[11] Over time, the community of St. Matthew's grew in number and changed locations, worshiping in mortuary and wedding chapels before being able to acquire its own building.
A number of former Roman Catholic priests joined St. Matthew's Church and new communities began to be established.
To this end, he was put forward as a candidate for the episcopacy to the bishops of the Ecumenical Communion of Catholic and Apostolic Churches.
The new communities required ordained leadership and this has resulted in a number of ordinations of both women and men.
The Community of the Good Shepherd in Belgium and currently also in the Netherlands and Poland, joined the ECC as well as a parish in Vienna, Austria.
Krebs was nominated for presiding bishop[15] and then elected to that post at the 2014 synod of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion in Denver, Colorado.
[17] Krebs served as a Roman Catholic priest for 18 years as a parish pastor at St. Ann, Pius the Fifth and Sts.
[1] The ECC affirms The Declaration of Utrecht (1889)[19] of the Old Catholic Church which rejected papal jurisdiction and papal infallibility, although the ECC does not completely reject the place of the Bishop of Rome, regarding him as first-among-equals, as it claims was the case during the first millennium.
[1] Hickman was the only bishop of the communion until late 2009, when the Ecumenical Anglican Church (EAC) joined the ECC.
At that stage, Richard Hollingsworth of the Ecumenical Anglican Church also joined the communion, but relinquished juridical authority within the ECC.
[5] The episcopal council is a legislative, administrative and judicial body of the ECC synodal structure that is composed of all active bishops of the communion, and serves as the highest court of appeal and court of review for the entire communion.