Diana (DeDe) Leetch

District Superintendent

Atlanta Emory District

After serving as a senior pastor for 20 years, DeDe Leetch was appointed to the LaGrange District as District Superintendent. She served LaGrange for four years and was then appointed to serve as District Superintendent of  the Atlanta Emory District in 2007. A lifelong Methodist, she passionately embraces Methodism’s discipline, order, and theology of grace upon grace as well as Wesley’s concept of going on to perfection in love.
 
DeDe strives to be an encourager and one who helps others in ministry fulfill their call. Having been discouraged as a young person from entering the ministry, she promises never to “rain on anyone’s parade.” She tells her ministers to never underestimate the power of their words to encourage or discourage. She says: “Like Jesus, we are supposed to radiate light, hope, and joy to the world.”
 
Originally from Illinois, DeDe graduated from Illinois State University with both Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Education and Administration. She spent 16 years teaching emotionally disturbed children and adolescents and served as a principal of an alternative high school for juvenile delinquent boys. She moved to Georgia in 1983 with her family to study at Candler School of Theology. She graduated magna cum laude in 1986 with a Master of Divinity Degree. Her first fulltime appointment was at Center Valley UMC in the (then) Dalton District. The church won the Church of the Year Award for the District her first year there. She was nominated for the Denman Award for Evangelism two times in her ministry career.

She is married to Chip, a retired school teacher, and they reside in Buford, Ga. They have three married children – Stacey, Gwendolyn, and Matthew – and seven grandchildren who all live within an hour or so from their Granner and PaPa.