Riverview Church Message Podcast

Riverview Church Message Podcast is the sermon feed of Riverview Church, a congregation its speakers greet simply as RIV. The archive is large. It also has more than one voice. Noel Heikkinen, who introduces himself as one of the pastors, delivers several of the messages; Jordan Allen, James Granger and Tony Pyle deliver others. That rotation shapes the listening, since each speaker finds a different way into the same Bible. A series through the book of Acts anchors several of these messages, and one speaker describes it running across the whole school year. The reading is careful without turning dry. In 'The Rival God', Heikkinen takes the line about treasure and the heart and argues that the biblical heart is less about feelings than about the will, the decision-making engine of a life. Then he rereads the verse with that phrase swapped in. A coffee mug becomes his picture of a treasure that quietly steers every choice, and the closing prayer asks for freedom from worshiping money. Jordan Allen turns to 1 Corinthians 15 to ask what the apostles knew that made following Jesus worth it. He spends time on the bodily resurrection and on Jesus sending his followers out as witnesses to the ends of the earth. Tony Pyle takes on a storm that pinned a Rome-bound freighter in the Mediterranean, naming the east and north winds behind it and listing the crew's precautions, from hoisting the skiff to jettisoning the cargo. His way in is four words most people have heard: I told you so. James Granger, under the nearly identical title 'A Perfect Storm', starts from a men's retreat in Florida and a strong gale warning that canceled his flight. Humor is part of the method. Explaining that the church treats pastor, elder and overseer as names for one office, Heikkinen jokes that about three people in the world call him bishop. Granger admits he does not know what a chimney pot is but does not want his removed. Easter brings its own close reading: Heikkinen points out that Peter went away amazed rather than convinced, and argues that the second traveler walking to Emmaus with Cleopas was probably his wife, Mary. Baptism comes up again and again, from a series video Heikkinen describes as full of people coming up out of the water to prayers for those about to be baptized. The Easter message 'This is Why We Are Here' carries a first-person testimony from someone who held back until the words 'stop fighting Jesus' landed. Several messages end in prayer. One asks God to strip away anything the church does simply to look flashier.