2026 State of the Church Address

As we enter this new year of 2026, I'd like to talk to you about the state of the United Pentecostal Church International. I'm so happy to tell you that God has blessed our church. We had a great year in 2025 and we're continuing to move forward. Of course, there are always challenges, unexpected problems, but they're also great victories. So, just as a snapshot, every year we do a report for general conference, but I can say that of the 210 nations of the world, we're now working in 203 plus many territories. Of course, we already have plans. We're already getting started in a few more and plans for even more. But what's new in the last few years is we're emphasizing not only reaching every nation but reaching people groups that is ethnicities, language groups. Because while there a couple there are a couple hundred nations, there are thousands of language groups and ethnic groups many of whom have no witness or very minimal witness.

So, while we're still trying to finish the list of every last nation, we're also expanding our vision to reach every ethnicity and every language group. So, I'm happy to tell you that we now have well over 45,000 churches worldwide, including our preaching points, and over 45,000 credentialed ministers. We estimate a total constituency of about 6.2 million. We're seeing rapid growth. We're seeing many people being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ every year. So the numbers vary, of course, from year to year, and we have to make estimates in some cases, but somewhere between 250,000 and 350,000 people are being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ each year and a similar number receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost every year. And so that means in the last three years we calculate that approximately 1 million people have received the Holy Ghost in the ministry of the United Pentecostal Church International around the world.

That's exciting. That's something to celebrate. In the US and Canada, which is our home base, we estimate 1 million constituents. We have over 5,100 churches. uh predominantly self-governing, but that also counts daughter works and preaching points. And we have over 12,300 credentialed ministers. And what's exciting about this, in the last three years, we've planted almost 700 new churches in Canada, and the US. So, it's a great report of revival, growth, progress, and it's because we're all working together. Of course, our mission is the whole gospel to the whole world by the whole church. And as each of us takes part in that and joins our efforts together, we can see what God is doing. You know, we could survive as a little independent church or as a small organization of like-minded people who agree on almost everything, but we really couldn't fulfill the great commission.

People sometimes want to know, why is it so important to be part of the UPCI? Of course, you don't have to belong to the UPCI to be saved or have a valid ministry. We don't think we're the total body of Christ, but we do believe we're a significant part of what God is doing in these last days. But the number one reason why I'm part of the UPCI is to fulfill the great commission. I can't do it by myself, but as we work together, we're seeing amazing things accomplished for the Lord. When I became general superintendent in 2010, I felt that God gave me three important priorities. Number one, apostolic identity. Number two, apostolic unity. And number three, apostolic revival, by which I also meant growth. Um, and I still believe it's important to emphasize those three things. Our apostolic identity, our doctrine, and to me that includes our teachings of holiness.

While we have individual uh differences on certain matters of application or preference or conviction, the teaching of holiness, including such things as gender distinction in our appearance, modesty of dress, the fruit of the spirit, all of those things are biblical teachings, and that should be part of our apostolic identity. I think we've got to continue to maintain our emphasis on the oneness of God, the deity of Jesus Christ, the humanity of Jesus Christ, the new birth message of repentance from sin, water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, the baptism of the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost with the initial sign of speaking in tongues, the emphasis on prayer, on worship, on the coming of the Lord, on the pursuit of holiness. All of those things are essential to our identity. We can't compromise those things. But we should also hold very importantly unity. Sometimes we can be so uh strong in some things we believe that we're less concerned about unity.

But I think we have to work hard to maintain unity and to strengthen one another and to work together and to fulfill our mission. You know, there are all kind of issues that could divide us. If we're not careful, we can allow certain opinions or preferences or ways of doing things to to cause us to become divided, to work against each other. In our culture of social media, it's so easy for um some problem to go viral or some opinion to be expressed in a very strong way and people react to that and it's easy to start a media war. But in the midst of such a polarized culture, we have to maintain unity. You know, our our world is polarized. Our nation is polarized. Uh the political situation, people have strong opinions one way or the other. And some think you if you're apostolic, you're going to have this vote this way and some think no, you can vote a different way.

