Christian revival event draws thousands in quest to save Portland’s soul

Three hours before the gates opened, people camped outside the Moda Center to secure the best seats possible. They were there for PDX Crusade, one of the largest Christian revival meetings Portland has seen in decades.

The event was hosted by Athey Creek Christian Fellowship, a megachurch based in West Linn, and its founding pastor, Brett Meador.

Thousands of people traveled from across the region to attend, a line snaking around the Rose Quarter. Some of the biggest names in modern Christian music were performing, including Chris Tomlin and Zach Williams.

“I’m really excited about it,” Laury Lybrand of Portland said as she stood in line. “I haven’t seen anything like this in a long, long time.”

The revival during the first weekend of August had a rock concert atmosphere. Smoke machines billowed and stage lights flashed, while the thousands in attendance sang along, their arms raised and tears filling their eyes.

In Meador’s first sermon, he urged those in attendance to commit their lives to Jesus and the words of the Bible. But he also talked about Portland, hitting on familiar themes: homelessness, crime and a lack of faith in the region.

“Why is there so much darkness here?” Meador said to the crowd. “I believe it’s because we have often pushed Jesus — the real light of the world — out.”

While Meador and Athey Creek focused on Portland’s modern problems, the idea of saving the Rose City from wickedness has attracted evangelists for nearly 100 years.

Saving Portland’s soul

Saving souls in Portland has been an integral part of Pastor Brett Meador’s mission for almost 30 years. The founder of Athey Creek Christian Fellowship, he has said in interviews that he moved to Portland in 1996 partially because of the city’s status as the “least churched city in America.”

Meador’s church started in a living room before moving to Athey Creek Middle School, where he became known for his verse-by-verse teachings of the Bible. Athey Creek now worships in a large building in West Linn, with two additional campuses in Hillsboro and McMinnville.

The city of Portland is a frequent topic for Meador; he has critiqued the city for its liberal politics and active protests. The promotional video for the crusade shows a montage of footage from the 2020 George Floyd protests and tents lining the streets.

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“Portland is the tip of the spear in America of stupidity, wokeness and failure,” Meador said in a July 3 sermon, before lamenting drag queens performing on the floor of the Oregon House of Representatives.

Through a spokesperson, Meador declined multiple requests for an interview. Athey Creek Executive Pastor Rick Anderson told OPB his church was aiming to provide hope to a region that has struggled in recent years.

“Our heart is for Portland,” Anderson said. “The Rose City has slowly declined in terms of its appeal, the way that it has devolved into what it is today from really a beautiful city.”

A long history of evangelism

Athey Creek is not the first church to host large-scale revivals in Portland.

Leah Payne, a professor of American religious history at George Fox University, said West Coast cities like Portland have long been a focal point for evangelists.

The Portland metro area has one of the lowest rates of religious affiliation in the country, according to the Pew Research Center, but low church attendance is nothing new for the area.

“For the last 100 years or so, revivalists have looked at cities like Portland as a special place where they need to focus their energy to clean out the godless state of the city,” Payne said. “It’s become a shorthand for what they see as an increasingly secular United States.”

Famed evangelist Billy Graham held multiple revivals, dubbed “crusades,” in Portland starting in 1950, and the spiritual failings of Portland were often discussed. His 1992 crusade drew more than 40,000 people to Civic Stadium, which is now Providence Park. Meador has cited Graham as an inspiration for the PDX Crusade.

Attracting converts and new members is central to these revivals. Typically, that happens during an altar call, where a pastor will invite the audience to approach the stage to convert and accept Jesus Christ.

“This context of the revivals is often where people will have these ‘born again’ experiences and have a shift in their life,” said Susanna Morrill, professor of religion at Lewis & Clark College. “They’re really important for missionizing, but also for individuals.”

But the portrayal of Portland as a spiritually desolate place struck the wrong chord with some. Karyn Richards-Kuan, the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Portland, said she didn’t agree with how Athey Creek portrayed the city.

“It sort of did paint this picture of Portland as a place of desperation, and they said that they believe that Jesus was the answer. And for me, there’s just so much more to it,” Richards-Kuan said. “I think the focus on salvation alone really misses the mark.”

Churches within the city limits had little involvement in organizing the event. Of the 17 churches that helped Athey Creek in putting together the PDX Crusade, none were from Portland, according to a list provided by a church spokesperson. All were from surrounding suburbs.

“It was all these congregations sort of looking into the city as this big, bad, dark place, rather than the congregations who are serving in the city and who see it as a place of great light and opportunity,” Richards-Kuan said.

‘Reviving the church’

For the thousands inside the Moda Center, the PDX Crusade lived up to the hype.

At the end of Meador’s sermon, people began streaming to the stadium floor, trailed by hundreds of volunteers distributing Athey Creek-branded Bibles and other information.

By the end of the weekend, Athey Creek declared the PDX Crusade a success: 35,000 people attended the three events, and 3,200 people responded to the altar call, according to the church.

Some attendees felt the size and scale of the crusade was a sign that attitudes toward religion could be changing in the Pacific Northwest.

“I’ve just seen a number of different people over these last few months and years that are moving from different areas to the [Willamette] Valley, because they feel like there’s some sort of revival taking place,” Brandon Porter of Newberg said. “They feel like God’s called them here.”

Anderson said the Athey Creek leadership is now considering whether the PDX Crusade will become an annual tradition.

“If the city of Portland reflects back and recognizes that this was a catalyst for reviving the church … and really bringing the love of Jesus to a lost and desperate world, we’re going to consider that a success,” Anderson said.