Father Dehon's new religious congregation attracted prospective candidates at a slow but steady pace. The first person to join the community was his good friend, Father Alphonse Rasset, a priest, who like himself, had been looking for the support of a more spiritual environment in his pastoral ministry. Quickly, Father Rasset took charge of Saint Joseph's Youth Club.
In the first ten years there were 60 professed members in the new religious community; after 20 there were 130; and on the 50th anniversary of its founding the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart had almost a thousand members.
From the beginning, the new congregation distinguished itself by its innovative approach to pastoral ministry. In addition to traditional works like running parishes, preaching missions and teaching, some of the first professed members began a ministry to the deaf at a time when there was little sensitivity to the needs of the physically handicapped. Other priests became chaplains in a textile factory in northern France where they not only provided religious services in the workplace but also introduced Christian values into the dealings of labor and management. Father Dehon himself was actively involved in many social issues, organizing meetings of church leaders to make them aware of the hardships endured by the working class, and also helping workers to organize in order to combat the unjust conditions that were imposed on their employment.
During his lifetime Father Dehon saw his congregation expand to Belgium, Holland, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, Africa, North and South America, and Indonesia. But the story of his religious congregation is not an unbroken series of successes and expansion. At the beginning of the 20th century a hostile an  ti-Catholic government came to power in France and quickly inaugurated a policy of confiscating church goods, closing down Catholic schools, and expelling religious congregations. A decade later World War I broke out in Europe. Along with millions of other innocent victims, Father Dehon's congregation suffered economic hardship, the destruction of property, and the loss of scores of priests and brothers killed in the hostilities. The single most devastating loss of life, however, occurred in 1964 in the former Belgian colony of the Congo when 29 members of the congregation, including one bishop, were murdered during the bloody Simba rebellion (the Congo has gone through several transformations since then, first as Zaire, and now as the Democratic Republic of Congo).
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