We can't let those secondary political and social and cultural opinions uh detract us from the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the unity of the church. The world would like to po polarize us racially, culturally, ethnically. We have to resist that and we have to work hard to understand people within our own ranks who have different opinions, different backgrounds, different life experiences, people of different races, ethnicities, cultures, um life experiences, first generation Pentecostals, multigeneration Pentecostals, urban, rural, uh immigrants. uh we we have to consider these backgrounds are so diverse, our opinions, our life experiences are so different that instead of just contending for our own personal views and preferences, we have to focus on maintain the unity of the body under the centrality of our apostolic identity. And then I do believe it's essential for us to keep a focus upon growth, revival and growth.

We've got to be aggressive in planting new churches. We've got to create an encouraging atmosphere for people to feel a call to preach and to be able to to qualify themselves to get local license, general license, ordination. That should be a priority for us. But I'd like to emphasize that we don't want growth at any cost. Obviously, we don't want to grow at the expense of compromising our identity, uh, our teachings of holiness, for example. But also, we don't want unhealthy growth. We're not trying to grow by manipulation or coercion or uh focusing on dominant personalities or authoritarian leadership, but we want healthy growth. Um growth churches that are planted and are sustainable, uh that grow numerically, but also grow spiritually and and help people come to maturity in Christ. So we we must be interested in evangelism, but equally interested in disciplehip. Of course, that's a big subject, but I just feel led to maintain that emphasis on growth, but also healthy growth and a healthy church culture.

So, let me just share a few things as we uh look at this new year. We're going to face things we don't know about yet or un unanticipated situations will no doubt come up. But let me give you some perennial challenges or challenges in recent years from my perspective as general superintendent. One challenge is pastoral transitions as pastors are getting older. In fact, the age of our credential ministers has crept up a little bit and we've worked hard to maintain that. Part of it is ministers are living older, which a good is a good thing, but part of it is that our culture doesn't really encourage uh young adults to pursue careers and ministry quite as early. Uh but the median age of our ministers, which means half or above and half or below, is 52. I would like to see that go down a little bit.

Uh the median age of our church planters has been 49. that needs to go down significantly. So, we need to work hard to to encourage younger people to accept the call that God has given them. A lot of times that happens when they're exposed to evangelism and missions. A burden follows exposure. And then once they realize they're called to preach, we need to encourage them to move along the track of credential ministry. And we need to give them opportunities. ministers in their 20s and 30s are capable of doing a significant work for God and we need to open the doors for them. And then on the other end, I'm 69 years old. And so ministers my age have to be thinking about pastoral transition. Uh who's going to take my role? And we can still be very active in our ministry, but at some point we don't want to be tied down just to local church responsibilities or local church income.

So we need to plan ahead. We shouldn't wait till the last minute. Sometimes uh our plans don't work because uh death intervenes or age and poor health. But even if we're in excellent health, at some point we're going to feel a shift in our burden. and we want to have a shift in our responsibilities. And one of the biggest challenges that I've seen is pastors who haven't planned for a transition. So when the transition comes, then uh the church goes through a quite a struggle and sometimes the church is destroyed or it's severely damaged. I recommend a book written by one of our own senior ministers who made the transition. Brother Gary Tracy has written a book called Successful Succession. It's available at Pentecostalpublishing.com. That will there are many other great resources, but that is an excellent resource not strictly for pastoral transition, but structur structuring your church in a healthy way long before a transition so that when a transition comes, you'll be ready to handle it.

Uh I do think we need to have these conversations and ministers in their 60s even earlier need to be thinking, talking, planning, partnering with others so that when the right times come comes there can be a smooth pastoral transition. And that leads me to another subject we senior ministers need to be thinking and actually younger ministers need to be thinking about pastoral retirement. Of course, our culture has been the Lord is coming. So, uh, maybe we don't need to think about retirement, but we don't know when the Lord is coming. I believe he's coming soon, but I think we have to continue to make plans as if we're going to live out our natural lifespan. So, sooner or later, as ministers, hopefully, we'll minister to the day we die. But, as I mentioned a moment ago, we don't want want to necessarily be tied down to local church responsibilities andor local church income.

