The Mission: To Bring Life To All We Touch

“When the river enters into the dead sea, the waters are healed and swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows” Ez 47:8-9

At River47 it’s understood that we are the church and we are for the world. Rather than a held up bastion against it, we long to see ourselves as a life giving stream to the barren and desolate places of life, to bring healing to a broken world not only locally but also beyond.

Church Planting – we realized as one congregation there were churches not yet in existence needing to be birthed to bring life to persons and communities outside our reach. For this reason, a few years ago, while many would say we were too small to try, we recently gave birth to a church by sending more than 20% of our congregation and finances to become Circle Church

Covenant Bible College Ecuador: If we want our church to be ethnically diverse, we think it important to support an institution committed to the growth of its students in Christ while giving them exposure to another part of the world. With this in mind, we have taken on the Swenson’s Deans of CBC Ecuador as our missionaries. CBC by the way is one of the most affordable college experiences available
Covenant Together: Through our conference we are partnering in a number of endeavors from church plants to economic development in depressed urban areas. To give you an idea of how we’re better together log onto www.pswc.org

Girl Scouts: River47 does have its own girl scout troop. For information call the church office. Help and Healing: Through the generosity of River47 our benevolence fund has yet to run dry and is regularly used to help people make the rent in hard times, provide emergency shelter or medical care or counseling. Scores of people have been helped and given hope in the midst of life hurts.

Narcotics Anonymous: On a weekly basis scores of folk come to River47 on Thursday evenings to seek healing from addiction.

Orange County Youth Authority: Rick Johnson presently serves as Chaplain for Orange County Probation Department and works for Pacific Youth Correctional Ministries. He is always open to volunteers who will join him in visiting and caring for incarcerated youth.

Orphanage Mexico: On a regular basis clothes and other necessities are collected and delivered to an orphanage in Mexico. More than just delivering though, we are building relationships with our little friends and those wonderfully committed to their care.

Overseas Mission Fellowship (OMF). This was one of the first mission agencies to seek to care for the needs of Asia. Begun by Hudson Taylor it was originally known as The China Inland Mission. Different than other western missionaries Taylor was vilified for taking on the dress and culture of those to whom he sought to bring the life of Christ. Taylor is a reminder to us that we are seeking Christ’s Life and not a composite of Western Civ and The Kingdom of God.

Second Harvest Food Shelf: You may not know it, but there are a lot of people in our city who often end the day not having eaten. Working in partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank, we run a food shelf of our own. Often on a daily basis singles, and whole families will receive help in the form of daily bread together with kind words and encouragement from our pastoral staff and other volunteers

Short Term Missions: We have a dream of seeing scores of people from River47 taking a mission plunge in all areas of the world. Right now at River47 we have people dreaming and checking out the possibility of short term missions to Africa, Latin America and Asia.

World Relief – Together with other Christian’s around the globe we regular contribute to this relief organization working through local ministries to bring relief to human suffering wherever famine, disaster, poverty or pestilence is to be found. As an example, when the tsunamis hit south Asia recently, our gifts were quickly on the way to aide and speed healing.

Wycliffe Associates: The fundraising and practical support arm of Wycliffe Bible Translators, River47 entered into partnership with this wonderful organization years ago to make certain that in rising real estate market of Orange County, Wycliffe Associates would always be able to have a home base here. You’ll find Wycliffe Associates just North of our North parking lot. Always open to volunteers, you might give them a call if you’d like to give some time to supporting missions in a practical way.

Young Life: We are very pleased to host the offices of the Area Young Life Director right on our campus. Through a host of local clubs attached to Junior and Senior High Campuses in the cities of Tustin, Orange and Villa park, Young Life is reaching out to hurting kids to bring them hope and help right here in our cities.

The above are only a few examples of what we are doing to reach out both locally and internationally. While this is a great list, we believe that some of our greatest hands on work is yet to be discovered and developed that it might be more strongly said that River47 truly brought life and healing to a hurting community and world.