John Kendrick Archer (3 March 1865 – 25 July 1949) was a Baptist Minister, Mayor of Christchurch and member of the New Zealand Legislative Council.

John was raised as a Methodist and educated at Market Bosworth Grammar School, Leicestershire, and University College Nottingham.

When Archer and his family moved to New Zealand in 1908, he became minister of the Baptist Church, Napier until 1913 and serving as chairman of the Main School Committee and the local Technical Education Board.

[1] Archer was not only a prominent leader in the Baptist church but also gave long and influential service to the early New Zealand Labour Party.

Archer stood unsuccessfully as Labour candidate for the House of Representatives four times: in Invercargill (1919), Christchurch North (1922 and 1928), and Kaiapoi (1931).

His preaching and actions reflected the moral righteousness and millennialism of British puritanism and the urgent and total commitment to social change of the Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah and Amos.

Nonconformist in religion and politics, he argued that 'faith without works is dead' and that imperfect human relationships arose out of economic and social injustice caused by sin, which he defined as selfishness and the worship of material self-interest.

The institution was named in John and Phoebe's honour 'as an expression of thanksgiving to Almighty God for the outstanding and devoted service of the late Rev.

[2] One of the Archers' sons, Kendrick Gee, was born at Heptonstall in the historic county of the West Riding, Yorkshire.