Rick and Katie Schaeffer, with their 4 boys, came to Long Beach in 2005 with the goal of taking the good news about Jesus to people and to places where the gospel had lost its voice and no longer had a hearing, to people who had left the faith, people who had become burnt out on the church or to people who had just never come in contact with Jesus and the gospel. They felt God was moving in Long Beach and wanted to join Him in what He was doing in the city.   They wanted to see a community in Long Beach that would not be explainable apart from movement of the gospel and the presence and power of God. They began by praying and asking God how he would want them to go about this.

In 2006 they began a "Gospel Tranformation" study in their home and met a few people who wanted to join them in seeking to know what a life transformed by the gospel would be like.  They began to focus on knowing and loving their neighbors.  This lead to a season where community groups were established in various neighborhoods.  The goal of these groups was to begin to learn to do life around Jesus and the gospel,  and to be a blessing to our immediate neighbors.  The groups met together as one community every Sunday night for prayer and once a month they would rent a space to have a meal and share what God had been doing.  As the neighborhood groups began to grow, it was time to gather together on Sundays to worship God together as a community.

The first Sunday Service was held in the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in Oct. 2007.  The service moved several times, to the Broadlind cafe, the Schaeffer home and now finally to the Community Center in Bixby Park in June 2008.  Since then Grace Harbor has become a true neighborhood community with 95% of the people who come on Sunday morning living within a 3-mile radius from Bixby Park.  As of March 2009, there are 5 community/neighborhood groups meeting weekly, with more forming. 

Grace Harbor has become a home for many artists.  "The Art" was started in February 2009 for these artists to share and critique their art as well and use it to be a blessing to the community.

Grace Harbor also works closely with the non-profit “We Love Long Beach”, which was birthed out of this community.  They have helped put on 2 city BBQ's along with neighborhood breakfasts and events for special ed students at Wilson Highschool.

This work is being done as a part of the PCA, the Presbyterian Church of America, with vital partnerships with many churches throughout the LA area and from around the US. 

Grace Harbor exists to ignite and support a gospel movement so that “things on earth are as they are in Heaven.” 

This means that we believe the gospel alone has the power to change everything. 

It alone has the power to bring about the kind of deep, authentic personal transformation that causes us to flourish as humans. 

It alone has the power to reconcile us to God so that we might know him and his acceptance and to reconcile us to our “neighbors” so that we might live in intimate, dynamic community with people across all ethnic, economic, generational and social boundaries. 

Such a movement requires that we go out into our families, our neighborhoods, our places of employment and our world to extend the blessing we’ve received.