Join us for

House Church

Sundays at 12pm

Our house church meets right across the street from CMU. After you request to join this gathering, a leader will reach out soon to set up a time to meet you personally over coffee or lunch. We find that walking into a new community for the first time feels entirely different when there's already someone in the room who knows your name and your story.

We're a 2 minute walk from CMU, and a short bus ride down Forbes from Pitt.

Fill out the form below if you’d like to join us!

Join us for church

What’s house church?

At River, our Sunday gatherings look a bit different - we meet in a home right near CMU & Pitt. When we were in college, a lot of us fell in love with the vision of the early church in Acts 2 - a group of people intensely devoted to word, fellowship, and prayer, meeting "in their homes" and sharing a meal together.

And in Jesus' own ministry, we see him not only addressing larger crowds, but we see him engaging in close, life-on-life discipleship with a smaller group. Our vision is to disciple, equip, and mobilize college students to love God, love people, and to reach their campuses for Christ.

At River, we're trying to recreate the early church, today.

Join us for church

Frequently Asked Questions

  • This is a big change for us this year - for 9 years now we've done the more traditional church service reaching college students here in Pittsburgh. But we're struck by the vibrancy and potency of the early church - they gathered both in larger groups and in homes. They were devoted to scripture, shared meals, prayed together, and became part of one another’s everyday lives (Acts 2:42-47). And remarkably, the "Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved."

    We're trying to follow that same pattern. House church gives us a smaller setting where we can know each other well, talk honestly about life, celebrate steps of obedience, and learn how to follow Jesus beyond a Sunday service. In the home we can also make V60 pourovers, BBQ in the backyard, and hangout after church too! Many of us were saved in college and our passion is to reach college students, and we believe that spiritual formation happens best in community.

  • After coming up our front steps, you'll be likely greeted by a rowdy group of college students and staff hanging out in our living room, people jamming on a guitar and cajon in another corner of the room, and some people cooking up a storm for lunch. We often start church with TOE JAM time - sharing stories of Thanksgiving, Obedience, and Evangelism, followed by jamming together for praise.

    Some weeks we'll do training on inductive bible study and learning to feed yourself through the word, other weeks we'll get equipped to answer tough questions about the faith. Sometimes we'll memorize scripture or be addressed by a message in the word. We'll have plenty of times of discussion, sharing, and prayer too. After church is chill as we take down and hang out - maybe we'll go to CMU campus and play some spikeball or frisbee!

  • Our emphasis will be on Christian discipleship, but anyone is welcome to attend! If you don't have a spiritual background we invite you to come and take a peek at what Christians believe and do!

  • This year we'll have 2-3 larger Sunday gatherings to celebrate bigger holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, and to do a baptism service as well. We also will have our Fall Retreat combined with our sister church at OSU - pencil it in we're going away to Elkhorn Valley Christian Service Center for a retreat on Fri-Sun October 2-4, 2026.

  • We're glad that you love gathering for worship. We believe large group worship is powerful, and we'll gather corporately a few times a semester. However, we recognize that a familiar, Sunday corporate gathering is preferred for many. If so, we know of other good churches in the Pittsburgh area that we could connect you with.