And so it's ideal at the beginning of our ministry to set aside just a little bit for retirement. But certainly in midlife, we need to be serious about retirement. And even if we see retirement coming pretty near or transition coming pretty near, if we haven't made adequate arrangements, there are ways to catch up. Uh so I would just encourage you to participate in the ministers retirement fund. Uh there's no advantage to the UPCI to do this except to provide an excellent service. Uh we have over $140 million in the minister's retirement fund and that means we can take advantage of great opportunities for growth as well as keep expenses very minimal. uh all that money is immediately invested in the participants, the ministers, and it's all managed by external professionals and it's not on our UPCI books and it's not subject to UPCI control. If you're interested in that, I strongly recommend that you go to mrfupci.org and you can email or call their employees uh dedicated to the UPCI.

Their whole job is to help us through that. We have to plan for retirement. You know, it's been common in years past for ministers to say, "When I retire from the church, the the church will keep making payments for me uh and or my spouse until I die." And while a longtime minister is certainly deserving of that kind of support, it's not best practice to wait until the end. Instead, you've got to invest in a retirement program years before. And if you haven't, you got to find a way to catch up or to get ahead. The problem is when you make these plans, uh, they can be subject to change. The same church board that set up the plan can also change or in the plan. So in the UPCI, the research I've done in talking to professionals who work in this area, the average life of a plan like this, even if it's intended to be for many years, ends up being about three years before it gets changed.

So that's not really a best practice. We need to have a more secure method of retirement and we can do that through the MRF as well as through secular employment and so forth. Um this is a very important part of having a healthy church. Uh unfortunately I've had to mediate in lots of situations. first as a preserver, then as a district superintendent, and then believe it or not, even as a general superintendent, trying to guide churches and ministers through very difficult transitions or conflicts, postretirement conflicts as the needs and priorities and and the personnel and boards of churches change. Uh, and so if if we can take care of this business upfront, we're going to have a healthier church. Another area in recent years, society has brought to attention uh the the the existence of abuse of various kinds, especially child abuse in in the areas of business, of uh the media, government, and unfortunately even in churches.

And so we have to be proactive. We have to have a culture that as much as possible prevents abuse. And if abuse does occur, we have to find healthy ways of dealing with it both ethically and legally. And we have to know how to deal with allegations. Even if they're false, they have to be handled very carefully and very properly. There's a balance when an allegation comes. On the one hand, we presume a person is innocent until proven guilty. And certainly in the case of a minister, we don't want to take just one person's word against a minister's word. We want to presume that ministers is innocent and we have a judicial procedure to protect the rights of a minister. On the other hand, we must take all allegations seriously, especially if they involve child abuse. We can't just brush them off. We can't just assume uh that this is fake or false.

Uh we can't attack the alleged victim and say, "Well, you know, they're not living a moral life or or they backslid. They're not in church." uh that is not relevant to whether abuse happened and in many cases the person has been abused because they are vulnerable and maybe would not be believed or perhaps their subsequent life has been tragic and dysfunctional because of their abuse. So my point is we have to take all of these allegations seriously while protecting the rights of all concerned. There's a lot to that subject, but I encourage you for resources. If you'd like some sample policies for your local church, if you'd like some best procedures and practices for how to prevent abuse, how to create a healthy culture, how to deal with allegations of abuse, how to deal with when abuse has been proven, how to help victims. I encourage you to go to upci.org/safeurch.

We do have a ministry called Safe Church UPCI with a a committee. We have a number of trained professionals who work with us and they can help you uh and help any of us with inquiries, walk you through situations, help you set up u policies and procedures for your local church. Another area that I think is very important is Christian liberty. The Bible talks about this especially in Romans chapter 14 as well as 1 Corinthians 8-10. As I mentioned earlier, we absolutely stand on apostolic doctrine, apostolic identity, the life of holiness. But within that context, there are many things that are matters of personal preference or conviction as well as pastoral preference or conviction. But they might not be uniform across our fellowship because they're not specifically biblical, but they're more cultural or traditional or more uh relevant to a locality or even a local church or even individual.

