Riverview Church in Holt, Michigan, originated in 1977 when 12 young people from Ames, Iowa, moved to Michigan to establish a ministry on the Michigan State University campus. Upon arrival, they shared the gospel with a high school student who became the church’s first convert that very day. Today, that woman is married to one of the pastors, serving as a testament to Riverview’s long-standing commitment to setting young leaders up for success.
“It is a powerful legacy that two of the original 12 founders have retired from vocational ministry yet remain active members of our team today,” says Noel Heikkinen, a pastor at Riverview.
While the early years were marked by zeal, a lack of strategic planning led to the failure of nine initial church plants. This period of rapid expansion was followed by 12 years of stagnation until Heikkinen and his wife revitalized the mission in 2001. Within 18 months, attendance surged from 250 to over 1,000, driven largely by young adults. Encouraged by a colleague in the church-planting network to dedicate his life to multiplication, Heikkinen embraced a culture of mentorship. He remains grateful for the leadership development that defines Riverview while actively addressing the concerns of next-gen church leaders.
That was in 2005, and the church hit the ground running, pouring all their energies into church planting. Pre-COVID-19, they averaged between 3,000 and 4,000 each Sunday across all four campuses. Though times have changed, their goal remains in the next five years to continue faithfully planting churches.
“We’ve gone into our church and revamped our entire leadership development structure,” says Heikkinen. “We’re building the infrastructure now to build church planters. We think it will take five years to get the engine fully moving, so our hope is to plant one to three in the next five years, and then starting in Year 5 plant one to three churches every year going forward.”
Heikkinen says he stopped looking at church attrition numbers because it was too depressing.
“If we are to stem the tide of people leaving the faith or leaving the church, we have to plant multiplying churches that are evangelistic and young,” he says. “If we don’t do that, we’re toast.”
He explains that there is a natural bell curve of a church plant in that when they are first launched, they grow rapidly before plateauing. In the season of plateau, there tends to be an establishment of, “This is how we do things” in which older members control the narrative. From that point it slowly goes downhill, Heikkinen says, until there are more funerals than weddings, more deaths than births.
“The key is culturally engaging young people in a way that hands them leadership,” says Heikkinen, noting that when he was in his 20s, the senior leaders of the church saw him bumping up against the glass ceiling (i.e., them). He admits that the graceful passing of that leadership takes remarkable humility.
“There are two things you can do at that point,” says Heikkinen. “You can either throw that young leader out, and say, ‘Go create your own glass ceiling,’ or you can open a skylight and let that person pass through.”
He notes that a good leader fades into obscurity by the time they pass the baton and that nobody even realizes it has been done because it has taken place over time.
“Now it is my turn,” says Heikkinen, who is 48 years old and preparing to do the same. “Too many older leaders stay until retirement, and then what do you do? We want to have a good combination of both sending our best leaders to plant churches and keeping the best leaders and giving them power in the church so that they can lead while we are still there.”
—Christy Heitger-Ewing
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RIVERVIEW CHURCH
Holt, Michigan
Lead Pastor: Noel Heikkinen
Twitter: @NoelJesse
Website: RivChurch.com
Founded: 1977
Church-Plant Affiliation: Acts 29