Only One Life: The Story of Dr, Jack Scott

Winifred M. O'Rourke was a writer and journalist in Saskatoon.

This book was written, author Arnold Dallimore states, in response to many requests shortly after Dr. Jack Scott died in 1981 from people who had known him as a devoted Baptist pastor and preacher in Toronto and elsewhere.

Early influences in Dr. Scott’s life were a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher; the witness of a half-brother who died at age 21 when Scott was 14; and a preacher at an open-air meeting who seemed to make the Christian message apply personally.

The author shows how Scott’s vocation in life developed. He was a Sunday school teacher while still in high school and upon graduation entered the Toronto Baptist Seminary in 1933. He was regarded by his superiors as a diligent student with a gift of humour. In his second seminary year he was asked to take on weekend pastoral duties at a small Belleville church. This he continued until his graduation from the seminary in 1937.

Scott received a number of calls from churches in Ontario but he accepted the call to Forward Baptist Church, Toronto, one of the most challenging evangelical Baptist churches in Canada at that time. He was aware of the challenges it presented, but pastors from evangelical churches did not hesitate to point out his youth and the facts that he was not yet ordained and was not married! In 1938 he was ordained and in 1939 he married. His ministry developed and flourished. In 1942 Jack Scott was accepted as a chaplain for the Royal Canadian Air Force and served in Ontario and Britain. Returning to Forward Baptist Church after the war, he became involved in radio broadcasts. He also became president of the new Central Baptist Seminary. In 1950 he suffered a collapse due to nervous and physical exhaustion. He resumed work after a couple of months’ rest.

In 1963 Dr. Scott and his wife accepted a call to a large Baptist church in Detroit, a call that he had turned down three times. His heavy ministry of preaching and the development of building programs for his new church were a heavy work load. In 1967 he suffered a heart attack and it was four months before he could take up preaching again.

At the urgent request of the board, Dr. Scott returned to Toronto to take up once more the presidency of the Central Baptist Seminary. He resigned in 1978, accepting the post of Chancellor, with the idea that his responsibilities would be light. By 1980 his health was failing considerably. His last sermon was preached to the convention of the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches, of which he was the president, in October 1981. He died in December 1981.

In this biography the author includes a number of personal testimonies from people whose lives were changed due to Dr. Scott’s preaching or to personal contact with him. Dr. Scott would be quick to point out that these were not just chance encounters but “part of God’s plan.”

This is an easy book to read. Its message is not limited to those who are members of the Baptist church.