In July 1929 the Board of Managers of the Christian and Missionary Alliance decided to close six of the C&MA’s nine training schools, including Canadian Bible Institute (Toronto) and Great Western Bible Institute (Edmonton), to offset a movement-wide decline in revenues.
All attempts to reopen CBI during the 1930’s were quashed by the leadership of the C&MA. Finally, pastors Willis Brooks (a CBI alumnus) and George Blackett (a former board member) took matters into their own hands. In October 1941, with the blessing of Gordon Skitch, superintendent of the Western Canadian District, they “re-established” Canadian Bible Institute in Regina, Saskatchewan. Convinced that the initiative would be rejected if they went through normal channels, they consulted neither the Eastern and Central Canadian District of the C&MA nor the Board of Managers. As a result, the school had to wait another four years for official recognition. It was also required to change its name to Western Canadian Bible Institute (WCBI). However, the name was not changed on the Institute's official publications until September 1945.
In 1944, the Eastern and Central District received approval to establish a school in Toronto, but the project foundered for lack of leadership and proper facilities. Two years later, the Glen Rocks estate came up for sale. The District concluded that it needed a Bible camp and conference centre more than it needed a training school, and so it sold off the (Toronto) Institute building to help pay for Glen Rocks. In 1956, WCBI (later, Canadian Bible College) was declared to be the national school for the C&MA in Canada.

In 1959 or 1960 Barry Moore began Crusade Evangelism of Canada, the first inter-denominational Canadian-based evangelistic association. He travelled throughout Canada and the United States conducting “crusades”—multiple-day and sometimes week-long events involving music and preaching. In 1967, the organization became Crusade Evangelism International (C. E. I.), reflecting the widening geographical scope of its efforts.

On 16 October 1981 Crusade Evangelism International became Barry Moore Ministries Inc. Although Barry Moore retired in 2011, the organization continued to function as a recognized Canadian charity until 31 December 2017.

Dr. Edwin Barry Moore, generally known as Barry Moore or E. Barry Moore, was born in London, Ontario on 10 November 1925. He attended primary and secondary school in London. Before being drafted into the military, he briefly considered playing professional baseball. When he was given the choice between post-secondary education and military service, he spent a year at London Normal School. In 1945 he began teaching primary school in London, and the following year began a B.A. at the University of Western Ontario (UWO). In 1947 he began volunteering with Youth for Christ (YFC). A year later he married Audrey Snelgrove, whom he met at Wortley Church in London. Over the next decade they had three children, Kerry Jane, Barry Mark (Mark), and Timothy Lee (Tim).
In 1950 Moore took over full-time leadership of the London YFC. In 1951 he graduated from UWO with a degree in education, after six years of extension and extra-annual study. During the 1950s he investigated the possibility of serving in France with Greater Europe Mission, having traveled to France in 1950, 1952, and 1953. With this in mind, he left YFC in 1956 to pursue studies at Columbia Bible School, Columbia, SC (now Columbia International University) from which he graduated in 1958 with an M.A. in Biblical Education and Missions. The Moore family moved from London to Columbia for these two years, returning to London after Barry’s graduation. The Greater Europe Mission board officially accepted Barry and Audrey as missionaries in 1957.
In 1959 or 1960 Moore discovered that the opportunity to serve in France in his desired capacity no longer existed. He therefore began Crusade Evangelism of Canada, the first inter-denominational Canadian-based evangelistic association. He travelled throughout Canada and the United States conducting “crusades”—multiple-day and sometimes week-long events involving music and preaching. In 1967, the organization became Crusade Evangelism International (C. E. I.), reflecting the widening geographical scope of its efforts. That same year, C. E.I. produced an award-winning gospel film featuring Barry, Man of Steel, in association with Ken Anderson Films. In 1971 C. E. I. hired an associate evangelist, Alf Rees, who also conducted crusades. The organization’s first major overseas thrust was a three-month mission to India and Sri Lanka in 1973. In 1976 C. E. I. opened an office in the United States, led by Howard Brenneman.
In 1977 Moore received an honourary Doctor of Divinity from Winnipeg Theological Seminary for his work in evangelism. In 1979 the first Barry Moore School of Evangelism, an occasional week-long seminar, took place. On 16 October 1981Crusade Evangelism International became Barry Moore Ministries Inc. When Alf Rees returned to the pastorate in 1982, Walter DeSousa assumed the position of associate evangelist, which he occupied until 1990. In 1989 Moore was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Columbia International University. He continued hholding crusades both overseas and at home until his retirement in 2011.
Upon his retirement, Barry Moore Ministries endowed a Chair of Preaching and Evangelism at Ambrose University in Calgary, AB, for the purpose of “promoting and resourcing the vital function of biblically-based preaching and evangelism in the 21st century.” Moore’s youngest son, Tim Moore, serves at Ambrose as Associate Professor of Youth Ministry and Director of Field Education.
Notable members of Barry’s crusade ministry have included J. D. Blackwood, Lyall Conlin, Harvey Schroeder, Herb Bock, Don Jost, Don Kroening, Ken Baer, Ken Carter, Steve Boalt, Bernard Camper, Art Perri, John Laari, and Barry’s son Mark Moore.
Altogether, Barry Moore has conducted over 700 evangelistic crusades in more than 50 countries, and his publications have been translated into several foreign languages. Hence his nickname, “the Canadian Billy Graham.”

