our story

The history of Hope Community Church is the history of God with a group of people in Riverside, California. Individuals and families started meeting together in 1961 and they came to sense that God was prompting them to form a church. First, they met together for worship in a funeral home. They then contacted the mission’s outreach of the Christian Reformed Church (denomination). That opened a window where people of several churches around the United States financially contributed to form a church with a mission to a community, in this case, the mission was the community near the corner of Jackson Street and Colorado Avenue in Riverside.

Property on this corner was purchased, a building for worship and ministry built. A pastor was called to lead this new congregation, in worship and outreach to their friends and neighbors in the community. Youth ministry was important from the start, with Vacation Bible School each year for kids, and education classes for all ages throughout the year. Music was valued. Pastors who brought the good news of new life in Christ and how to please Him has been a central message from the beginning in 1961 to the present.

Who were and are these people in this church? Young and old. Some had positions in elementary, high schools, and colleges, some in trades, factories and business and city services. Others at home focused on raising children, volunteering, or working with students in places like Sherman Indian High School. One man’s job was to water the citrus groves along Victoria Avenue, in his free time among the citrus trees he memorized much of the book of Romans in the Bible. In one way or another God had touched each of us in Hope Community Church.

In the past six decades the congregation experienced life common to all. Birth of babies, graduations, sickness and deaths, funerals and celebrations, disagreements and reconciliation, and much needed support from friends. A common thread through each year was and is the presence of a Holy God who comes to us in the person of Jesus. That was life then and it is now in Hope Community Church.