The Birth of a Church - Home PDX

I love my church, The Bridge, here in Portland, Oregon. It's a bit of a story of how our family landed here, the most chaotic and honest faith community I've ever been a part of.

I started journaling about The Bridge nearly two years ago. I have four notebooks filled with details of various Sunday gatherings and conversations with different people. Looking at my Bridge journal (as I call them) of '06 I find such interesting quotes (from the pulpit) such as this:

You are not your shit
(from Crystal, married to Geoff Neill, co-pastor at The Bridge

Or a descriptive entry like this one:

April 30, 2006
A guy with orange hair, dirty shoes and a well-worn guitar, worn from music and from life. It's covered with stickers, one which says, Jesus Saves from hell. Also a Nine Inch Nails band sticker. It was announced today that we're having a Make-a-Bucket contest, as in offering bucket. Ken announced he's having a weekly bible study and he's calling it B.S. "We'll talk about the bible, theology and residential plumbing," he said.

Later, when Ken gives a short sermon, he kicks it off by saying, "It's my turn to speak and I have my big bible today." He talks to us a little bit about Paul,"He traveled all over the middle east getting the shit kicked out of him for telling people about Jesus."

I have another entry from September based on a lunch I had at Ken and Deborah's house. In case you haven't figured it out yet, Ken and Deborah are pastors and, at the time, they were both pastoring The Bridge. Here's what I wrote in Sept 2006:

I brought salad. I had a date with Deborah and Ken joined us. As we munched on the Costco cobb salad I had brought, we talked about all-things-church as we often did. Naturally, the conversation shifted to street kids. It usually did whenever I talked with Ken.

At some point during the lunch Ken said, "I'd like to put an ad in the Williamette Weekly or Portland Mercury that says,'Wanted, a group of people to meet as a church who expect nothing in return. Must be willing to give your self away without getting anything back. It won't be about you. And, be willing to tithe ten percent.'"

I sat stunned and silent. Ken is such the dreamer, I thought. "That would make for an interesting experiment," I mumbled with a mouthful of romaine lettuce garbling my words.

"Do it babe," said Deborah, "You ought to go ahead and do it." She paused, we all paused, and the idea, long locked in Ken's heart but now having found it's way to the surface, was like being present at a quiet birth. "That's great,Ken!" Deborah got more excited. "You have to do it!"

Ken sat there. The wheels of his mind and heart spinning like those whirlygigs I've seen at the coast. I stayed respectfully quiet, unsure what to make of it. Was he serious? Was Deborah?

Less than a month later Ken began telling people he would be leaving The Bridge and beginning a church for street youth and by street youth. He wanted to call it 25 so as to attract people under 25, but one his friends without homes said, "That keeps people out. Lets' call it Home, 'cause everybody needs a home."

Before the end of 2006 Ken and his small team of people with and without homes began meeting and within a short while they decided to have their Sunday gathering UNDER a bridge rather than at The Bridge.

My friend Donna and I partnered up for a while to help provide a meal to Home PDX under the bridge. Ken and his team had recruited larger churches, and private individuals, like me and Donna, to help bring hot, cooked meals to their weekly gathering. Eventually, Donna and I had to bow out as their numbers swelled beyond what two home cooks like us could manage to pull off. (Donna, by the way, is one of Kens' best assistants. She helps sort hoodies and keeps the sock supply going. As a member of The Bridge she has become the liason person to keep both churches connected relationally and practically.)

So yesterday we were all stoked when our Portland newspaper, The Oregonian, did a huge spread on Ken and his work of love with street youth. (You can read the extensive article here)

Ken, who is one of the most inspiring people I know, insists on loving people simply because they exist. I once asked Ken if he ever cancels going downtown on the weekly night he and his small team give out socks and food and conversation. "We are utterly relentness," he said indicating that no, they are there no matter what.

Though I'm not a part of HOME PDX I am always interested in their well-being. Like a woman who watched a baby being born, I am interested in the health and welfare of this community. Now upon it's first year anniversary, I am in awe of how Ken the Dreamer got out of the boat and did not drown. He and the community that's been created are defying the laws of nature, or at least the laws of nature when it comes to church planting. (Ken spoke at a workshop at the recent Off the Map conference that he titled, How to Plant a Church for People Who Have No Money or Power.)

Go read the article. And if you want to send money, hoodies or socks to HOME PDX shoot me an email. I'll hook you up .Did you know that can buy a huge bag of 15 pairs of tube socks in the men's department at WalMart for less than eight bucks.

*note: PDX is short-hand around here for Portland. It's our airport code.