The River Church believes God the Father adopts, transforms, empowers, and unifies His children through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, based on the finished work of His Son, Jesus Christ. /// A statement from The River Church Elders, read by Pastor/Elder Jeff Patterson on Sunday, April 26, 2026, followed by a testimony from a brother from NWBTC. /// Read statement in full here. Limited portion shared below due to podcast limitations: As we launched fully into The River, becoming one unified and new church, we wanted to emphasize certain core values and truths that become beautiful in our community — embraced and embodied by us all. The core message taught here at The River will not change. Put simply, The River Church believes God the Father adopts, transforms, empowers, and unifies His children through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, based on the finished work of His Son, Jesus Christ. First, our adoption, as with all of God’s work in creation, is Trinitarian: God the Father, Son, and Spirit together. We worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,
neither blending their persons
nor dividing their essence. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God. In the Scriptures we see the work of the triune God revealed. It was the Father’s good pleasure to send the Son, who willingly came, lived a perfect life of dependence and obedience, died for the sins of the world, and rose again victorious, so that we might become God’s children. It also pleased both the Father and the Son to send the Spirit to dwell within each and every one of His children from the moment of conversion. Second, Jesus the Son of God lived and died to save sinners from the penalty of sin, and He did this to transform us into God’s beloved children. We are not left to make ourselves righteous by our own strength. Instead, God’s Spirit transforms us day by day into the people He has called us to be. Therefore, our salvation and our sanctification is a gift of God, accomplished through the cross. Third, the Holy Spirit empowers us to fulfill God’s purposes. In Christ, we have everything we need for life and godliness. All of us—from the least to the greatest—are called to display God’s goodness through our transformation, our love for one another, and the good works that overflow from His miraculous work in our lives. We are empowered by the Spirit to do exactly what He asks. Truly, what God requires, He provides. Finally, through the Spirit, we are united with Christ and with one another. Our love for each other is one of the greatest witnesses to Christ’s power. The Spirit grants us different gifts to edify the body and display His love to the entire world. For example, He gives some the gift of teaching, others administration, among many spiritual gifts, while others receive gifts like discernment or tongues. No gift makes a person “better” than another; rather, everyone is called to serve the body according to how God has uniquely created and gifted them. As we participate in God’s work together, let us eagerly seek and use our spiritual gifts to build up one another in love. The core message of our first teaching series—and the core message of The River—is the Gospel. Our hope was, is, and will always be, in Christ. So, as we now dive into Paul’s letter to Titus, let us grow in understanding and seek God’s help to obey everything Christ has commanded—not to earn our salvation, but as a joyful response to what He has graciously done. "when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." —Titus 3:4–7
