Jesus in the Upper Left

Send us Fan Mail A man holding blueberry moonshine on a Portland sidewalk asks Dennis Blevins what he should do to commit suicide. Dennis wasn't canvassing. He was walking his dog, praying for his neighbors. The man said somebody told him to go ask that guy a question. Dennis has been "that guy" for 50 years. Starting on Navy ships in the early 1970s, he watched sailors come to fait...

Send us Fan Mail A church with 23 parking spots loses a bid on the one piece of land that could have made it bigger. Instead of trying again, the pastor starts giving people away. Scott Rivley has been at the same church in West Linn, Oregon for 40 years. He arrived as a seminary student from Montana who got called to ministry while watching a bad TV game show, moved into a basement apartment that...

Send us Fan Mail This pastor deliberately dismantles his own Sunday gathering, gives his church building to a theater company, and loses 90% of his congregation over five years. Chris Snodgrass moved from a Dallas mega church staff role to Portland in 2018 to help plant Remedy City Church. Within a year, the church split and COVID hit. Instead of rebuilding in the expected direction, Chris led a s...

Send us Fan Mail Jacobsen Valentine had $500 in his nonprofit account, a high school diploma, and a pandemic that had just shut down his cooking classes. So he bought as much food as he could, made 150 meals, and told people to come to a parking lot. Six years later, Feed the Mass has served over a million meals in Portland. Jacobson now owns a 40,000 square foot building, employs 24 people, and i...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a theology professor realizes the arguments he built his career on don't actually reach the people he loves most? Brad Harper grew up in the Bay Area with a devout Christian mom and an agnostic rocket scientist dad. He chased a PhD partly to prove his family wrong. It didn't work. He spent eight years studying historical theology with Jesuits at St. Lou...

Send us Fan Mail Two brothers planted a church together in Vancouver, WA. Seven years later, they merged with another congregation, and within months, one brother stepped away from ministry entirely. The other stayed. That was 2018, and he's still there. Adam Hendrix is the lead pastor of Union Chapel, a role he never wanted and never planned for. This conversation traces the full arc: growin...

Send us Fan Mail What happened to Multnomah Bible College, its Portland campus, and the legacy built by generations of students, faculty, donors, and churches? In this episode of Jesus in the Upper Left, Oshawa Hawthorne sits down with longtime Multnomah professor Dr. Gary Friesen to discuss the school’s closure, its transition to Jessup University, the debt attached to the campus, and the moral q...

Send us Fan Mail Tim Osborne started asking one question in every lead pastor interview: "Who's mentored you?" The answers shocked him enough to keep asking, and keep being disappointed. That question sits at the center of this conversation with Naomi Federiuk, Director of Discipleship Training for Expand Network. Naomi's team has identified a specific gap in local churches: th...

Send us Fan Mail What would it look like to actually reach every man, woman, and child in your city with the gospel? Not as a slogan — as a strategy. Nick Harding has spent 30 years trying to find out. As the leader of KX City Reaching in Liverpool, UK, he's been building unity, breaking down barriers, handing off leadership, and watching God move in ways that are starting to look a lot like...

Send us Fan Mail What does it look like to actually live the mission you preach — not just talk about it from a stage? In part two of our conversation with Matt Bowen, lead pastor of Emmaus Church in Beaverton, we get into the real work of building something healthy from the ground up — the elder formation process, the search for a building, and the moment Matt realized he didn't have a singl...

Send us Fan Mail Matt Bowen didn't set out to plant a church. He didn't think he had the gifts for it. He wasn't the big personality. He just felt God say it was time to go — and said yes. What followed was one of the more remarkable stories you'll hear from a pastor in the Pacific Northwest. In This Episode You'll Discover: - Why Matt resisted church planting for years —...

Send us Fan Mail What actually causes pastors and churches to fall apart? After 20 years of denominational leadership and more interventions than she wants to count, Tammy Dunahue has a clear answer — and it's probably not what you'd expect. In this conversation, Tim and Gabe sit down with Tammy Dunahue, Executive Dean of Portland Seminary at George Fox University and a 40-year veteran o...

Send us Fan Mail What does it look like to follow a founder — especially one who built something that shaped an entire city? Chris Nye  is the lead pastor of Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon. In this conversation, he shares the unlikely story of how a kid born less than a mile from the church he now leads came to faith in the suburbs, felt the pull of the city for decades, and eventually re...

