Part A - River City Church

Located in the outer suburbs of Brisbane’s CBD, the small, but strong-hearted followers of River City Church gather each Sunday morning to worship and praise our Almighty Lord.

The church first congregated in 2003, with only 2 families and the Pastors of the church, Matt and Anna Casson. It was based in one of the families’ living room. Over the past 7 years, the church has grown to about 150 people and the church’s campus has moved from the living room to Cooparoo Secondary College’s main auditorium, free of charge. The school allowed the church to hold the services at this venue as a way of saying thank-you for everything the church has done for the school (donations, food hampers for families etc.). All of this has been accomplished through the school’s chaplain and the church’s former youth pastor, John Filewood.

River City Church is not an independent church. It is sister churches with Hillsong Brisbane (a.k.a. Garden City Church). The churches vision for this year is discipleship. The church’s focus is to bring people up in the church and influence them to help the community grow to be a safe and spiritual place

River City Church is an ACC (Australian Christian Churches) church. ACC (a.k.a. AOG) originated in Sydney, during Easter of 1937. The inspiration behind this came from the senior pastors of two Pentecostal churches, who thought the idea of a more unified and co-operative church was needed in those times. However, Pentecostal worship has only become well known in the past 15 years. (Australian Christian Churches, www.aog.com.au).

The church is run by a board of directors from both River City Church and Hillsong Church. The senior Pastors of the church are Pastors Matt and Anna Casson. However, this church does not have only selected people to do certain jobs. The church has a routine called DCAT, which stands for “Doing Church As a Team”. The whole church is on roster for setting-up, cleaning and helping out with the service. The church also has a rostered music team full of guitarists, singers and drummers.

My experience at River City Church was very warm and settling, as soon as I walked through the front door, the greeters bombard you with warm welcomes. At the welcome desk, there are a variety of pamphlets and newsletters about the church and other ACC events. At the top is a copy of the newsletter from the service I attended.

Like most churches, the service started with praise and worship. As the church is a family church, it isn’t usually Pentecostal-type music. It is more solemn, but still along the same lines of how ACC congregates worship. The church takes music from famous Christian musical groups and bands, for example, Hillsong, Planet Shakers and JesusCulture. During this time, all the member of the church really got into worship. And they really held nothing back, which made it comfortable and freeing to worship.

After the praise and worship, there was the formal introduction to everyone who was attending. Again they made new people and visitors even more welcomed by giving them chocolates and another warm welcome. They also took the time to announce events that the church were holding or attending in the following weeks. I gathered that because it was a family-friendly church, a lot of the events were family friendly. However, I was happy and surprised to find out that, just because it is a small church, it doesn’t just cater to families. There were many events for all ages, from youth groups, to mothers with small children, even to the “Vintage Wine” group for women over 50. It was very good to see that everyone in the church was catered for in some way.

The sermon was preached by one of the churches treasurers, Rod Pietila. His message was about perserverence and resillence. He opened with a true story from World War II about one of his relatives over coming all odds to save his team on the Kokoda track. The story’s message was about being the leader and overcmoing all odds with the power of Christ. The story lead into the sermon about having the courage to step up and do God’s will in the community. The message was immediately aimed at adults, as Rod talked about how we can change the community in a post-school everyday living. It was a very well-presented and hard-hitting sermon, but it did not have many teenager elements to it.

In conclusion, River City Church is a very welcoming, family-centered church that has good intentions for the community and for God, but the church is not very experienced in catering to younger ministries.