Durham was born in 1873 in rural
Kentucky and joined his family's
Baptist church; however, he would only experience conversion later. He joined the
Holiness movement and by 1901 founded the North Avenue Full Gospel Mission, a store-front church in Chicago. When the influence of the Los Angeles
Azusa Street Revival spread to Chicago, one member of his congregation was
baptized in the Holy Spirit. Initially, Durham was dubious about the new Pentecostal movement, but when he visited the Azusa Street Mission for himself, he had his own experience of Spirit baptism with speaking in tongues and was convinced. Upon returning to Chicago, Durham transformed his North Avenue Mission into a center to disseminate the Pentecostal revival in the Midwest and among ethnic minorities. Durham started publishing a periodical,
The Pentecostal Testimony, and travelled extensively to diffuse the Pentecostal message. Raised in a
Reformed tradition, Durham found difficult to accept the then-widespread
Wesleyan doctrine of a three-stage salvation process held by most Pentecostals. Quickly Durham acquired supporters among Pentecostals of Reformed, Baptist, and
Christian & Missionary Alliance backgrounds, and many missionaries abroad, but entered at odds with the older Pentecostal preachers, such as
William Seymour,
Charles Parham, and
Florence L. Crawford. Durham planned to systemize this theology and published drafts of it in his periodical, but he would not complete it as he died of pneumonia in Los Angeles in 1912. ==Legacy==