Avenue Road Church
The Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, subsequently Avenue Road Presbyterian Church, subsequently Avenue Road United Church and later Church of the Nazarene, was a church located on Avenue Road on the northeastern corner of Roxborough Avenue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
A number of well known preachers served in its pulpit after it passed out of the hands of the Presbyterian and United Churches, including Charles Templeton of the later Church of the Nazarene and the famous author Aiden Wilson Tozer.
Templeton originally founded the church in 1941 as an independent congregation, but it eventually became associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination.
Designed by Gordon & Helliwell, the building was originally the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant; aptly named in contrast to the Anglican Church of the Messiah across the street (which was also designed and built by Gordon & Helliwell) a few years earlier, was built in 1899. The Presbyterian congregation (renamed Avenue Road Presbyterian Church in 1902), joined the United Church of Canada in 1925.
They eventually left the building, joining with the former St. Paul's Methodist congregation, a few blocks south, (St. Paul's-Avenue Road United Church, now Trinity-St. Paul's United Church on Bloor Street, west of Spadina Avenue), and it remained empty for 14 years. Templeton and his wife decided to rent the empty building for $100 a month, even without a congregation. Due to his dynamic preaching, the new independent congregation grew until Templeton went into debt to pay for the construction of a balcony to hold hundreds more. It was soon after the balcony was completed that the structure was severely damaged by fire. The building was repaired thanks to donations from supporters across Canada and the United States.
In the mid-1970s, the growing congregation left the downtown area to found Bayview Glen Church north of the city in Thornhill, Ontario. During the congregation’s move, there was controversy surrounding the sale of the church building to a buyer who secretly represented a Hare Krishna group. Despite the church’s desire that the building not be sold to the group, it has since become one of the most popular Hare Krishna places of worship in Ontario.
Read more about Avenue Road Church: Relocated Congregation
Famous quotes containing the words avenue, road and/or church:
“Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First you’re the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he’s been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice, supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn’t commit. And now you play the peevish lover stung by jealously and betrayal. It seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actors Studio.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“Telephone poles were matchsticks, put there to be snapped off at a whim. Dogs trotting across the road were suddenly big trucks. Old ladies turned into moving—vans. Everything was too bright, but very funny and made for my delight. And about half a mile from my long liquid breakfast I turned carefully down a side street and parked, and sat beaming happily through the tannic fog for about an hour, remembering how witty we all had been, how handsome and talented ... [ellipsis in original]”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“A church that can never have done with excommunicating Christ while it exists! Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall churches! Take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses. Invent a salt that will save you, and defend our nostrils.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)