At the beginning of my senior year, I had a good friend of mine introduce me to a stellar church in downtown Portland called Bridgetown Church. Bridgetown meets in this crazy cool old church building right in the heart of Portland, and on the way to my first service, I had the mindset that this was going to be a small homey little church that met Sunday evenings. In reality, Bridgetown is a huge church filled with twenty-something-year-old Portlanders trying to live out the ways of Jesus in a city that can make that lifestyle very difficult.
I quickly fell head over heels for this church and their values. After that first week, it became one of my top priorities to be downtown every Sunday at 7:00 pm. My friends and I usually gathered up a decently large group of high schoolers to carpool up since it was about a 25-minute drive into the city, and after service, we would make our way to ice cream, or some kind of food. Every week the group of people that went looked a little different and our post-service snacks changed a little week by week, but this mosh posh group of people soon became like a second family, and Bridgetown became the highlight of my week.
And even though the staff doesn’t know it, they became like my family too, take the lead pastor for example. He’s a thirty-something, skinny jean wearing dude named John Mark Comer.
John Mark is my idol.
That may be slightly dramatic but not really. John Mark is an author of some of my favorite books and he has given some teachings that have completely blown my average beliefs out of the water. This allowed me to rebuild my beliefs on a deeper level, and every single pastor at Bridgetown has played a huge role in this re-vamp of my faith if you will. Take a man named Collin Mayjack for example. He’s another young funky dude (who I subscribed to this blog on impulse, so if your reading this, hello! you’re doing great works!) He taught on the gospel of Matthew recently and broke down the parable of seeds in Matthew 13.
At the beginning of this teaching, Collin asked the question as to why some fall in love with Jesus and follow him for the rest of their days, while others fall and deny him. He broke down the different kinds of soil and how they affect the way seeds grow. I could go on forever about this teaching and the way it shifted how I look at the people around me, it helped me understand my brothers and sister’s in Christ much better, and while I loved this lesson, you as a reader would be better off listening to the podcast and hearing his words first hand. So I’m going to shift back to the main point.
I love this church; I love their basic beliefs and the heart they have put behind creating this kind of a Jesus oriented family in such a bizarre city. This church helped lead me through some of my hardest decisions throughout the last year of my life, and helped lead me to push myself out of my comfort zone in pursuit of the kingdom (spoiler alert, the world race) and for my last few months before leaving for the race I was blessed with the opportunity to serve my church. Between the 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm service, I got to brew coffee, and restock the sugar and cream for the coffee table, and while this may seem like a very small job, Portlanders enjoy their brew and it was fun to meet all the other volunteers and some times bump into the pastors. It gave me a purpose in my church and I loved doing it for the short few months I was able to.
But after training camp for the race, Bridgetown felt very different. I missed a few weeks of services while I was in Georgia, and even though I was keeping up through the podcast, when I returned it all felt different, a switch in my head had flipped, and it’s like I had gone numb. The teachings were wreaking me like they used to, and coffee didn’t seem like it mattered anymore. Even the killer worship wasn’t soul-shaking like it was meant to be. I felt as if I was going through the motions and just getting things over with before I left for the race.
Before I knew it, it came to be my last service at Bridgetown for a long while, I had some of my freshman young life girls I lead with me, and a few of my close friends came too, and I was preparing myself to say goodbye to my second home of sorts. I cried throughout first worship and when the service rolled around, I didn’t know if my heart was going to be able to take it. And it was that point that I saw a face I hadn’t seen in forever walk up on stage.
Her name is Bethany, she is a fiery redhead with a sharp sense of humor and the ability to light up a room in a matter of three words. She had been on sabbatical for 10 weeks and was back to teach on Jesus and the Five Thousand. She spoke words of flaming truth on the discipleship of the Lord and the reality of God’s small miracles. She spoke to me everything I needed to hear, she brought me to peace of the dark season I had been in and the struggles of being a disciple of the Lord. I’ve since re-listened to her teaching again and again and it reveals something new to me every time, but Bethany prepared me to say goodbye.
Not only goodbye to Bridgetown, but goodbye to my home, and get ready to plant my seeds in these three countries over the next nine months.
So thank you Bridgetown for being there through all the hills and all the valleys, thank you for blessing me with the opportunity to serve you coffee and for giving me a fire in my soul for Jesus.
See you soon BT.