In 1967, Crusade Evangelism of Canada (founded by Barry Moore in 1959 or 1960) became Crusade Evangelism International (C. E. I.), reflecting the widening geographical scope of its efforts.On 16 October 1981 Crusade Evangelism International became Barry Moore Ministries Inc.

Northern Bible College was a ministerial training college of the Canada (educational) Region of the Church of the Nazarene. The first classes of its "progenitor institution", Calgary Bible Institute, were held in 1921 in Calgary, AB. In 1927, under the leadership of its first president Charles E. Thomson, the school relocated to Red Deer, AB and adopted the name Alberta School of Evangelism. By 1929 the school purchased property on Gaetz Avenue in Red Deer, began building a new campus and adopted a new name, Northern Bible College. NBC offered both high school and college programs. In 1940, NBC, following the pattern of its American counterparts, took the name Canadian Nazarene College and granted its first Bachelor of Theology Degree in 1941. With the creation, by the Nazarene Church, of an All-Canada Region, CNC attempted to centralize by moving the campus to Winnipeg in 1961. During its time in Winnipeg, CNC became an affiliate teaching centre for the University of Manitoba, enabling the college to teach university accredited courses. Facing a decline in enrolment, in 1995 CNC relocated back to the city of its birth, Calgary, AB, where it leased office space in the downtown core. In 1999 CNC became an accredited university college with its own degree granting status. With this change CNC was renamed Canadian Nazarene University College (NUC).

In 2003 Nazarene University College began a joint university college venture with Canadian Bible College/Canadian Theological Seminary, two institutions of The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada (CMAC), on a shared campus in downtown Calgary. The new CMAC university college was officially designated Alliance University College in 2004. The joint university college took the name Alliance University College/Nazarene University College. The two institutions officially merged to form Ambrose University College on 1 May 2007. Ambrose University College became Ambrose University on 1 July 2014.