And so if we're going to maintain unity and strength, we have to wisely handle these areas where the scripture does give us allowable differences. I'll just give a few examples that sometimes are flash points or attack points that don't really need to be. One example is the use of various Bible translations. I think we should use conservative Bible translations that uphold the full inspiration of scripture. But some might say, well, I want to use only the King James. Others actually have other languages where there is no such thing as the King James. Others are dealing in uh with modern culture where where the King James is not uh un understood as much and so they want to have other translations or supplement. These are areas where pastors can have their own preferences and churches can have their own practices. It shouldn't be a point of contention.

Another example, we obviously believe in modesty of dress but but some churches will emphasize a more traditional church dress. Others will take a less formal approach. A lot of times that depends on the culture, the locality, urban area, ethnicity, nation. Again, we can allow differences, differences of preaching style, differences of music. Uh and and as I said, dress should be modest and should be biblical and gender distinctive. But in some places, men's facial hair is just a common part of the culture and part of the gender distinction. In other places, it may still represent something negative. And so, again, this is a matter of personal preference or pastoral preference. This is not something we should fight over our use of social media. We've got to be careful. Social media can be very polarizing. In fact, research has shown that the media giants actually create algorithms to promote conflict and anger because they found that people respond more uh in anger than any other emotion.

And so they actually promote conflict. Somehow our use of social media should be different from the world's use of social media. We shouldn't get into the attack mode, the ridicule, um the politics of personal destruction. But if we're going to use social media, it should be in a wholesome Christian way and especially practicing ministerial ethics. Now, if I mention some things that seem controversial, actually historically they really haven't been as far as how our movement or our organization treats them. Years ago, for example, in talking about Bible translations, I wrote a book called God's Infallible Word, uh, published in 1992. and then uh dealing with dress, facial hair, other types of issues. Uh Christian liberty, my book in search of holiness 1981 and my book practical holiness 1985 actually talks about these issues and talks about the parameters and talks about what is a scriptural conviction conviction versus a pastoral or personal conviction.

Uh and these books have been widely received. I'm just mentioning that to say we do have resources and we have wrestled with these issues for many years. We've arrived at a consensus overall on the best way to deal with them. But as certain controversies pop up, maybe culture brings them to the forefront or their social change brings them to the forefront, then we revisit these issues. But these are not really new. My advice is this. We should be conservative, but that is not always the same as traditional. By conservative, we must go by the word of God. Absolutely. No matter what the culture says. And that's our authority. But we we can also look at the example in the early 20th century of the pioneers of our Pentecostal movement. Some of the things as they broke away from their traditional denominations, they established practices. And that's also a good test.

But too often, especially in a local setting, we just do things that we've done for the last 25 years or the last 50 years, and we think that is being conservative where it may be just traditional. Now, there is a value in tradition, but we Pentecostals have always warned, be careful of denominational traditionalism because that will get you such things as the doctrine of the trinity. So, we've got to be careful, I think, to say we're conservative. We're going to believe what the Bible teaches and we're going to hold to that no matter what. And we're going to preserve the essence of the Pentecostal movement from its inception, the mighty move of God, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost that brought transformation to a world of dead denominations. But other things might be our own tradition that we have developed over the years, which may be fine.

There's a value to that. It's not necessarily wrong. But someone else may not have that tradition or someone in a different context may say it's time to change that tradition. And and u we have to realize that not all change is bad. Not all change is compromise. So if it's changing our teaching that's bad, but if it's changing a traditional practice that's not a biblical practice, then that's where Christian liberty comes into play. I suggest this in 2026. We are living increasingly in a post-Christian, postmodern, secular culture. It people don't accept truth as truth anymore. We still preach truth, but many people say, "Well, you have your truth. I have my truth." And in that context, I think it's important for us to have a balanced ministry of the word and the spirit. We're going to always preach the word of God without compromise. But we need an equal emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit.

