Pentecostal roots
Like many other denominations and their historical beginnings, our Pentecostal movement also started in the city. The mission on Queen Street East led by Ellen Hebden was one of the most unlikely places for Canadian Pentecostalism to arise, similar to the American Pentecostal movement starting with William Seymour at Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California. To society at large, they were both unqualified—of lesser stock. Yet they were ordained by God to help usher in a new movement in church history. Ellen Hebden was a woman in a patriarchal city (there were heated discussions about whether women’s toilets belonged in the library).1 William Seymour was a legally blind Black man who lived at a time when racism and slavery were still mainstays in the United States of America. These two pioneers were unlikely leaders with a vision for ministry that was dissonant with societal norms.
William Seymour was insistent that the work of the Holy Spirit was a uniting force amid the racial divisions of his time. In 1906, The Los Angeles Daily Times openly mocked the Azusa Street gatherings in an article with headlines, “Weird Babel of Tongues,” and “New Sect of Fanatics Is Breaking Loose.” The interracial worship services were described as “…howlings of worshippers, swaying back and forth in a nerve-racking attitude of prayer and supplication.”2 What they could not see was a prophetic vision of God’s imagination where superficial racial divisions (i.e., the “color line”) were washed away by the blood of Jesus.3 What was unlawful and unimaginable to society at large during that time was, in fact, a prophetic vision of God’s plan: “…every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,” (Revelation 7:9). It was a foretaste of the future kingdom, manifesting within the city.
Our Fellowship’s history traces its beginnings to a small mission on 651 Queen Street East where, as described by Ellen Hebden, “the peace of God filled the place.”4 People encountered God’s presence, the work of the Holy Spirit was manifested in their gathering, and they commissioned others who would later become future Pentecostal leaders.5 Toronto is the epicentre of “…the historical Pentecostal outpouring in Canada.”6 What would it look like if we revisited our past as the lens for our future? Could we begin to see the city as the launching pad for ministry again?
The numbers
Nearly three out of four Canadians live in urban centres.7 Our immigration targets project an influx of almost 1.5 million people from 2024 to 2026, with the vast majority moving into urban centres as well.8 More than ever, our cities will be home to every nation, tribe, people and language. As Rick Tobias, my former mentor, would regularly say, “God’s plan may have started in a garden, but it ends in the city.”9
What does this mean?
Our cities represent both an incredible opportunity and a challenge. Although countrywide, 53.3 per cent of Canadians identified as Christian in the latest 2021 census,10 fewer people identified as Christian in urban centres.11 Our cities are a mission field! Could we imagine what it would be like for the Holy Spirit to ordain unlikely leaders once again? Could a new dynamic work of the Spirit manifest a church that serves as a prophetic model of God’s transcendent design for His future kingdom—on earth as it is in heaven? Could we imagine and craft our future as Pentecostals through the lens of our past? May this be a holy challenge for us to dream once more for God’s Spirit to be poured out in the city—because our cities matter.
Earnest John “Ejay” Tupe is an urban missionary to downtown Toronto for Mission Canada and the director of Our City Toronto, an urban ministry training initiative now expanding to other cities in Canada.
This article appeared in the October/November/December 2024 issue of testimony/Enrich, a quarterly publication of The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. © 2024 The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. Photos above: My City Conference underway in Calgary, Alberta, on October 26, 2024. Photos courtesy Ejay Tupe.
- Maureen A. Flanagan, Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Toronto, and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2018), 190.
- “Weird Babel of Tongues,” Los Angeles Daily Times, April 18, 1906, archived at http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/azusa-street-revival-pdf.
- Frank Bartleman, How Pentecost came to Los Angeles: What Really Happened at Azusa Street? (Northridge: Voice Christian Publications Inc., 1962) 54.
- William Sloos, “The Story of James and Ellen Hebden: The First Family of Pentecost in Canada.” Pneuma 32, no. 2 (2010): 191, https://doi.org/10.1163/157007410X509100.
- Ibid., 182.
- Ibid.
- “Canada’s large urban centres continue to grow and spread,” Statistics Canada, February 9, 2022, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220209/dq220209b-eng.htm.
- “CIMM – Immigration Levels Plan for 2024-2026,” Government of Canada, November 7, 2023, https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/committees/cimm-nov-07-2023/immigration-levels-plan-2024-2026.html.
- Dr. Richard (Rick) Tobias was the CEO of Yonge Street Mission in Toronto, Ont., for over 20 years. He championed urban ministry and leadership until his passing on May 18, 2022. Visit https://www.ysm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/YSM_UrbanLights_Fall2022_WEB.pdf.
- “The Canadian census: A rich portrait of the country’s religious and ethnocultural diversity,” Statistics Canada, The Daily, October 26, 2022, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.pdf?st=cSDYCt9n.
- Ibid.