Mission: Portland

My missionary journey to Portland Oregon will begin next Monday. I wanted to share with you an overview of Portland and what I and my team will be faced with when we arrive.
The Columbia River Gorge speaks to the spirit of adventure and exploration for a nation. It embodies the untapped potential of a still young country, with timeless geography. Portland is the gateway, not only to the gorge, but also to the open spirit of the Pacific Northwest. If Chicago is broad shoulders, Portland is broad horizons.
It is home to arguably one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the United States. Multnomah Falls is certainly the most easily accessible major falls on the continent.
But the beauty and promise of Portland belie the dark spiritual shroud over the area. Portland is a post-modern, non-Christian outpost. The city was the first major metropolitan area in the U.S. to elect an openly gay mayor. Tolerance is touted as a virtue over truth.

Send North America: Portland is strategically focused not only on the metro area of Portland and Vancouver, Wash., but also the influential communities of Eugene and Corvallis, home, respectively, to the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. Portland Send North America City Coordinator Clay Holcomb says the spiritual oppression in the area is openly discernable.
“Portland is a center for sex trafficking in America,” says Holcomb. “Pornography is huge here. There is a massive homosexual community. The spiritual darkness is strong here and the area is not open to Christ. Sexual sin is celebrated and people actually believe this is the correct way to live. It is the embodiment of 2 Corinthians 10. Those have become formative verses for me.”
One of the bright places is Trinity Church, planted in 2010, and one of the few recent Portland church plants to survive. The church has some 200 members in community. Another encouragement is the foundation of strong partnerships with sending and supporting churches, like Greater Gresham Baptist Church in Gresham, Ore. But the need is great for more of all of these elements for the city.
“We need people to mobilize to pray for the city and for us,” says Holcomb. “We need people to pray for the protection of planters and their families who must raise children in this environment. We need churches to partner with us and we need church planters, interns and apprentices. We have identified the locations where churches are needed. We need the people.”

My team and I will be working with Rev. Holcomb, and at Trinity Church as well as Greater Gresham. You can check back on this website (exposingjesus.blogspot.com) as I will hope to be posting updates and recording the journey. God bless you as you pray for me and my team and others like us.