DONALD
GEE 1891-1966

Donald Gee
Donald Gee is described by one biographer
as pastor, author, educator, conference speaker, editor and
ecumenist. A true Pentecostal statesman! Born in London in
1891, he was converted in 1905 when Seth Joshua, the Welsh
revivalist held evangelistic meetings at Finsbury Park Congregational
Church. He joined a Baptist church with his mother in 1912
and he was baptised in the Holy Spirit in March 1913.
When the war broke out in 1914 he registered
as a ‘conscientious objector’ to military service
and was sent to work on a farm in Buckinghamshire which he
found to be ‘a divinely arranged college that provided
deep preparation of spirit, soul and body for the years of
strenuous ministry that, all-undreamt-of, lay ahead.’
He considered these times ‘some of the most richly formative
of a lifetime.’
A year later he moved to another farm where
he led a small Pentecostal fellowship and then, after the
war ended in 1918, he returned to London. In 1920 he accepted
a call to the pastorate of a small chapel in Leith, near Edinburgh,
Scotland. The church grew and Bonnington Toll Chapel was built
and became his place of ministry for 12 years to come. Many
great Pentecostal pioneers like the Jeffreys brothers, W.F.P.
Burton Burton, Howard Carter and Smith Wigglesworth ministered
here. In 1921 he attended the International Pentecostal convention
in Amsterdam and became acquainted with the wider Pentecostal
Movement.
In 1922 he began writing articles for Pentecostal
periodicals and in 1924, as an accomplished musician himself,
he produced the first British Pentecostal hymnbook, Redemption
Tidings. He considered joining the Elim denomination
but in 1924 Donald was one of the pioneers of the Assemblies
of God in Great Britain and Ireland. From 1925 to 1963 he
sat on the executive presbytery as an esteemed and valued
contributor.
In 1928 he responded to an invitation to go to Australia and
New Zealand as a Bible teacher, a ministry in which he excelled.
En route he wrote his famous first book, ‘Concerning
Spiritual Gifts.’ Thereafter he lectured across
the five continents of the world as an itinerant teaching
minister, always gathering new information for his magnum
opus, a history of the worldwide Pentecostal Movement,
published in 1949, later called Wind and Flame.
During the war he was restricted to travelling
in Britain encouraging small Pentecostal fellowships, but
thereafter resumed his international travels and at the Pentecostal
world Convention in Zurich, in 1947, was chosen to become
the editor of the magazine Pentecost producing 76
issues until it concluded in 1966. Here he published some
of his finest and most provocative essays for the still adolescent
Pentecostal family.
He was highly ecumenical and received harsh
criticism for cooperating with the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Campaign at Haringey, London in 1954 and for fraternising
with denominational leaders who subscribed to the World Council
of Churches. In 1961 he was invited as an observer at the
New Delhi Assembly of the World Council of Churches, but pressure
from Pentecostal leaders in the USA forced him to decline.
In 1951, when he was 60 he accepted an invitation
to become the principal of the newly reorganised AoG Bible
College at Kenley where he spent the next 13 years. He died
two years later of heart failure, aged 75.
He wrote almost 30 books and innumerable magazine articles
published in Pentecostal periodicals around the world, 500
in the AoG’s Redemption Tidings alone. His
Biblical teaching, his bridge-building and conciliatory manner
and his magnanimous attitude to the burgeoning charismatic
movement during his evening years made him a true Christian
statesman.
Bibliography: Colin Whittaker, ‘Seven
Pentecostal Pioneers’ 1983; Donald Gee, ‘Wind
and Flame,’ 1949; D.D.Bundy art. 'International
Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements'
2002.
Tony Cauchi
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