Lakeside Church


Lakeside Church is an evangelical, nondenominational church, in Guelph, close to Toronto, Canada. There are two campuses, one in downtown Guelph and one north of the Guelph city limits.

History of Lakeside

Lakeside Church was founded by David Booker, along with forty families, in 1989. The church conducted its first service on 24 October that year. Booker retired as Pastor in 1998 and was succeeded the following year by David Ralph, who remained as Lead Pastor until 2017. A 1,000-seat auditorium was built in 2007. In 2014, the church opened its second campus at Lakeside Downtown and held its first downtown service on Jan. 5. In 2017, Jeff Groenewald was appointed as Interim Senior Leader and in 2018 Marc Gagnon was hired as Teaching Pastor.

Outreach and charitable work

Lakeside Church started Lakeside HOPE House, which opened its doors on Sept. 8, 2012. HOPE is an acronym for Helping Overcome Poverty Everywhere. From the premises of the Lakeside Downtown campus, it operates a food bank, a gymnasium, a café, two kitchens, offices, classrooms, and a 400-seat auditorium.
Lakeside Church has ministries targeted towards children, students, and young adults, and also runs recovery programs to assist people suffering from grief, divorce, and drug addiction.
Lakeside Church has an extensive missionary program and is involved in ministries in Africa, Central America, and Haiti. The church is partnering with PACE Africa to build Lakeside High School in Nyahururu, Kenya.

Church relationships and leadership

Lakeside has no official denominational affiliations, but it networks with other Evangelical churches of various denominations.
Lakeside holds one service on Sunday at its Lakeside Central campus, and one at its Lakeside Downtown campus.
The church is governed by a board of elders. Marc Gagnon was hired as the teaching pastor in March of 2018, and Daniel Bell is the Campus Pastor at Lakeside Downtown.

Notable people associated with Lakeside Church

Lakeside Church partner Cam Guthrie has served as mayor of Guelph since 2014.