Gracelife Church was founded by Craig and Dawn Glenn in May 2008. After serving in their previous local church and being on the Pastoral Team for 6 years, the last year of that full time, they felt called to go into the community and start something of their own. After 2 months of meeting in their home they approached the local Presbyterian Church to meet on Saturday evenings in their main hall.
Six months into the church plant Craig and Dawn had hands laid on them by Pastors of the Churches that they had relationship with and Gracelife officially had her first Elders. One year later and with a few more folk, the decision was made to move the meetings to a Sunday night and also to change venues, this time to the Bluff Eco Park. The next two years were spent there with more people being added and Gracelife growing from strength to strength.
After skyping one day with a good friend of theirs, a Pastor who led a church on the Gold Coast in Australia, Brad Dearlove, they made a decision to approach Durban Academy High School, Bluff to see if they would be able to meet in their now vacant school hall (a church had been meeting there till about a month prior to the Skype chat). To their delight they were given the green light and all systems were go to move across. Of course this came with its challenges, if you have ever meet in a school hall you will know what we are talking about, but it was a challenge accepted, because the new move would accommodate more people and essentially make us more accessible.
After five years in the Hall, Gracelife approached the SGB of Durban Academy to ask if we could take over their disused derelict old hall (they have two) on a permanent basis, fix it up, at a cost to the Church and use on a permanent basis. After much dialogue and negotiation the Memorandum of Understanding was signed between us and after two months of very intensive labour we moved in. And we are loving our home!
From humble beginnings of essentially two people in Craig and Dawn’s home, Gracelife has grown to around 140 people including children on any given Sunday. We now have 4 Deacon couples, 8 Lifegroups and many leaders who lead different ministries. We are a church full of colour in a beautiful neighborhood.
God has been so faithful to us.
We believe this is just the beginning!