An earlier parish church in Lahti, built in 1890, was as long back as in the 1920s found to be too small, due to the town's rapid population growth from a few hundred in the 1880s to over 8,000 in the 1920s. Its appearance and timber construction were also considered too parochial, and unsuited to Lahti's new city status (chartered in 1905). Therefore, plans had been brewing since the 1930s for a new church to be built, although these had had to be put on hold for the war years.