“We recommend the encouragement and expansion of regional . . . schools.” So reads a motion adopted by the 1920 Annual Meeting of the C&MA. In response, A. W. Roffe, superintendent of the District of Canada, urged the District to open a national training school in Toronto. By the summer of 1921, the District of Canada Committee had begun to lay plans. Paul Rader, president of the C&MA, got wind of them and informed the Committee that neither he nor the C&MA’s Board of Managers approved of the project, since Toronto already had a good Bible school (the Toronto Bible School, see sidebar). Then, at its Annual Meeting of May 1922, the C&MA unexpectedly approved the project.
Walter M. Turnbull, dean of the C&MA’s flagship school, the Missionary Training Institute (Nyack, N. Y.), advised the Committee to seek the blessing of Principal McNicol of Toronto Bible School. Rev. Oswald J. Smith, pastor of Christie Street Tabernacle, and Lionel Watson, Roffe’s assistant, made the visit to McNicol, who deemed the venture “a very wise and timely move.” Planning then began in earnest, with a September 1922 opening date in view. However, the Committee was unable to find a principal for the school, and so its opening was delayed for another two years.
Finally, in May 1924, a board of governors was formed, with Walter Turnbull as chair. Turnbull’s brother, John, a C&MA missionary on furlough, agreed to serve as principal. That same month the C&MA purchased land next to the Tabernacle on which to build a 50’ x 50’ educational facility (which was to include “appropriate stairs for the sexes”). Canadian Bible Institute (CBI) opened on 15 September 1924 with 29 students. Within weeks, another Canadian C&MA training school, Great West Bible Institute (GWBI), began educating leaders for J. H. Woodward’s Edmonton-based Great West Mission.
The following year the principalship of CBI passed to E. Ralph Hooper, the former dean of the C&MA’s Boston Bible Training School. He ensured that the school’s curriculum followed that of the Missionary Training Institute, which had become all but inaccessible to Canadian students because the U.S. had recently implemented a more restrictive immigration policy. Things went smoothly at the new school, and it turned out a steady stream of leaders (21 in 1928, 11 of whom were women) until July 1929, when the Board of Managers decided to close six of the C&MA’s nine training schools, including CBI and GWBI, to offset a movement-wide decline in revenues.
All attempts to reopen CBI during the 1930’s were quashed by the leadership of the C&MA. Finally, pastors Willis Brooks (a CBI alumnus) and George Blackett (a former board member) took matters into their own hands. In October 1941, with the blessing of Gordon Skitch, superintendent of the Western Canadian District, they “re-established” Canadian Bible Institute in Regina. Convinced that the initiative would be rejected if they went through normal channels, they consulted neither the Eastern and Central Canadian District nor the Board of Managers. As a result, the school had to wait another four years for official recognition. It was also required to change its name to Western Canadian Bible Institute (WCBI).
In 1944, the Eastern and Central District received approval to establish a school in Toronto, but the project foundered for lack of leadership and proper facilities. Two years later, the Glen Rocks estate came up for sale. The District concluded that it needed a Bible camp and conference centre more than it needed a training school, and so it sold off the Institute building to help pay for Glen Rocks. In 1956, WCBI (later, Canadian Bible College) was declared to be the national school for the C&MA in Canada.

The Rev. James Frost was born on 18 July 1931 in New Brunswick. He attended Canadian Bible College (then Western Canadian Bible Institute) in Regina, Sask. from 1953-1957. There he met and married his wife, Loreen (Galenzoski), with whom he had five children. During their ministerial career Rev. and Mrs. Frost pastored a number of Christian and Missionary Alliance Churches: Wheatley, Ont. (1957-1960); Thorold, Ont. (1960-1963); St. John, N. B. (1963-1968); Montréal, P.Q. (Alliance Community Church Pie IX, 1968-1971), Midland, Ont. (1971-1982), and Gibbons, Alta. (Sturgeon Alliance Church, 1982-1995). Rev. Frost also served as a member of the Eastern and Central Canadian District Ordaining Council, the Director of Maritime Alliance Family Camp, and the member of a committee that organized the sponsorship of Vietnamese boat people. He currently resides in Edmonton, Alta.

A. B. Simpson was a pastor, hymn writer, author, educator, and magazine editor who founded The Christian and Missionary Alliance. He was born in Bay View, Prince Edward Island on 15 December 1843 and was baptized in 1844, in the Cavendish (P.E.I.) Presbyterian Church by John Geddie, a Presbyterian missionary. His family moved to Chatham, Ontario in 1847. He was converted in 1858, and in 1861 wrote a "covenant" in which he dedicated himself to God. From 1861 to 1865 he attended Knox College in Toronto. In 1865, after graduating from Knox, Simpson received a call to Knox Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, Ont. He accepted the call, and that same year married Margaret Henry (1841-1924), with whom he had six children.

In 1873 he accepted a call to Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. The following year he experienced "the baptism of the Holy Ghost" after reading W. E. Boardman's The Higher Christian Life. In 1879 he became pastor of Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York City. During this pastorate he began editing his own missionary magazine, The Gospel in All Lands, which lasted from February 1880 to October 1881. In 1881 he experienced physical healing from a heart condition and was baptized by immersion. That year, increasingly at odds with his upper-class congregation, he resigned his pastorate in order to devote his ministerial efforts to “the poor and neglected masses.”

His efforts led to the founding of the Gospel Tabernacle in 1882, the same year in which he began publishing The Word the Work and the World, a periodical for the promotion of missions and "the higher Christian life," that later became the official organ of The Christian and Missionary Alliance. By 1883, the newly-incorporated Gospel Tabernacle had grown to the point where it could launch its own missionary sending society, the Missionary Union for the Evangelization of the World. It also opened a "home for Faith and Physical Healing" ( renamed the Berachah Home in 1884) and began the New York Missionary Training College (now Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary) which graduated its first students in 1884. That year the Missionary Union sent out its first missionaries (to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Simpson organized his first conference for the promotion of evangelism, the deeper life, and missions. The Friday evening services at the conference were dedicated to holiness and physical healing.

