Hillcrest Christian Church in Toronto, Ontario is an amazingly diverse congregation.
Every Sunday morning people from countries like Guyana, Jamaica, England, the Phillipines and Australia worship with Canadians at Hillcrest.
Diversity is woven into almost every aspect of church life at this church. The pastoral team is made up of Fred Dizon, an ordained Methodist pastor originally from the Phillipines; Robert Steffer and his wife Diane, Disciples clergy from America; and Ann Stainton, a former missionary and long-time Disciple from Canada. And it’s just not pulpit leadership that’s diverse. Elders, choir members and deacons represent people from all parts of the world.
Long-time Hillcrest members are honest in saying that they didn’t necessarily seek out diversity; instead, it came knocking at the church door. Robert Steffer tells the story of the Jamaican immigrant who came to what was then an all-white Hillcrest Christian congregation in the 1960s, saying to church members that he too was a Disciple and that he was looking for a church home.
The congregation at Hillcrest welcomed him to the church, and soon more Jamaicans found their way to Hillcrest. Other people from a variety of West Indies countries followed. Most had either been Disciples in their own countries or were looking for a welcoming place to worship. Along the way people from other parts of the world also discovered Hillcrest.
Then there was the work of Dorothy Martin Jeffries, a former missionary from Canada to the Phillipines. Because of her connections to the Phillipines, many Filipinos who moved to Canada visited Hillcrest, liked what they experienced, and stayed. Today, Hillcrest has a burgeoning Filipino population. On the October Sunday that I visited, nearly three dozen Filipinos of all ages, gathered in the fellowship hall for an after-service Bible Study conducted in their native language.
Over the years this central city congregation not too far from the University of Toronto, has experienced many of the issues that have affected churches everywhere: an aging population, changing neighborhood demographics, and a decline in membership. But it still has a committed group of about 75 to 80 people who gather in its sanctuary each Sunday, a core of youth people involved in church leadership, and a wondrously diverse group of people who, as their church motto says, “come from various parts of the world to worship…to be a community of faith…and to be a witness for Jesus.”
