Dear Harbour City

Dear Harbour City,

Watching our Community take shape over the last 6 and a half years has been a very special thing to be apart of. Seeing people meet Jesus, grow as disciples, step into using their gifts and minister to others, seeing new leaders raised up, and people take next steps in life – in marriage, family, work and faith – all with Jesus and apart of the Harbour City community has been so beautiful to watch.

I love the Culture that is being formed amongst us.

I recently received a message from a friend, who is part of another Church in Durban, but has a number of friends in Harbour City. 

He wrote: “It’s been such a blessing this year to be surrounded by the beautiful people and community of Harbour City that you shepherd. Their spiritual vitality, authenticity and prioritization of Jesus have added to me in invaluable ways.”

That is probably one of the best messages I have received in my life.

The fact is, this is not the first time I have heard this from people outside of our Community, whether they followed Jesus or not. 

The Culture that God is forming in our community is unique and beautiful. There is a warmth, a love, a joy, an authenticity and a devotion to Jesus that is forming among us that I haven’t seen anywhere before. 

One of my favourite things to do in our New Members Course, before I speak about our Vision, Mission and Cultures in week 1, is to ask the group what our Cultures are. You see, Cultures are these invisible, intangible realities that you’d hope that people coming into our community would experience straight away. 

And generally, they do! We’ve found that the words might be different, but people are experiencing our 6 cultures (Knowing God, Gospel, Family, Mission, Multiplication and Renewal) as they meet us, and join us on Sundays and Midweek.

Peter Drucker said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and I believe that. And I love that people are experiencing our beliefs through the words and lives of our community.

Jesus said it this way, in John 13v34-35: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

There is something about the way that we love people, and even more, the way we practice love inside of the community of the Church, that speaks powerfully to those watching about what Jesus is like. And I love that we are growing and doing this more and more.

That being said, there are a few ways that I would also love to see us grow, as individuals, and as a Church:

Firstly, we live in a City marked by comfort idolatry and leisure. People don’t move to Durban to make the big bucks, but they do move to Durban for a good lifestyle, or a good work-life balance. 

The challenge of this, is that following Jesus will require discomfort, sacrifice, and suffering. Jesus says this in those challenging parts of the gospels that we prefer not to acknowledge, like: 

Mark 8v34: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

For us, choosing to follow Jesus like this, might require us to:

-       Obey the scriptures, even when it would be easier not to, in areas like our sexuality, our finances, our time etc.

-       To make decisions that are marked by prayer, faith and obedience to the Spirit; not marked by fear, financial gain, the approval of family or friends, or assimilating to what is normal culturally.

-       Have a hard conversation with a friend, challenging them on their sin and pointing them to Jesus.

-       To serve in an area of Church life, even when it would be easier and more comfortable to just arrive on Sunday morning at 10am.

But, in all these things, we are living to please Jesus (2 Corinthians 5v9), so being his disciple means to not live for comfort or what is easiest, but to live for His Glory.

Secondly, South African culture across the spectrum, can be quite proud. This means that asking for help, being vulnerable about our weaknesses and struggles, asking for prayer, and confessing our sin to one another can be quite an unnatural or uncomfortable thing for us to do. Even though these practices are celebrated and encouraged throughout the New Testament.

For us to grow as a community where we are all fully known and fully loved means growing in humility and vulnerability and grace. Growing in courage to take these uncomfortable steps in sharing these things with others, and knowing that we will be accepted and supported despite them. And relying both on God’s grace, and the people of the Church to help us where we’re at.

We find it very easy to share opinions, to share advice and to help someone else. But, are we willing to ask for advice, ask for help, ask for prayer, ask for someone to walk with us as we work through sin in our lives? 

Finally, I want to encourage us in the area of evangelism. We live in a time when sharing your faith with others can be met with hostility and rejection. So, as much as we want our friends, families, co-workers, neighbours and everyone to know Jesus, sometimes the fear, awkwardness and uncertainty of how they will respond to an invitation to Church, an offer of prayer, us sharing our testimony of God’s grace in our lives, makes us hold back from doing it at all.

For each of us, this is an ongoing challenge, but also an exciting part of following Jesus that we all need to work out. We are all called to follow Jesus as missionaries in our lives, so how are we doing as missionaries? And what can we put into place in our lives to be more faithful to this call.

I’ll end with one of my favourite pictures of the Church, that I regularly pray through for us:

Ephesians 4v11-16: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. ¹⁴ Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. ¹⁶ From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

Love!

Grant Clark