Simpson encapsulated his movement's teaching in the phrase "Christ our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King," which became known as "the Fourfold Gospel".

In 1887, he founded the Evangelical Missionary Alliance (EMA). Its major object was "to carry the Gospel 'to all nations', with special reference to the need of the destitute and unoccupied fields." It sought "to unite all Christians of evangelical denominations in its work." The organization’s name was changed to the International Missionary Alliance on its incorporation in November 1887 (Alliance Yearbook 1888, p. 52-55).

That year he also founded the Christian Alliance as a "fraternal union of believers in cordial harmony with evangelical Christians of every name." It was responsible to hold annual conventions and form local "branches". These were intended as fellowships, not as churches, for the purpose of bearing testimony to the Fourfold Gospel, diffusing its truths, providing community for those who believed them, and praying for the evangelization of the world. (Alliance Yearbook 1888, p. 48-51).

On 31 March 1897, the boards of the two organizations authorized a merger; it was made law on 1 April 1897 by a special act of the New York legislature and ratified by a special convention held 14-18 April at the Gospel Tabernacle. The aims of the newly-minted Christian and Missionary Alliance combined those of the original bodies: (as stated in the Fraternal Letter that resulted from the 1898 annual convention) the C&MA was "to preach a full Gospel at home and send missionaries; to carry the same glad tidings to the unevangelized regions beyond; to preserve our non-sectarian and interdenominational attitude; to study to confine the [administrative] machinery to that which is necessary…." (Pardington, George P. Twenty-five Wonderful Years, p. 74, 75).

In October 1897 the Missionary Training College relocated to Nyack New York, a town about 30 km. from New York City., and was renamed the Nyack Missionary Training Institute. Simpson and his family also moved to Nyack so that he could participate more fully in the activities of the school. He commuted daily to New York City to minister at the Gospel Tabernacle and to work at the C&MA's headquarters.

The C&MA encountered a major crisis in the decade following the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in 1906. Simpson believed that all of the charismatic gifts were available to believers, but he rejected the Pentecostal belief that glossolalia is the initial physical evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. To his great sadness, many Alliance folk disagreed with him and left the C&MA for Pentecostal churches. A significant number of those who left became leaders within the Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal groups.

Despite these losses, the C&MA continued to expand, both in North America and overseas, and so the movement was strong enough to be saddened but not demoralized by Simpson's death when it came on 29 October 1919. The Alliance continued to grow under the leadership of Simpson's successor, Paul Rader (1879-1938), and subsequent leaders, so that today it numbers 6 million adherents worldwide (of whom about 600,000 are in North America).

A. W. (Aiden Wilson) Tozer is perhaps the most widely-known and influential member of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). He was born on 21 April 1897 in La Jose (now Newburg) Pa., and died in Toronto, Ont. on 13 May 1963. He was ordained as a minister in the C&MA in 1920 and served pastorates in Toledo, Oh. (1921-23); Indianapolis, Ind. (1923-1928); Chicago, Ill (1928-1959); and Toronto, Ont. (1959-1963). He also served as vice-president of the C&MA (1946-1950) and, most significantly, as editor of the denomination’s official organ The Alliance Weekly (1950-1957) and its successor The Alliance Witness (1958-1963).

Tozer was a convinced evangelical and a staunch supporter of the ideals of the C&MA. His first book, Wingspread: Albert B. Simpson, a Study in Spiritual Altitude (Harrisburg, Ps.: Christian Publications, 1943) was a spiritual biography of the founder of the Alliance. Although loyal to the Alliance, Tozer had an ecumenical spirit. He felt a sense of spiritual community with all true Christians, regardless of their denominational affiliation.

Regarded by many of his admirers as a prophet, Tozer exerted an influence that extended beyond evangelicalism and beyond North America through his insightful books and editorials on the spiritual life. His writings reveal a mystical approach to the Christian life that was founded on his love of the Christian spiritual classics. He was in great demand as a speaker, and during the 1950’s many of his sermons were broadcast over Chicago’s WMBI radio. Tozer wrote nine books during his lifetime, the most influential of which were The Pursuit of God (1948) and The Knowledge of the Holy (1961). An additional twenty volumes of his sermons and editorials have been published since his death. For further biographical information see Fant, David J. A. W. Tozer: A Twentieth Century Prophet (Harrisburg, Pa.: Christian Publications, 1964).