Get to Know RiverLife: 25 Compelling Details

Curious about RiverLife? We value transparency and authenticity, so we're an open book. Here are 25 intriguing details about us—how we got started, what we do, and what our congregation is like.

Our Origin

1. We launched in September 2014. Here’s our origin story.

2. Our mission is to bring hope, healing, and growth to next-gen Hmong and beyond.

3. Over the years, we’ve met in 6 different locations: a rec center, a school auditorium, a small black box theater, a school cafeteria, and now a church building in St. Paul and one in Brooklyn Park.

4. Here’s a highlight video of our launch service on Sept 7, 2014.

Our Locations

5. We have 2 campuses—St. Paul, MN (east metro area) and Brooklyn Park, MN (northwest metro area).

Our St. Paul campus

Our Brooklyn Park campus

6. We launched the second campus in Sept 2021 with services on Saturday nights. It didn’t work out, so we shut down the campus, re-strategized, and re-launched Easter 2022 on Sunday mornings. Now, it’s thriving.

7. Greg Rhodes leads the St. Paul Campus, and Kong Moua leads the Brooklyn Park campus.

8. The services are fully live at each location. Periodically, we will pre-record the sermon for one location if one of the pastors will be gone.

9. We follow a “one church, two locations” approach to multi-site. Both campuses are equally RiverLife. We share one board, bylaws, and budget. We have one leadership team that is split across the two campuses.

10. It’s challenging to explain multi-site to first-generation Hmong. They ask questions like:

    1. “Did the church split?” No, we planned it.

    2. “Is the other one a daughter church?” No, we’re both equally RiverLife.

    3. “Did you plant a new church?” Sort of. It’s a new location but not a new church.

11. Our Brooklyn Park campus has a 1:1 ratio of kids/youth to adults. Some weeks, the kids and youth even outnumber the adults. St. Paul has a ratio of 2:1. (A typical ratio for American churches is 3:1.)

Our Congregation

12. We have a combined average weekly attendance of 240—130 at St. Paul, 93 at Brooklyn Park, and 17 watching online.

13. Our attendance has returned to what it was before the pandemic.

14. We’ve been growing steadily since we launched, excluding the pandemic.

15. Our most attended Sundays are Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. We do big, kid-friendly events on each of these Sundays.

16. We describe ourselves as a multicultural Hmong church. We’re about 80% Hmong and 20% everything else (African, Black, White, Hispanic, etc.)

17. We are a young church. The average age in the church is less than 40.

18. Most of our congregation grew up in the church but left at some point and were not regularly attending before coming to RiverLife.

19. We’ve baptized 129 people over the last 9 years.

Our Finances

20. We have a current annual budget of $330,000. It has generally increased over the years.

21. Here’s a snapshot of our revenue and expense breakdowns for 2023.

    1. Revenue: Offerings 84%, Facility Rentals: 6%, Community Events: 5%, Fundraising 5%.

    2. Expenses: Staffing 49%, Facilities 27%, Ministries 17%, Admin 8%.

22. We are transparent with our finances. We post detailed financial reports available on our website.

Our Leadership

23. We have a leadership team of 11 people, 6 of whom are paid staff. (3 full-time and 3 part-time.) See our Meet Your Mentors page for more.

24. Most of the team that launched the church is still serving or attending the church. This is unheard of for a church plant. Most of the time, the team that plants the church isn’t the team that eventually leads the church.

25. Pastor Greg routinely says this is the best team he’s ever worked with.

Curious about anything else about RiverLife? Ask us! We’d love to share.