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.
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.
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.
[9] 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.
Out of this grew a developing international ministry of praise and worship, community living, music, and a worldwide teaching and preaching role for Graham Pulkingham throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
In September 1992, he was suspended temporarily from the priesthood after admitting he had a sexual affair with a man, whose wife said the relationship destroyed their marriage.
[15][17] On April 1, 1993, while Pulkingham and his wife were shopping in a Winn-Dixie Supermarket in Burlington, North Carolina, a gunman fired upon store employees, killing one person.