Send us Fan Mail Pastor Clifford Jones shares an unforgettable testimony of meeting Jesus while serving a 50-year sentence in Louisiana State Penitentiary, one of the most violent prisons in America. What followed was a radical transformation, seminary training behind bars, pastoral ministry in prison, and eventually a calling that brought him all the way to the Pacific Northwest. In this episode...

Send us Fan Mail Cameron Heger moved from Arkansas to Portland with no ministry plan — just a seminary enrollment and a love for the city. After years embedded at Door of Hope, he felt called to plant a new church. Door of Hope sent him with a core team of 100 adults, a building, and a spirit of generosity. Door of Hope Northeast held its first gathering on March 1, 2020. Its second on March 8. Th...

Send us Fan Mail New research on Portland reveals something most church leaders wouldn't guess — the city is far more spiritually open than its reputation suggests. Missiologist Ed Stetzer joins Tim Osborne and Gabe Colstatt to unpack major findings from a mixed-method study of the Portland-Vancouver metro area conducted in partnership with Come Near and 7 Cents. The data shows striking curio...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when men stop sitting on the bench and start showing up for each other? In this episode of Jesus in the Upper Left , Tim sits down with three Men’s Alliance leaders from Westside Community Church (Aloha, Oregon): Steve Barker (“Scout”), Brady Cook (“Blueprint”), and Devin Masak (“Mr. Ratchet”). They talk about why so many men drift into isolation, how brotherhood buil...

Send us Fan Mail Why do so many men hesitate to step into spiritual leadership, even when they want to? In Part 3 of our Men & the Gospel in the PNW series, we sit down with psychologist and coach Nancy Castile to talk about the internal barriers men face, including unworthiness, emotional shutdown, shame, performance pressure, and isolation. We also unpack practical “unlocks” like building re...

Send us Fan Mail What does it actually mean to be a man who follows Jesus in the Pacific Northwest? In this episode of Jesus in the Upper Left, we continue a multi-part conversation on men, masculinity, and the gospel. Drawing from Scripture, cultural observation, and decades of pastoral experience, we explore why confusion around masculinity matters for discipleship, families, and gospel multipli...

Send us Fan Mail In this new-year episode of Jesus in the Upper Left , Gabe, Tim, and Ahshuwah unpack a pattern Brilliant Labs keeps seeing across Portland: the majority of ministries serving “downstream” needs are serving at-risk women and children . So what’s upstream? They talk honestly about the crisis of masculinity, fatherlessness, and what changes when men actually walk with Jesus—learning...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Jesus in the Upper Left , Gabe and Tim sit down with Nicole Larson from Together PDX to talk about how churches in Portland can partner with the city in meaningful, practical ways. Nicole shares what’s actually happening on the ground around homelessness, why collaboration matters more than ever, and how churches and individuals can step in without trying to sol...

Send us Fan Mail It’s easy to feel discouraged leading a church or ministry in the Pacific Northwest. The season is long, the headlines are heavy, and the challenges are real. But in this episode of Jesus in the Upper Left , we pause to do something intentional: name where God is clearly at work in Portland right now. Hosts Gabe Kolstad and Tim Osborn share real, on-the-ground stories of gospel mo...

Send us Fan Mail Money is one of the biggest realities every ministry leader faces, especially in the Portland metro and the Pacific Northwest. In this episode, Tim and Gabe welcome Ahshuwah back to the show, then jump into a practical conversation about fundraising, church planting models, generosity discipleship, and what it looks like to build sustainable ministry without letting money drive th...

Send us Fan Mail Rising Back Up in Rockwood: The Story of As Is Church with Pastor Scott Bradley In this powerful episode of Jesus in the Upper Left , Gabe and Tim sit down with Scott Bradley , pastor of As Is Church and founder of the Underground PDX youth program. Scott shares the raw, hopeful story of what God is doing in one of the most overlooked and challenged neighborhoods in Oregon — Rockw...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when two pastors from the Pacific Northwest take a trip to the UK and accidentally walk straight into worship at Westminster Abbey , visit thriving churches in Liverpool, Bristol, and London , and learn from global leaders working toward gospel collaboration and city transformation ? In this episode, Pastor Gabe Kolstad and Pastor Tim Osborn unpack the biggest lessons...