Our Story

The River Church is a Christian church meeting in Waltham, MA, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Our desire to be revived in God, refreshed in community and released in purpose.

In January of 1998, The River Church's lead pastor and his wife (Sean & Laura Richmond) moved to Boston and began 'scouting out the land' for a specific location for a Boston church plant in association with the Antioch Ministries International. By May, the Richmonds had decided on the neighborhood of Brighton. The rest of their team moved to Boston in September, and together they began to strategically pray.

In January of 1999, their Brighton church, Community of Faith Christian Fellowship (CFCF) was incorporated in Massachusetts. The church began its first faithgroup in February and celebrated their first public worship service. Since then, CFCF has grown to offer multiple faithgroups to college students, singles, children and families, and more than 300 people now attend the celebration service on Sunday mornings. They now also have a training school to train future cell church planters.

A little more than 10 years after the start of their Brighton church, Sean and Laura felt the Lord leading them to plant anther church in New England, this time in Waltham. Thus, in February of 2010, they and an advisory board began to meet and pray weekly. As the team continued to pray, the church started to form. In July 2010, thirty-five members began meeting in the home of Sean and Laura Richmond to pray about where in Waltham God wanted to position the church. In September of 2010, the church emerged with a vision, a location, a staff, and weekly celebration services held in the Embassy Cinemas directly off of Moody Street. After a year and having grown to one hundred attendees, The River Church held its first baptism in the Charles River. Through a continued investment in prayer, discipleship and small group outreach The River Church has grown. In April of 2012, the church moved from renting out space in the Embassy Cinemas and into its very own building located on 17 Spruce Street in Waltham.

God has been moving tremendously through our community of believers as well as those that we have been reaching out towards and we hope that you may be able to join us for our Sunday celebration service or at one of our weekly faithgroups to experience the joy and life that we have found in Jesus!