ABOUT
OUR STORY
When Riverside Community Church started, we didn’t necessarily feel from the beginning that Peoria needed a new church. We DID feel like it needed a different kind of church.
We held our first service on August 20, 2000, in the Holiday Inn City Centre Ballroom in downtown Peoria. The church began with a vision of seeing a modern church established in the heart of the city whose vision would be to reach out and make a difference in the community by meeting people’s physical and spiritual needs in a practical way. The first Sunday, over 450 people packed into the ballroom and everyone knew that this was just the beginning of an exciting adventure.
The first few months of its existence, Riverside Community Church saw God do some incredible things and the young church quickly outgrew the ballroom and looked for a permanent location to call home.
Through a series of miracles, Riverside was able to purchase the former Shrine Theatre (the place where people ‘played in Peoria’ until the 80’s when the Peoria Civic Center was built) for only $550,000! The historic Peoria landmark with seating for close to 1,500 would now become the face of Riverside Community Church in downtown Peoria. With the help of volunteers, the building was transformed from a performance theatre into a place where people could connect with others and most importantly, connect with God.
After a visit to the LA Dream Center in 2002, Lead Pastor John King came back inspired to see a similar ministry established right here in Peoria. Vision became reality in August of 2002, as Dream Center Peoria held its first Backpack Peoria outreach, distributing over 900 backpacks filled with school supplies to under-resourced families in our community. Programs like Adopt-A-Block and Revolution Kid’s Ministry quickly followed as Riverside Community Church took the challenge of meeting people’s needs right in our own backyard.
Over these past six years, the faithful people who make up Riverside Community Church have given of themselves and of their resources to see our ministry expand here, as well as throughout the world through our missions giving and support of missionaries around the globe. Missions teams have established relationships in Ukraine, the Bahamas, the Amazon region of Brazil, and in Mexico. Short-term teams from Riverside go every year to help our missionaries spread the exciting message of hope and life in Christ.
Along the way, we’ve had the incredible privilege of welcoming guest speakers and musicians who are influencing the way we do ministry and the way we do church. People like Pastor Tommy Barnett of the Los Angeles Dream Center, John Bevere, Bill Wilson of Metro Ministries, Delirious, Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio, David Crowder Band, Brennan Manning, Reuben Morgan of Hillsong, and many others have come and blessed our church and other churches and leaders in our community.
In 2005 God again worked miraculously for Riverside. As the ministry of Dream Center Peoria continued to unfold, so did the need for space and a place to become the ‘hub’ for the ministries of DCP. One day as Lead Pastor John King was making his usual commute to the church office, he passed by the YMCA building, located at the corner of Glendale and Hamilton just two blocks away from the church, a massive 7-story building that had been vacated and was for sale for close to $3 million. Sensing God leading him to inquire about it, Pastor John met with the owners of the building, who in the end agreed to sell it to Riverside Community Church for $210,000! When it seemed it couldn’t get any better, an anonymous donor came forward and said that if the church would raise $100,000 they would match it – and in less than a month, the entire building was paid for! Countless volunteer hours were put in to, slowly but surely, bring new life to the new home for Dream Center Peoria.
In April of 2006, Riverside joined with St. Paul Baptist Church to make history in the city of Peoria by combining our two congregations (Riverside being predominantly ‘white’ and St. Paul being predominantly African-American) for a community Easter service, Easter in the City, at the Peoria Civic Center. Close to 5,000 people were in attendance, and many decisions were made for Christ through this joint effort
With six years under our belts, we really feel like the journey has just begun and the journey ahead can only get more exciting.
Riverside Community Church is a group of ordinary people who have fallen in love with an extraordinary God. We believe that, with God at the center of our lives, we can see Him do amazing things. The story of our journey these past few years is just one testimony to that fact. There are so many lives and so many people who have been impacted – and we know there are many more still to reach.
So, there’s a snapshot of ‘our story,’ so far. We hope that you will join us in writing the future history of our church as we love God, reach people, and see lives changed.
