First Evangelical Lutheran Church of Toronto

First Evangelical Lutheran Church is a congregation of the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, located at 116 Bond Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that serves the communities of Toronto, and the Greater Toronto Area. The church offers services in English with a sensitivity to its multicultural context and make-up. German language services were held for much of its history. The last German service was on March 1, 2020. The church was founded in 1851. A major celebration is planned to mark the congregation's 175th anniversary on August 9, 2026.

The history of First Evangelical Lutheran Church of Toronto is, above all else an account of a relatively small number of German-speaking immigrants struggling to create and maintain a spiritual home for themselves and successive generations. Not only did those first immigrants accomplish this goal, but in so doing, earned for First Lutheran the designation of the Lutheran mother church of Toronto. First Lutheran traces its beginnings to 1850 when a small number of German Lutheran families began to meet in their homes for worship. The German population of Toronto was then extremely small, no more than a few hundred, and probably equally represented by Protestants and Roman Catholics. The formal organisation of the congregation took place on August 9, 1851, when 12 members signed its first constitution. Served by itinerant pastors for the first several years of its existence, the congregation met in a number of temporary locations which included the First Congregational Church, the Crookshank Street Public School and the Temperance Hall — all in the heart of what is now downtown Toronto. The first permanent pastor to serve the congregation, the Reverend Gustav Reiche, was appointed in 1855. In that same year, the congregation purchased the property on Bond Street where it began construction of its first church building the following year. This was a small simple wood-frame structure and included a parsonage at its western end. The completed structure was consecrated on August 23, 1857. In its first decade, the congregation was plagued by severe financial difficulties. Due to increases in building costs, the first of the European fundraising efforts took place in 1857 when a trustee of the congregation, G. van der Smissen, went to Germany and collected an amount sufficient to cover the most pressing building debts. As the financial situation had not improved by 1860, his daughter, Elizabeth van der Smissen, undertook a trip to Europe to raise funds. Using testimonials provided by clergy of other denominations in Toronto, specifically Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Congregationalist, Miss van der Smissen traveled to Germany, France, Switzerland, England and Scotland, and raised sufficient funds to retire the congregation's debt. A record of these testimonials and of all funds collected remains in the congregation's archives to date. The next few decades in the history of the congregation were characterized by a number of short-term tenancies of pastors, very slow growth in the size of congregation, and perennial difficulties in meeting ongoing financial obligations. Through the late 1920s, the women's group frequently provided funds to cover essential expenses when the financial situation of the congregation became desperate. In 1877, evening services in the English language were introduced for the benefit of the congregation's younger generation and their spouses who did not speak German. In 1889 a fire seriously damaged the structure, but with the insurance compensation, the damage was repaired. Four years later the parsonage at the western end of the church was rebuilt into a Sunday school hall. By 1895, it was apparent that the original church bui

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