The International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC) or simply Pentecostal Holiness Church (PHC) is a Holiness-Pentecostal Christian denomination founded in 1911 with the merger of two older denominations. Traditionally centered in the Southeastern United States, particularly the Carolinas and Georgia, the Pentecostal Holiness Church now has an international presence. In 2000, the church reported a worldwide membership of over one million—over three million including affiliates.
Several ministers who were raised in the Pentecostal Holiness Church have risen to greater name recognition than the church itself, such as Oral Roberts, an internationally known charismatic evangelist; Charles Stanley, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention; and C.M. Ward, a former Assemblies of God radio preacher.
Gaston B. Cashwell, a minister of the Methodist Church, joined Crumpler's group in 1903. He became a leading figure in the church and the Pentecostal movement on the east coast. In 1906, he traveled to Los Angeles to visit the Pentecostal revival at the Azusa Street mission. While there he professed having received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the evidence of speaking in tongues. Upon returning to Dunn, North Carolina, in December 1906, Cashwell preached the Pentecost experience in the local holiness church.
The PHC Foreign Mission Board was formed in 1904, and its members were all women. In 1907, Tom J. McIntosh, a PHC member, traveled to China and may have been the first Pentecostal missionary to reach that nation.
Following the 1911 merger, the Tabernacle Pentecostal Church merged with the Pentecostal Holiness Church in 1915. Having Presbyterian roots and located mostly in South Carolina, this group of congregations was affiliated with Nickles Holmes Bible College in Greenville. After the mergers, the new denomination, which continued to go by the name of Pentecostal Holiness Church, had about 200 churches with approximately 5000 members. Property for the denomination's first headquarters was purchased in 1918 for $9,000 in Franklin Springs, Georgia.
In the 1960s, the Pentecostal Holiness Church began to branch out beyond the United States by affiliating with sister Pentecostal bodies in other parts of the world. In 1967, an affiliation was formed with the Pentecostal Methodist Church of Chile, one of the largest national Pentecostal churches in the world and the largest non-Catholic church in Chile. At the time, the Jotabeche Pentecostal Methodist congregation was the largest church in the world with over 60,000 members. With over 150,000 members, it ranks second to the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea. This denomination claims no less than 1.7 million adherents. A similar affiliation was forged in 1985 with the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Brazil. A Neo-Pentecostal body with roots in the Brazilian Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Church numbered some 50,000 members and adherents in 1995. The word International was added to the church's name in 1975.
In 2000, the IPHC reported 10,463 churches and over a million members worldwide—including affiliates over 3.4 million . In 2006, membership in the United States was 308,510 in 1,965 churches. There were 28 regional conferences and missionaries in more than 90 nations. International offices were once located in Franklin Springs, Georgia, but are now located in Bethany, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City.