| Grace Toronto Church | |
| Location: | 383 Jarvis Street Toronto, Ontario M5B 2C7 |
| Denomination: | Presbyterian Church in America |
| Seniorpastor: | Dan MacDonald |
| Coordinates: | 43.6623°N -79.3763°W |
Grace Toronto Church is a Presbyterian Church in America congregation worshipping in the historic Old St. Andrew's Church building at 383 Jarvis Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The original St. Andrew's Church congregation (of the Church of Scotland) dated back to 1830, when Toronto was still the Town of York. This congregation split in 1874 over whether it should move west from its home at the corner of Adelaide and Church streets. In 1876, the majority moved to a new site at King and Simcoe streets that became known as "New St. Andrew's", and it remains there to this day.
The church building at Adelaide and Church streets was renovated by Henry Langley in 1877–78. Those who wished to stay in that area remained with the "Old St. Andrew's" congregation. There was, however, a need for a new building, and in 1878, the congregation moved northeastward to a newly constructed church building at 383 Jarvis Street, on the corner of Carlton Street.
During the 1940s, the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states produced an influx of refugees from that area into Toronto. At the same time, the United Church of Canada, which Old St. Andrew's had joined in 1925, was in relative decline within the downtown core of Toronto. In 1950, Old St. Andrew's joined with Westminster-Central to become St. Andrew's United Church near the corner of Bloor Street East and Yonge Street.
By 1951, the Old St. Andrew's building on Jarvis Street was sold, and it became the main church of Toronto's Latvian and Estonian worshippers. Saint Andrew, as a renowned saint of the Christian Church, was retained in the name by the congregations. Until September 30, 2015, the church building remained home to two congregations of both the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran and Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Churches.[1]
As of October 1, 2015, St. Andrew's became the new home of Grace Toronto Church. The historic building housed a Presbyterian congregation once again.
Grace Toronto Church was founded in 1992 by Stephen Beck. During this time, the church flourished. In 2002, Beck and his family left to become missionaries in Germany, and attendance at Grace began to dwindle. In 2004, the Reverend Dan MacDonald became pastor of the church. The church was reduced to a handful of people in 2004, so Dan and Sue, under the guidance of the denomination, re-planted the church. The congregation was reduced to 10 people. In 2006, there were 25 regular attendees. Since 2006, the congregation has grown exponentially.[2]
Old St. Andrew's Church was built by Langley & Burke in 1878 for the Rev. M.G. Milligan and the remaining congregation of the original St. Andrew's Church. The building was designed in a Gothic style with a linear orientation on an East-West axis, with towers dominating the western side where the main entrances are located.
The facade is a simple-yet-elegant design featuring groupings of stained-glass windows on the north, east and south sides of the building, to allow maximum light exposure during the morning hours when services would take place. The materials used in the construction are brick, wood, stone and stained-glass.
The exterior shows mainly the brick and stone elements, while the interior reveals more of the warm wood texture complemented by the intimate lighting from the stained-glass windows. The approximate dimensions of the building are 36 meters by 25 meters for the body of the building, 17 meters high to the top of the pitched roof, and 46 meters and 25 meters to the tops of the two steeples.