Lecturer of "I.S. Kijne" Theological Seminary of Evangelical Christian Church in Papua Land at Evangelical Christian Church in Canada (Christian Disciples) - Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
The Evangelical Christian Church in Canada (Christian Disciples), as a mainstream Christian religion in North America, traces its historic roots to the formal organization of the Christian Church in 1804 in Bourbon County, Kentucky, U.S.A., and in 1810 near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada under the leadership of Barton Warren Stone (1772-1844), a former Presbyterian minister. The Christian Disciples in Canada whose faith was influenced by Baptist theology, was founded in 1810, near Stratford, PEI, where a small Georgian/Colonial style church was built in 1813, by John R. Stewart, an immigrant from Perthshire, Scotland. As early as 1813, he was holding worship services in his home. The young congregation decided to establish their first meeting house - a crude log cabin which was only thirty feet long by twenty feet wide. At this time, all of the adherents were of Scots ancestry.The Stone Movement later merged with the efforts of Thomas Campbell (1763-1854) and his son Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) to become the Restoration Movement that gave birth to the Churches of Christ (Non-Instrumental), the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and The Christian Connection. The emphasis on religious freedom became strong enough that Barton Stone avoided any man-made ecclesiastical traditions that resulted in a movement that was "largely without dogma, form or structure," committing only to a primitive Christianity. This movement sought to restore the whole Christian church and the unification of all Christians in a single body patterned after the church of the New Testament. In a nutshell, it was believed that the church had departed from the New Testament model by adding to the scriptures.