- 1994Three families start meeting in the Albertsons' living room.
- 1998Rent our first space. The old hardware store on Augusta.
- 2007Buy the current building. Members repaint the whole thing.
- 2014Food pantry opens. Pastor David joins the staff.
- 2019Sterling Elementary tutoring program kicks off.
- 2023Add a second service. Coffee machine retires.
Started in a living room. Kind of still feels like one.
Riverside started because the Albertsons, the Webbs, and the Chens couldn't find a church that felt like a neighborhood. The Sunday-morning machine had gotten so big and so polished that nobody knew anybody's kids' names. So in the fall of 1994 they just started meeting in Linda Albertson's living room with bad coffee and a folding chair shortage.
The thing didn't grow because of a brilliant strategy. It grew because three families invited their actual neighbors. Then those neighbors invited theirs. By 1998 they'd outgrown three living rooms and rented the old hardware store down on Augusta. We've been within a quarter mile ever since.
Thirty-one years in, the shape is mostly the same. Around 600 people on a Sunday. A pretty good preacher, a small staff that does five jobs each, and a wide-open front door. We're non-denominational by birth, not principle. Nobody planted us, we just kept showing up. We baptize. We bury people. We feed our zip code. We're trying to be the church we needed when we couldn't find one.
