The Fourth World Conference of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, which convened May 13-15, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, seemed more like an extended family reunion than an international church function. The atmosphere crackled with excitement as brothers and sisters from every continent reunited and new family members were introduced and welcomed.

At the opening banquet on Tuesday evening, Presiding Bishop James D. Leggett greeted the over 400 registered guests as well as members of the World Pentecostal Holiness Fellowship (WPHF). Then he introduced a video titled, “A Family Album.” The narrative of the presentation was interspersed with “snapshots” of individuals from various countries who gave their names then stated emphatically: “I am Pentecostal Holiness.”

Dr. A. D. Beacham, Jr. was the first speakers in the Wednesday morning plenary session. Beacham, who serves as executive director of World Missions, continued the family theme by highlighting four values that bind the church together. These include theology, relationships, a sense of being part of a larger community, and a common inheritance.

Beacham also discussed the Vision 2020 goals and strategies set by the representatives from the continents, setting the stage for reports from the Overseas Ministries Coordinators (OMC). The OMCs, in turn, introduced key leaders from their fields to report on the ministry from their unique perspectives.

These representatives provided conferees with a greater understanding of the church's global mandate and mission. Their stories - some stirring and others humorous - helped participants appreciate the diversity of the IPHC family as well as some of the struggles many leaders have faced as they persevered in taking the gospel message to the lost.

Some delegates were amazed by reports of the numbers of missionaries being deployed from places heretofore considered as receiving nations. Many countries that have received missionaries in the past are now sending missionaries into neighboring nations and around the world. These include Mexico, the Philippines, India, China, Russia, and others.

Each of the daytime sessions, as well as the evening celebration services opened with worship led by a local band and praise team from Calvary Christian Church (CCC) in Vancouver. Dr. Gordon McDonald, CCC's senior pastor, also serves as general superintendent of the IPHC of Canada and as a member of the World Pentecostal Holiness Fellowship (WPHF).

Both the Wednesday and Thursday evening services included short sermons by two speakers. The Wednesday evening service featured Donavan Ng, consulting pastor of the 6,000-member Wing Kwong PH Church in Hong Kong and a member of the WPHF, and Ron Carpenter, Jr., senior pastor of Redemption World Outreach Center, a mega church of 12,000 members in Greenville, South Carolina. Both Ng and Carpenter are men of vision who have proven apostolic leadership in their respective areas.

In the Thursday morning session, Dr. Ronald Carpenter, Sr., vice-chairman of the IPHC and executive director of Evangelism USA, underscored the significance of the international family being brought together under the banner of the IPHC. “We may be tribal in some ways, but in other senses we are united in a great organization that is making a difference in the world.

Carpenter referenced the denomination's transition from being an entity that plants churches to becoming a church planting movement. He described this change as necessary just to keep up with the population increase in North America. “America is not a Christian nation,” he declared. “It is increasingly becoming an anti-Christian nation. America is a mission field.”

A team of intercessors, led by Terry Fowler, director, and his assistant Kathy Shelley, kept the iWIN Prayer Room available throughout the conference. Approximately 40 intercessors visited the Prayer Room and prayed for the speakers and events of the conference. Conference iWIN directors from South Carolina, New Horizons, Africa, LAMCAR, Europe/Middle East and Asia and many missionaries spent time in prayer. As a capstone to the daytime sessions, Fowler taught briefly on 2 Chronicles 20 and the Fourth Day Experience and led conferees in a prayer for the nations.

Thursday evening's celebration service featured messages by Demetrius Miles, pastor of the Tucson (Arizona) Church International, and Presiding Bishop James Leggett. Miles spoke prophetically that the IPHC family is on the verse of experiencing something greater than it has even imagined.

Bishop Leggett affirmed Mile's word with a message based on Joshua 1:1-3, 7, 8. “God has a prosperous future for the IPHC,” he proclaimed. Leggett pointed the desperate situation in which Joshua and the people of God found themselves. “It was a time of transition and testing,” he said. “Moses, their great deliverer, was dead, and the Jordan River was overflowing its banks. The nation could have said, 'We can't do this,' but God said, 'You can.' When God says 'Cross the river,' hell can't stop you from doing what God says to do.”

The Presiding Bishop concluded his message with four divine commands from the text: (1) Be anchored in God's Word (v. 8); (2) Be decisive (v. 2); (3) Be strong and courageous (vv. 6, 9); and (4) Stay the course (v. 7).

The conference adjourned appropriately with members of the IPHC family gathered at the Table of the Lord to observe Holy Communion. The General Executive Board of the IPHC of Canada served the elements as Presiding Bishop James Leggett and Bishop Gordon McDonald led the congregation in celebrating the Lord's Supper.

The IPHC is a diverse family with faces and cultures to match their various ethnicities. Throughout the days in Vancouver, delegates heard members of their denominational family who speak Russian, Swahili, Hungarian, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, Telugu, Chinese, Filipino, Cambodian, English, as well as many other languages and dialects. Some presented their reports with the help of translators and others spoke English with regional accents and drawls. The Fourth World Conference was a testimony to the fact that people from every nation and tribe are welcome at our Father's table.

