Driving the Churches Away

Earlier this week I posted a short article showing how the Toronto District School Board has chosen to effectively drive churches out of the public schools by pushing through a massive fee hike. In a city of small congregations and expensive real estate, renting space from public schools has long been one of the few affordable options for churches. Grace Fellowship Church of East Toronto, a recent plant of the church I attend, is faced with a 391% increase in the fee they pay to rent a gymnasium for their worship services; Grace Toronto, another local church with which we have a close association, has seen their fees rise by 142%, up to $192,000 a year for just four hours of weekly use. Many other local churches face similar circumstances.

At the time I wrote the article I asked for action and for prayer. Both must have happened in abundant measure!

I posted the article on Monday morning and by the next day I had been contacted by several local and national newspapers, radio stations, and television channels. I opted to direct all media inquiries to Julian Freeman and Dan MacDonald, the pastors of those two churches. In the few days since, it has been a thrill to see those men appear all over the news.

• CTV News covered the issue immediately and headlined their article “Churches scramble after school board raises rental fee.” They published another titled “Church stunned by major TDSB rental fee hike.”
• The Toronto Star published an article titled “School rental hike wallops small faith groups.”
• The National Post went with the long headline “Church groups see rent for meeting rooms spike as much as 400% as Toronto schools try to fill budget gap.”
• WORLD Magazine titled an article “Blatant Discrimination.”
• Christianity Today published a brief story titled “Toronto Churches Face Eviction As School Rental Fees Skyrocket”   Continue at Tim Challies

• See also: Questions the TDSB Is Not Answering