Toronto is a fascinating town

Toronto is one of the most cosmopolitan cities I’ve ever visited. Two million people converge on the city each day, speaking a cacophony of languages that range from Polish to Farsi, to English, French, Chinese and Korean.

I am visiting the city for the first time… staying only a few steps from the center of the University of Toronto campus, a bustling international community of 53,000 students. Surrounding me is my pick of book stores, boutiques, and restaurants, a choice as diverse as the people who live here. I am two blocks from the Royal Ontario Museum (where there is an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls) and the Royal Observatory. A couple of blocks from there, and I am in the upscale Yorkville area, where multi-million dollar condominiums abound, and a gourmet grocery story provides valet parking.

Disciples have had a presence in this diverse community for many decades. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a national office for Canada, located in Toronto, when, as former Regional Minister for Canada, Robert Steffer states it, “there were funds to operate one.” Today, Hillcrest Christian Church is just a short drive from the University of Toronto campus. Two other small Disciples congregations have attempted to start in Toronto recently, a Spanish-speaking church, and a Burundi-Rwandan congregation that nested at Hillcrest for a while.
Emmanuel College, a United Church of Canada seminary, is on the UT campus and is headed by Mark Toulouse, a Disciples pastor. Until last year Toulouse was Professor of American Religious History at Brite University in Fort Worth, Texas. Disciples have been known to train at Emmanuel, including 2006 graduate Jen Garbin, pastor of two Disciples churches – Milton and Summerville in Nova Scotia.

I had a chance to talk to Mark Toulouse while I’m in Toronto about his work as principal of Emmanuel College and about some of the innovative strategies he’s undertaking at the college. I’ll write about that in an upcoming blog.