A Brief History

Morningstar Christian Fellowship began as Churchill Heights Baptist Church Thanksgiving Sunday, October 13, 1958 at the Churchill Heights Public School. Only 10 people were present that first Sunday morning. Harry Strachan, our church's founding pastor began an aggressive programme of visitation and within 18 months the congregation had grown to 12 families.

After four years of meeting in the school, land was purchased and our first worship centre was opened in October 1962 at Markham Rd. and Painted Post Drive. God's blessing was evident in all the church's ministries and attendance soon exceeded the capacity of these and other rented facilities. Within 2 years, this building was sold and Harry Strachan led Churchill Heights Baptist Church into a new and larger worship centre at Markham and Ellesmere Roads in 1964.

In these new facilities, the congregation experienced new leadership under three pastors. Doug Routledge, Ellard Corbett and Martin Wedge. Under Martin Wedge's leadership the church continued to grow. There was a great movement of God's Spirit among young people with many coming to Christ and being called into pastoral and missionary service. Again, the church's facilities were overcrowded, so in 1974 our second worship centre was sold to the Salvation Army, necessitating temporary use of Woburn Collegiate and Public School. Later, the purchase of a 2.64 acre site, strategically located at Morningside and Sheppard Avenues was negotiated.

In July 1978 our present and third worship centre was completed to house our growing congregation and ministries. In the 1980's, Churchill Heights enjoyed the pastoral leadership of Art Larson who strengthened the church through his fine ministry of expository preaching and Ian Bowie who set our church on a new course of outreach to our growing multi-cultural community.

In 1990 our present Senior Pastor, John Mahaffey, began his ministry at Churchill Heights following 10 years of church planting in the Philippines. Since then our church has experienced unprecedented growth, growing from an average of 400 to 1200 people each Sunday. To accommodate this growth we started two morning services in 1996 and in 1999 a 20,000 square foot expansion of our facilities was completed.

Since John Mahaffey began his ministry here the church has also grown more international in flavour. There are now people from over 50 different nations that are represented in our fellowship. To better reflect this new reality Churchill Heights in 2006 under went a name change and adopted the new name “Morningstar Christian Fellowship” along with the tag line “…where the nations meet.” Morningstar is a name that heralds the end of the night and the dawning of a new day; a name that speaks of our mission to continue to bring the light and hope of Jesus Christ to all the peoples of our city. The tag line “where the nations meet” communicates our vision to reach all the people of our international community.

Morningstar employs a staff of 15 including 6 pastors who serve with John giving leadership to several divisions of ministry.

Our Pastoral Leadership