Jarvis Street Baptist Church

From  The History and Heritage of Fundamentalism and Fundamental Baptists,

Thomas Todhunter Shields (1873-1955) was born in England and grew up in Canada, the son of a pastor. He was converted in 1891 at age 18 and preached his first sermon three years later. He had no formal college or seminary education. He pastored four Baptist churches between 1894 and 1910.

That year he became pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, where he remained until his death in 1955. He was called a “man of special gifts, a mountain peak without peer as preacher, teacher, writer–a veritable genius, the Canadian Spurgeon, a battling Baptist, and a devoted pastor” (Leslie Tarr, Shields of Canada, from the foreword by H.C. Slade).

By 1919, Jarvis Street was the leading church of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, with a membership of 700. That year, Shields spoke out against the liberalism of I.G. Matthews, a teacher at the denomination’s McMaster University, and the liberalism espoused by the Canadian Baptist, the denomination’s paper. There was a downgrade in the doctrine of the infallible inspiration of Scripture. Shields also spoke against “the damage being done by worldly amusements.” Instead of heeding the warning and standing with Shields against liberalism and worldliness, the majority of pastors in the denomination attacked the messenger, charging him with being “a dictator.” Many of his own church members were supporters of McMaster’s University and called for a vote to fire the pastor. By a slim margin of 351 to 310, the move was defeated, but 340 people left the church. There is usually a real price to pay for standing for the truth, but God blesses it.

Wikipedia:

The present church was erected on Jarvis Street in 1875, with a large donation to the construction costs from the Canadian Senator and banker, William McMaster.^[1] The newly formed Baptist Union of Canada held its first meeting at Jarvis Street in October 1880. In 1882, William McMaster, William Elliot (a member of Jarvis Street and a Toronto pharmacist and businessman),^[2] and others established the Standard Publishing Company, which published the Canadian Baptist, transferring that enterprise from private ownership to a denominational enterprise.

“In 1888 the Western Convention, while in session in Jarvis St. Church, Toronto, passed the following resolution:

Whereas this question of Union has been carefully considered, both by the Society in the East and by us, therefore, resolved, that we do now receive the Eastern Society into union with us.

The new convention was to be called, ‘the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec.'”^[3]

Less than 40 years later the same Convention passed a resolution calling for the dismissal of Jarvis St. and a number of other like-minded congregations during the “Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy“.

From 1925 until 1933, the church owned and operated a radio station in Toronto under the call letters CJBC. The station went off the air when the federal government terminated all religious radio licenses. The station is unrelated to the current CJBC which is the French-language station owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.^[4]

Photo By Canmenwalker CC BY 4.0