Because people that do not understand the authority of the word, we can still reach them by the power of personal testimony, by prayer that changes their life, by an atmosphere where they can feel the presence of God for the first time and realize there's something more than than what they think of as truth. and the the spirit of God can draw them. And so by a dual emphasis on the word and the spirit, I believe we can reach our generation. But I would suggest this. We have to think of ourselves increasingly as missionaries to our own culture. So as Pentecostals, many of us were raised in a Pentecostal tradition. Uh but increasingly people are not raised in any kind of a Christian or biblical tradition at all. So, if we were missionaries to China, we would understand that when I go to China, I've got to preach in Chinese or get someone to interpret for me.

Uh, when people come to church, I'm not going to necessarily expect them to dress up in modern uh traditional western clothing, but they're going to dress in their traditional style. If we have dinner after church, it's not probably going to be American barbecue or something I'm used to, but it's going to be Chinese food. We understand that that we have to adjust not our doctrine but our methods to the culture that we're ministering to. Well, increasingly we are ministering to secular people who have no concept of our own Christian biblical Pentecostal culture. There's a generational gap of young people. Uh they're also immigrants and increasing diversity of ethnicities. So we're ministering in and in in urban context especially we're ministering to people of very diverse backgrounds. I think we have to consider ourselves missionaries to our culture. So we're going to absolutely proclaim the word of God, apostolic doctrine and convert them to the apostolic faith.

But we're not trying to convert them to our traditional culture even if it's a good culture. We're trying to convert them to Jesus Christ. So a lot of things are optional. A lot of preferences that we might have and we might follow may not be necessary to emphasize to converts of another background. What we're trying to do is bring them to the word of God. So that's my thought for 2026. I think we can be effective. I think we'll see increasing revival, but we need to maintain a healthy church culture and we need to follow best practices. We need to understand Christian liberty. We need to act as missionaries to our own culture. Let me give you some resources that I think will be a help to you in various ways. Of course, I'm I'm assuming you're aware of the Pentecostal resources group, the Pentecostal Publishing House.

There are all kinds of resources, books, uh Sunday school curriculum, uh disciplehip programs such as elements, um resources in Spanish. I could go on and on. uh doctrinal books, practical ministry books, um leadership books, all of those are available at Pentecostalpublishing.com. I also encourage all of us as ministers to continue our own education, uh our own study, whether it's personalized or through some program. We have great programs at our Bible colleges, uh, Ursen University, from bachelor's degree to master's degree to doctoral program, all accredited, as well as just taking a few classes. Um, as well as other ministerial training programs. Uh, I have a podcast, Apostolic Life in the 21st century, that every week I try to address a specific issue relevant to our culture. It's available on YouTube and other podcast platforms. I wrote a recent book called anchor points which deals with apostolic apologetics.

So I tried to establish our doctrine, what why we believe what we believe and address contemporary questions such as what about creation and evolution? Uh why does God allow suffering? And why should we believe there is a God? And why should we believe that the Bible really is the word of God? And u how why do we still teach the sexual morality of the Bible? Not not only from the perspective of what the Bible teaches, but also showing uh in through studies of psychology, sociology, how what the Bible teaches really does make sense. So if you're looking for something to help you uh address these contemporary issues, uh these resources may be of help to you. On a practical side, uh we have some great financial resources. The UPCI loan fund uh has $100 million in loans. This could be a great resource if you're also looking for information uh to help you with church budgets, maybe preparing for a loan or seeing what you would qualify for or just seeing how you compare with hundreds of other UPCI churches in your budget, then I recommend that you go to upcilonefund.org.

There's a budget calculator that might be very helpful for your local church. Of course, I'm I'm assuming you're aware, but I shouldn't just assume. Uh we do have the ministers website ministers.upci.org. You'll find all kind of helpful resources uh for churches. Uh the UPCI manual, the UPCI directory can be downloaded from there. And in the back of the manual, there's what is called resources for local churches. This gives you all kinds of policies and procedures that are samples that your church could adopt or adapt for your own use. Uh this also kind of serves as a checklist not only for new churches but established churches. Do you have all the policies in place that you need? Do you have all uh everything that would be beneficial or recommended for you? Another thing on the ministers website is the opportunities bulletin board. this is something new where we advertise for ministerial opportunities uh and also so the church is wanting to make these