Reformer
🇬🇧Jackie Pullinger
1944– · British (Hong Kong) · Missionary & Social Worker
“God wants us to have soft hearts and hard feet. The trouble with so many of us is that we have hard hearts and soft feet.”
Biography
Jackie Pullinger was born in 1944 in England. A trained oboist from the Royal College of Music, she felt called to missions at the age of twenty-two and set off for Hong Kong on a slow boat in 1966 with little money and no missionary organization behind her. Arriving in Hong Kong, she found her way to the Walled City of Kowloon—a lawless, ungoverned enclave of 33,000 people densely packed into a small block, notorious as the center of Hong Kong's drug trade, prostitution, and Triad gang activity. Despite warnings from police and missionaries alike, she moved in, teaching children and making friends among the outcasts. Over time, she discovered that praying in tongues with young men addicted to heroin produced miraculous drug-free withdrawals without the usual agonies. Hundreds of Triad members, drug addicts, and prostitutes were converted and transformed. She founded the St. Stephen's Society, which now runs multiple homes and programs for recovering addicts and the poor across Asia. When the Walled City was demolished in 1993, Jackie continued her work in Hong Kong's margins. Her decades of living and working among the most marginalized in one of Asia's most densely populated cities stand as a modern apostolic witness to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform individuals and communities.
Key Works
Jackie Pullinger's memoir 'Chasing the Dragon' (1980, co-written with Andrew Quicke) became an international bestseller, recounting her early years in the Walled City of Kowloon and the miraculous transformations she witnessed. The title refers to the street name for smoking heroin. The book has been translated into dozens of languages and remains one of the most widely read accounts of urban mission. 'Crack in the Wall' (1989) continued her story. Her ongoing work through the St. Stephen's Society—including rehabilitation homes, schools, and community programs across Hong Kong and Southeast Asia—represents her most enduring practical legacy.
Legacy
Jackie Pullinger's legacy is a living one: the St. Stephen's Society she founded continues to transform lives among Hong Kong's most marginalized communities. Her model of charismatic urban mission—marked by prayer in tongues, communal living, and miraculous deliverance from addiction—has inspired urban missionaries worldwide. 'Chasing the Dragon' remains required reading in many mission training programs. Her life demonstrates that the Holy Spirit's power is available in the darkest and most hopeless urban environments, and that the calling to serve among the poor requires total surrender of comfort and cultural advantage.