our story

The River exists...

To embrace in community the life-changing person and teaching of Jesus and to manifest together His kingdom deeply in our lives and broadly in our world.

Our Story

The River gathers weekly in the midtown area of San Jose (surrounded by Willow Glen, the Rose Garden, and Washington neighborhoods). We are a diverse community of different life stages and cultural backgrounds, but we are unified by our desire to know the fullness of life that Jesus promised, and to make his goodness tangible in our community and throughout the world. 

The River began in 1997 in Sunnyvale, CA founded on a vision of embodying the good news of Jesus’ love to a postmodern generation that was increasingly disenchanted with the institution of the church.  In 2002, we relocated to downtown San Jose, sensing that God wanted to share us his heart for those different from us in culture and socio-economic background. During our eleven years downtown, God shaped us as a people of Shalom (a peace that satisfies the individual soul, and breaks down the hostilities that divide people). In 2013, we moved into our current property on Lincoln Avenue. 

In April 2016, after 19 years as an independent, non-denominational community, The River followed God's leading to bind ourselves to the larger body of Christ by traveling with a like-minded tribe called the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). We love the ECC's devotion to living out the holistic implications of the gospel in multi-ethnic contexts.

Come visit us on a Sunday morning, and come as you are. We hope you'll find a worship experience that is Biblically thoughtful, spiritually moving, and relevant to the challenges of daily life in Silicon Valley.