When we decided that we would offer organizations the opportunity to sponsor a Night Strike we did not expect this kind of reaction at all. I remember sitting around a table and talking about how many sponsored Night Strikes we would like to set as our goal this year. I am not sure if I was skeptical or naive but I thought that 12 sponsored nights was going to be a hard thing to accomplish in the first year that we were offering this. To my surprise the response was overwhelming. Call after call came in over the next couple of months (some even wanting to sponsor that very same evening).  What an amazing thing to be a part...

    Every year, Easter is one of our favorite times to spend with our Btown Families, and this year was no exception. We are into our 6th year running now out at Parkside Commons apartments, building relationships with those families. This year was packed will all sorts of kids and families coming down, eggs filled with treats, and good old fashioned community everywhere you turned.  It was such a great time for us to continue and build on our already standing relationships, but also to build new ones!   We were also insanely blessed to partner with Westside Christian High School to make this all happen. Their wonderful student leadership team stepped up, and provied all the eggs,...

What a wonderful night!  After our annual break NightStrike kicked back off tonight – with a good number of volunteers and some newbies to the scene.  We love seeing what God does with those who show up and serve…but especially, with those we serve.  Some amazing individuals are joining our team to love the people of this city and we’re excited for you to meet some of them in the future! Our followers are going beyond this blog and into the Twittersphere, connecting us to new people with their own passion for those who are hungry and homeless.  Through our Twitter connections tonight we met Tym Less, of Form Photography, endeavoring on his own media campaign to keep a...

Thanks to all the wonderful volunteers who helped make this year’s Christmas party a great success for our BTown Kids and families! Metro Toy Drive and KGW Toy Drive helped with a number of gifts, as well as many individuals! Special thanks to the following faith communities for providing gifts and or volunteers! Community of Christ Church, Hillsboro Mountainview Community Church, Oregon City Christ Community Church, Beaverton Life Roads, Tualatin Door of Hope, Portland Mt Olivet Baptist Church, Portland Faith Bible High School, Aloha Westside Christian High School, Lake Oswego Stanfield Assemblies of God, Stanfield Norma Benjamin provided 100 tins of home made cookies to top off the stockings and gifts the kids received, and Bob (aka Santa) did...

Thanks to all of you who so generously donated to our Thanksgiving Baskets we were able to bless over 75 families with a full Thanksgiving meal for them to prepare for their families.  It was a chilly, but dry Saturday and we had a great group of volunteers from Faith Bible Christian School, The Pearl Church and Door of Hope to help us with the distribution.  From helping the families get everything they needed for their baskets to walking them back to their homes – interacting, loving – the volunteers exemplified what BridgeTown stands for – “Loving People, Because People Matter.”  In addition to our volunteers we had a number of other organizations help us make this all happen...

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, can you believe it?!  For most of us, that lends to ideas of family getting together – gathering the whole gang around the table, sharing a veritable feast of turkey or ham and warm pumpkin pie. The buzz of love shared can almost be tangible. For many families, this is THE event of the year, the hard and fast “family time”. We look forward to plan for, and think about Thanksgiving most of the month of November! For many others, though, it is a time when loneliness, poverty and despair are accentuated, when gathering the family to the table simply means to call the kids in for mac and cheese… again. For these...

Matthew 5:16, “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” A week ago the FIRE discipleship class had the privilege to serve the Lord in a mighty way with BridgeTown in Portland, Oregon.  Some of the areas we were all able to work in were walkabouts, foot washing, table conversationalists, and listening with those who need an ear to hear. One experience I had while serving at BridgeTown was when I was on the walkabout. As my group was walking around the streets of downtown Portland we stopped to talk to a man who was eating at a shelter.  After a couple minutes of...

  Many of you are aware of our BTown Kids environment which operates in 2 neighborhoods in North Portland: New Columbia, and the Parkside Commons cluster apartments. Both sites are, arguably, the most oppressed and violent neighborhoods in the city. Both of our sites have many at risk children who are vulnerable to great injustices and hardships. But we are so privileged to be able to spend the summer, and beyond with our amazing BTown Kids! God’s light shines brightest in the dark! We are very fortunate to have been given a permit from the City of Portland to operate our BTown Kids program in McCoy Park again, as well as in the Parkside Commoms, Pier Park and Ridgecrest...