Community of Celebration

The Reverend W. Graham Pulkingham (September 14, 1926 - April 16, 1993) was the rector at the Church of the Redeemer in Houston, Texas, U.S.A., from 1963 until 1975. He and his wife Betty began the developments that led to the founding of the Community of Celebration and the worship band The Fisherfolk. He wrote several influential books including They Left Their Nets, and spoke worldwide at meetings and conferences.

W. Graham Pulkingham was born on September 14, 1926, in Alliance, Ohio, and brought up in Ontario, Canada. He pursued graduate studies in music at the University of Texas and later received his training for the priesthood at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. He graduated in 1956 after having served in the U. S. Navy during the Korean War.

In September 1963, Graham Pulkingham took over as rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Eastwood, a Houston suburb. Few people attended, and there was a sense of terminal decay. All this changed in August 1964 when Pulkingham drove to New York to seek counsel of David Wilkerson, whose book "The Cross and the Switchblade" had made him famous. Pulkingham's original intent was to ask Wilkerson's advice on ministering to drug-addicted youth but Wilkerson discerned that Pulkingham lacked the necessary spiritual power to change his church, much less the surrounding neighborhood. Wilkerson prayed over Pulkingham to be "baptized in the Holy Spirit," a post-conversion experience mentioned several times in the New Testament Book of the Acts of the Apostles. This experience transformed Pulkingham and he returned to Houston a changed man. Pulkingham began preaching dynamic sermons, people started getting miraculously healed at Redeemer's altar and visitors began pouring in. By 1966, a group of five elders had formed including Graham, a Methodist layman called Ladd Fields, Galveston attorney Jerry Barker, a local physician known as Dr. Bob Eckert and John Grimmet, a foreman at Houston Lighting and Power. The elders began inviting people - many of them trying to get off drugs - to live with them, unintentionally starting a community household experiment that eventually included nearly 400 people in 40 households. By 1972, the average weekly attendance figure had reached 2,200 and Sunday morning attendance alone was 900-1000 people. In September 1972, Pulkingham relocated 27 church members including himself and his family to Coventry, England to start a community there and his assistant, Jeff Schiffmayer, eventually replaced him as rector. Pulkingham returned to Redeemer for a brief stint from 1980-1982, returned to the UK, then relocated his community to Aliquippa, Pa. in 1985.

...
Wikipedia