Joshua Tinson: Positive Attitude and Cheerful Spirit

 

                                                         Hanover Street Baptist Church

Joshua Tinson, another Englishman who trained for the mission field at Bristol College, was born at Watledge in Gloucestershire in 1794. His desire was to serve in Asia but, in 1822, BMS accepted him for service in Jamaica. After his ordination at the Eagle Street Church in London, Tinson and his wife, Elizabeth (nee Haines) departed the country of their birth; they landed at Morant Bay, Jamaica, May 31, 1822.

At first, Tinson considered working in St Thomas in the East. However, because George Liele was going to be away in England, the members of the Windward Road Chapel invited Tinson to serve as their pastor in Liele’s absence. Upon Liele’s return, Tinson began to preach at a house on Hanover Street in Kingston where some of his congregants were from Liele’s church. On January 7, 1827, the group of worshippers was constituted as the Hanover Street Baptist Church.

In June 1830, Tinson started ministerial work in Yallahs in the parish of St. David, now a part of St Thomas. With 48 members, this group was constituted as a church on Christmas Day, 1830. Tinson faced stern opposition to his work in St David from the magistrate and the members of the plantocracy. This did not discourage him from espousing a wider vision of his calling to serve the church. Within a few years, Tinson agreed to coordinate the distribution of 40,000 copies of the Bible – a gift from the British and Foreign Bible Society – to the newly emancipated people across Jamaica.

Ever willing to extend himself in ministry, Tinson assumed the role of interim pastor of the East Queen Street Baptist Church in 1836, after the death of the church’s pastor, the BMS missionary, John Shoveller. Shoveller had left his homeland for Jamaica shortly after his wife died when she was only 23. While at East Queen Street, he is known to have purchased the freedom of an enslaved person, for which he endured much criticism especially from the Methodists.

In 1837, Tinson started a church at Mt Atlas in the hills of St Andrew, in the vicinity of Cooper’s Hill and Diamond. Perhaps, this was what is now called Red Hills Baptist Church. Tinson appointed two deacons from the Hanover Street congregation to assist in the work at the church at Mt Atlas.

Meanwhile, ill health prevented Tinson from commencing the operation of a ministerial training programme for prospects for the ministry in the Baptist community in Jamaica. As he had done previously when ill health took its toll on him, Tinson and his wife visited England for recuperation. Upon their return to Jamaica, Tinson commenced his celebrated work in theological education and ministerial formation in Jamaica.

On October 6, 1843, after resigning as pastor of the Hanover Street church, Tinson assumed the role of president and tutor at the newly formed Calabar College near Rio Bueno, Trelawny. The institution began with 8 students. Over a seven-year period, Tinson carried out his duties while battling ill health, including cancer. In October, 1844, when he was in his 57^th year, Tinson fell from a ladder. Complications from the fall led to his death on December 3, 1850. He was buried on the grounds of Calabar in Rio Bueno.

Tinson’s life was a study in perseverance in the work of the Lord, despite ill health. His positive attitude and cheerful spirit during his trials helped prepare his students for the vicissitudes of pastoral ministry. After his death, Mrs. Tinson and her daughter returned to England and later, migrated to Australia where they resided first in Sydney, New South Wales, and then in Hobart, Tasmania. Meanwhile, Jamaica Baptists who visited Tinson’s tomb in Trelawny did so with reverent awe.

As the years passed by, the Hanover Street Baptist Church, which Tinson started, played a major role in the development of what later became the Jamaica Baptist Union Brotherhood and in the formation of Tarrant Baptist Church.