For the sake of space, this article does not include summaries of every session. To view all of the sessions and services of the Fourth World Conference of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, visit the IPHC website (www.iphc.org).

Observations on the 4th IPHC World Conference
May 13-17, 2008, Vancouver, BC, Canada
By James D. Leggett, Presiding Bishop, IPHC Ministries

A comment by a pastor spoke volumes about the Fourth World Conference of the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Looking at the large gathering of IPHC family in beautiful Vancouver, Canada, he said, “I wonder if the founding fathers ever imagined the church reaching every continent and reaching these numbers around the world.” Maybe some in their vision of a bright future did see the church impacting more than 110 nations. Maybe they saw a foretaste of the great gathering described in Revelation 7.
The Fourth World Pentecostal Holiness Conference was the largest and, described by some, the best of our family gatherings. The conference began with a banquet on Tuesday night with over 400 people and concluded with a communion service on Thursday night. The hours between were filled with many inspiring accounts and messages revealing the work of God through the Pentecostal Holiness Church around the world.

There was a sense of awe and deep thanksgiving as we listened to the stories of what God is doing on the various continents. From a very small beginning over a century ago, the Lord has wonderfully blessed the denomination to spread around the world. Some of the national churches have celebrated their centennial, while others will soon celebrate their centennial. There were churches that have joined the fellowship in recent years. The world conference gave abundant testimony of the continuing power of Pentecost in the world.

We listened to pastors of some of our largest congregations in the world: Donavan Ng of Hong Kong, Hernando Brochero of Venezuela, Ron Carpenter, Jr., USA, Eduardo Duran, Chile, and Valeriy Reshentinsky of Ukraine. It was exciting to hear these leaders and to see them sharing with each other.
The Pentecostal Holiness Church has always opened doors to women in ministry, for we know the promises of Joel: “Your sons and your daughters will prophesy … Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (Joel 2:28, 29).

Beatriz Lopez, superintendent of Cuba, inspired the conference as she did five years ago in Costa Rica. Her anointed message stirred the conference. Joanne Wong, lead pastor in the large Wing Kwong Church and Lazlone Mezes of the church in Hungary blessed all of us with their messages.

One of the most encouraging events was the reports of the missionaries who have been sent by national churches to open churches in other nations. In other words, the “receiving” nations have become “sending” nations. The churches in the Philippines have sent missionaries to Cambodia and other nations. The Hong Kong Church has planted churches in Canada and Kenya, and they have plans for more. Mexico has a missionary in Belgium. Argentina has started churches in the surrounding countries. Some of the Latin American countries have sent leaders to the Middle East. One of our pastors told me, “We are just beginning to see explosive growth. Instead of adding, we are going to see multiplication.”

World Missions had scheduled its missionary retreat in conjunction with the world conference for the first time. It added to the conference and gave pastors and national leaders the opportunity to fellowship and interact with the entire missionary staff. Many of the pastors expressed the deep gratitude for the opportunity to be a part of the world wide ministers of the denomination.

It also included time for the continents to set goals and strategize for the future. Many set ambitious goals for 2020. These goals and strategies will be reviewed at the next WPHF conference.

We praise God for the incredible progress of the Pentecostal Holiness Church around the world. Yet, we believe there is still much land to be possessed. We believe that the best days are ahead of us. We believe that God has greater miracles in store for the IPHC. Yes, we have seen the wonderful works of God in the nations of the world, but we believe there is a greater glory to come. Dr. Doug Beacham, our World Missions director, spoke of this when he quoted Isaiah 54:2: “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back, lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.”

God has promised us a vast inheritance. Joshua describes it as “every place you shall set your foot.” Let us dream as big as God has promised and rise up to take all the land He destined for the Pentecostal Holiness Church.

Part Three of a nessage delivered by Dr. A.D.Beacham, Executive Director of IPHC World Missions Ministries
14 May 2008
IPHC Fourth World Conference
Vancouver, B.C.

Read Part One here; Read Part Two here

In his The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries,(5) Stark revealed key factors by which Christianity in its infancy impacted and helped transform the world.

• Early Christianity was primarily a movement among the middle and upper classes, particularly in urban areas.
• When epidemics, fires, earthquakes, and ethnic violence spread through densely populated cities, the Christian commitment to love ones neighbor gave Christians a reason to stay in the mess, while rulers, philosophers, and pagan religious leaders fled to the countryside. Yes, many Christians died nursing their neighbors, but others became immune and established networks of care, love, and faithfulness. This “standing in the gap” led to numerous conversions.
• Christianity raised the status and value of women by prohibiting infanticide and abortion. It was because of Christianity that female population rates grew in the Roman Empire and the foundation was established for the greater dignity and influence of women.
• Stark puts it well: “To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services.”
• Referring to the Antioch of Acts 13, Stark concluded, “No wonder Christian missionaries were so warmly received in this city. For what they brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable.” (6)

