David Mainse

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David Mainse

Rev. David Mainse is a Canadian televangelist and evangelical Christian leader.

Born in August 1936 in Campbell's Bay, Quebec, and raised in a rural area near Ottawa, Ontario, Mainse was highly influenced by his father, Rev. Dr. Roy Lake Mainse (1896-1972) who worked as a missionary in Egypt, as well as a Holiness Movement Church pastor in both Ontario and Quebec.

Determining to go into ministry while still a teenager, Mainse studied theology at Eastern Pentecostal Bible College (now Master's College and Seminary) in Peterborough, Ontario and was ordained. He met and married Norma-Jean Rutledge in 1958. He pastored Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada churches in Brighton, Deep River, Sudbury and Hamilton.

He began his communications ministry in 1962 with a 15-minute program following the late night news in at the then CBC affiliate CHOV in Pembroke, Ontario, while he pastored in Deep River. He later began a television program called "Crossroads", and the program expanded to stations across the country.

In 1975 David left the pastorate to focus full time on television and evangelism projects. The early seventies brought Circle Square, a children's telecast that has been carried in over 50 countries and continues to be shown in some.

In 1976, Mainse began a project to begin telecasting daily, and as part of this lead an initiative to create a studio at 100 Huntley Street in downtown Toronto, Ontario. The lead program of this new station took the studio's address as its name. On June 15, 1977, the first of broadcast of the interview/talk show 100 Huntley Street (based on The 700 Club in the United States) was launched. This was the beginning of the ministry known as Crossroads Christian Communications.

This TV program has featured more than 14,000 guests including some famous evangelicals such as Billy Graham and Charlton Heston. Crossroads also produced a short-lived program for teenagers, Inside Track, in 1978.

In 1998, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission granted Crossroads a licence to operate a 24-hour a day Toronto-Hamilton over-the-air commercial TV station carried on cable and covering North America on satellites. CITS-TV has been broadcasting programming since September of 1998.

Mainse also served for several years at the request of the world's most successful mutual funds leader, Sir John Templeton as a judge in the world's largest annual prize "The Templeton Fund for Progress in Religion".

He has received numerous awards for excellence in television production from the National Religious Broadcasters in the USA, and has several honorary doctorates. The most recent being from Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto in 2003.

Mainse stepped down as president of Crossroads and host of 100 Huntley Street in the summer of 2003. The new president of Crossroads is his youngest son, Rev. Ron Mainse.

Mainse is a member of the Conservative Party of Canada. He recently commented of Prime Minister Stephen Harper "We've got a born-again prime minister" ^[1]