The Resurrection, Cookham, 1924, Sir Stanley Spencer

This Easter Sunday, Harbor Anglican will mark seven years of public worship and what better day to celebrate than the Feast of the Resurrection!

Harbor Anglican began its public worship life as Saint Ambrose Anglican on Easter Sunday 2019, with a handful of families and young singles gathering together on Capitol Hill. Unbeknownst, Covid was just around the corner! Our little church was not even a year old when the city shut down, and like so many communities, we had to find our footing in the wilderness of Covid-tide.

Our first location on Capitol Hill at Trinity Lutheran Church where Casey was ordained on Palm Sunday 2019.

We pitched our worship tent in several locations, tabernacling where we could, weathering all the challenges that churches faced during those two years, and slowly began to sense that God was calling us to do something we didn't set out to do. We were being called not just to survive Covid, but to replant and begin again. That journey eventually brought us to our current home in Green Lake, where we became Harbor Anglican.

There is so much more to our story than can be adequately recounted: from all the children and adults welcomed at the baptismal font (15 baptisms!), to faith professed and deepened, grief carried in the loss of children and parents, vows exchanged (6 weddings!), and all the ordinary and extraordinary moments in between. There are stories that still make us laugh, like the time incense found the smoke alarm, or when the Easter Vigil bonfire took on a life of its own demanding a fire truck to visit us. Some of these stories are widely shared; others belong solely to the people who lived them. All of them are part of who we are.

Saint Ambrose Anglican holding one of its first Holy Eucharist services at Trinity Lutheran.

We read often about how most church plants don’t make it past a few years. Not for lack of hard work from the planter or the people but simply because a church moving beyond a plant to an established church is truly a prerogative of Almighty God. As St. Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Why some church plants make it and others don’t is truly in the hands of a sovereign God.

While we cannot congratulate ourselves for making it to seven years, or speculate on why others didn’t make it, we can look at Scripture and see the significance of seven.

Concert in the lawn that St. Ambrose hosted with musical guest Blake Flattley of 1517.

Seven is highly symbolic throughout Scripture: God rested on the seventh day; Israel marched seven times around Jericho; priests sprinkled blood seven times before the Lord in the tabernacle rituals; major feasts last seven days; Naaman was told to wash seven times in the Jordan to be cleansed of leprosy; Proverbs speaks of wisdom's seven pillars; Jesus spoke seven “I am” statements; he also rested on the seventh day after his work on the cross; Revelation speaks of seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. We could go on!

A summer luau with early members of St. Ambrose.

Seven consistently points to the assurance of things hoped for: fullness, redemption, and rest. To mark seven years is to confess that what has been built here is not our own doing, but the fruit of the same faithful God who completes what he begins.

On Sunday we will do what we have always done: gather to worship God in the beauty of holiness, hear the good news of Christ crucified and risen, and receive his grace at the table.

Harbor Anglican worshipping in Green Lake on Palm Sunday 2026.

Following the service, we invite you to join us as you are able for some tasty treats, sparkly drinks, and an Easter egg hunt — but above all we invite you to give thanks for all that God has done at Harbor Anglican over these past seven years. And may he multiply all of this seventy times seven — doing far more abundantly than all we could ask or imagine!

Resurrection Feasting on Harbor’s Seventh Birthday

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