Stark's closing chapter is titled “A Brief Reflection on Virtue.” In looking for the ultimate factor in the rise of Christianity, he noted: “Central doctrines of Christianity prompted and sustained attractive, liberating, and effective social relations and organizations. And it was the way these doctrines took on actual flesh, the way they directed organizational actions and individuals behavior, that led to the rise of Christianity. The simple phrase, 'For God so loved the world . . . .' would have puzzled an educated pagan. And the notion that the gods care how we treat one another would have been dismissed as patently absurd. This was the moral climate in which Christianity taught that mercy is one of the primary virtues - that a merciful God requires humans to be merciful. Moreover, the corollary that because God loves humanity, Christians may not please God unless they love one another was something entirely new.” (7)

That analysis of the church's increase in her first three hundred years is instructive. People, and ultimately human principalities and powers, were influenced and changed because there were people who really had been transformed by grace. God's kingdom became the touchstone of their lives. Because they were citizens of God's kingdom, they were free to truly live as redeemed transformed people in their culture and time.

Isaiah 54:2 still speaks to us. We have the Hebrew verb form of the hiphil imperative to “enlarge the place of our tent.” The hiphil denotes a causative element. Something, Someone, is at work causing us to enlarge the place of our tent. That Someone is the Holy Spirit. But there are also others who are stretching out the curtains of our dwellings. These “others” are the multitude of the children of the desolate in Isaiah 54:1. They are the ones wanting to hear the Good News; they are the ones pushing at the curtains of our tent. They are wanting to hear us say, “Yes, Yes, Yes. There is room for you as we remove the obstacles that stand in the way of our tent expanding!” Amen. _______________

(5) Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1996). See also Stark's insightful One True God: The Historical Consequences of Monotheism.
(6)Stark, 161, 162.
(7) Stark, 211, 212.

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Part Two of a nessage delivered by Dr. A.D.Beacham, Executive Director of IPHC World Missions Ministries
14 May 2008
IPHC Fourth World Conference
Vancouver, B.C.

Read Part One here

I have seen among the over one hundred nations where we have a presence that this tribe has a divine inheritance that is our God-given responsibility to take. Yet, there are over 190 nations recognized by the United Nations. It burns within me to see an IPHC Spirit-filled and anointed presence in each of those nations. There is a sphere of spiritual authority in each nation that is ours to claim as an act of obedience to increasing our Lord's Kingdom.

Now, we all understand that IPHC Ministries is but one of countless movements over the past two thousand years that the Holy Spirit has raised up as witnesses to, as Paul put it in Ephesians 3:10, God's “manifold wisdom.” We are but one tribe among many tribes that have carried the banner of Jesus Christ. We are wise enough to know that we are not the only “church.” We are wise enough to know that God's Kingdom is bigger than the sum of its individual parts.

But we also recognize that this tribe, IPHC Ministries, is part of that kingdom, and we have an “increase-role” in this kingdom. Being “kingdom minded” is more than just thinking outside our own denominational lines. It is the recognition that the completion of the divine mandate to this tribe is part of what it means to be “kingdom minded.”

Over the past eighteen months Isaiah 54:2, 3 as been stirring in my heart: “Enlarge the place of your tent, And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; Do not spare; Lengthen your cords, And strengthen your stakes. For you shall expand to the right and to the left, And your descendants will inherit the nations, And make the desolate cities inhabited.” Listen to the verb litany: “enlarge; stretch out; do not spare; lengthen; strengthen; expand.” Listen to the promise, “Your descendants will inherit the nations and make the desolate cities inhabited!”

Though our tribe is only 110 years old, God in His manifold wisdom decreed that this tribe would exist in this portion of history. What does that say to us? God is calling us to have a “global-tent” spirit and mindset. Here are some thoughts on what that means for us:

In April, 2005, NT Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote The World is Flat. (2) Most in this room have experienced first-hand much of that he describes in terms of technology, multi-national organizations, communications, etc. But he is not the only one talking about a flat world. The church has also been talking about it.

Last year Bob Roberts, Jr., pastor of Northwood Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in a Dallas suburb, wrote a book with the engaging title Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World.(3)

The operative term is “glocal.” Roberts writes that “Glocal is another term for the flat earth that describes the seamless integration between the local and global.” The real passion of this book, and its 2008 sequel, The Multiplying Church (4), is that the established church will increase God's Kingdom as people become real converts and disciples of Jesus Christ, transformed by His power. It does not matter the nation or ethne grouping. Real kingdom expansion occurs as transformed people realize that their occupation is the place where their vocation, their unique gifts and calling by God, is gracefully released right where they live and work. Roberts suggests that the church and world doesn't need more preachers, it needs more disciples!

Today the world is flat due to multi-national businesses, instant communications, relatively easy travel and commonality of languages. But 2000 years ago the world was made flat because people from all languages, ethne, and politics, had a personal, life-changing encounter with the One who put death to death.

In the coming hours of this gathering, we will turn our hearts towards the challenges and opportunities before us around the globe. As we listen, I think Rodney Stark, a Baylor University sociologist, helps us as we reflect on our place after two thousand years of church history, a period today which is remarkably like the first three hundred of the church.
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(2)Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005).
(3)Bob Roberts, Jr., Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007).
(4)Roberts, Jr., The Multiplying Church: The New Math for Starting New Churches (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008).
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Continued in Part Three