Riverside Church celebrates 50th anniversary with new auditorium, plans for new lead pastor

By Robert Tomlinson
News Director

THREE RIVERS — A local church that started as a small gathering in a rented basement space in the Old Kent Bank in 1975 celebrated its 50th anniversary of spreading Christianity in St. Joseph County this past Sunday.
Riverside Church, one of the biggest churches in St. Joseph County, held a 50th anniversary celebration during its three services, looking back on their humble beginnings and looking toward what the future could look like.
The celebration also coincided with the ribbon cutting of the church’s new auditorium, the culmination of a $2 million renovation project funded by the church, with Senior Pastor Paul Booko, his wife Bonnie, and Founding Pastor John Booko helping to cut the ribbon at the top of the service.
“It feels amazing, and we’re just humbled that God would use imperfect people like Bonnie and me, and have the privilege of being able to celebrate 50 years of God’s goodness and faithfulness at Riverside Church in Three Rivers and being able to add value to the community in the way that we have,” Paul Booko said in an interview Monday. “It was kind of like a big family reunion of getting everybody back together after 50 years to say, look what the Lord has done.”
The anniversary service was mostly similar to what one might find in non-denominational churches of similar or larger scale – plenty of worship songs, video presentations from friends and colleagues congratulating the church on 50 years, and a sermon from the senior pastor about what it means to create a legacy. It also included a video presentation detailing the 50-year history of the church and the even longer history of John Booko, the founding pastor.
At the end of the service, Paul Booko announced that he would be stepping down in a year from the senior pastor role after 44 years, with current executive pastor Erick Penn and his wife Chanel Penn taking over as co-senior pastors by the end of June 2026.
“We thought now was the time because we saw Erick and Chanel rising to such a level of leadership where we said, we don’t want to be the ceiling they bump up against, we need to let this go and let them spread their wings and fly,” Paul Booko said. “We saw the calling on Erick and Chanel, and said what’s best for the church is that we step aside and let the younger leadership take over, and our role would be to coach and cheer them on.”
Booko said Erick Penn will slowly take over some responsibilities and do sermons on some Sundays in the leadup to him fully becoming a senior pastor. Once Penn takes over, Booko said his role will be co-founding pastor, and that he would not be leaving the church.
The Penns will be take the mantle of a church that has had a relatively shorter history compared to other churches in the city and the county, but one that came from smaller beginnings. The church was founded in 1975 by Paul Booko, who had left the Baptist Church 11 years prior after getting what he called “the left foot of fellowship.”
The church started on July 6 of 1975 as Three Rivers Christian Fellowship in the basement of Old Kent Bank, and had services in a couple of other spots around the city, including Andrews Elementary School, before purchasing 10 acres of an old asparagus field on Sixth Avenue in 1979 to build a church building there.
In 1981, John Booko handed over leadership of the church to Paul Booko, and the church grew throughout the next few decades. So much so, in fact, that they felt they had “outgrown” the church building by 1997.
“We were going to have to put a large addition onto that building [on Sixth Avenue]. So, when we learned that the public high school was going to be torn down, we thought, hey, this is really a better location for us to fulfill our mission; there’s a lot of needs here in this area of town. Plus, this is a huge building that would accommodate our growing congregation, what if we consider that location instead of putting this new auditorium on our building,” Paul Booko said.
After talking with then-Three Rivers Community Schools Superintendent Jim Bermingham, the two parties agreed to a deal in 1999 that Booko and Bermingham called a “win-win” for both parties: Three Rivers Christian Fellowship would receive the old Three Rivers High School building that was going to be torn down for just $1. The school district would subsequently move into the old church building and use it for their administrative offices, which they still use to this day.
Memorabilia from the old high school, including newspaper clippings, yearbooks, and even the old lockers, was on display during the celebration on the second floor of the church, something Booko, who had graduated from Three Rivers High School in the days when it resided at the building, says was important to remember the legacy of what had come before.
“That was just part of the mission all along, to celebrate that this building served so many people and has been such a staple here in our town of service to the community with meeting the needs of students and families,” Booko said. “We thought that was part of the rich history of our community, and we wanted to honor that and restore that and show our love for Three Rivers by restoring something that was near and dear to so many people over so many decades, and that was part of the vision.”
After months of renovation, in 2000, the church held its first service in their new building, and officially changed their name to Riverside Church. In the 25 years they have been there, the church has created new initiatives, such as a free health clinic that lasted for 13 years, the Celebrate Recovery program, Serve Days, River Lights of Wonder, and more.
That legacy of the past and present, he said, is what he hopes people remember as it heads into the future.
“We think it’s always important to remember where we came from, that we’re standing on the shoulders of others that love this community and gave sacrificially to it. It’s all about honor and respecting those,” Booko said. “We thought that was the right thing to do, to celebrate our past, to remember our humble beginnings and what God has brought us through and the sacrifices people have made as they gave to this vision.”
Booko said himself and the church have been “imperfect” at times over the years, having to deal with some controversies in its history, most recently in 2022 when decade-old sexual abuse allegations surfaced against one of their former volunteers, who was never charged with a crime. In May of that year, Booko released a statement that said, “As the Senior Pastor of Riverside Church, I take full responsibilities of any processes that did not get done properly.”
Booko said the church “[tries] to learn from our mistakes and remain humble to admit mistakes and to try to make it right wherever we could.”
“We’ve never claimed to be perfect pastors, we’ve never claimed to be perfect churches. When you’re entrepreneurial, when you’re visionary, you’re going to make mistakes along the way, and I think it’s humility and vulnerability and transparency that gets you through those times, just to say, yeah, we probably should’ve done that differently or done better, and not try to justify or try to defend, and even to not get caught up in the controversy,” Booko said.
In the future, Booko said he sees the church “thriving and reaching families” over the next 50 years.
“We want to add value to our community; we’ll always be about find a need and meet it, find a hurt and heal it,” Booko said. “We’re for God, we’re for people and making a difference in their lives and making a difference in our community and the surrounding area.”
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.