Pastors Pray in Portland

Near the edge of Portland, Ore., on the border shared with neighboring city Gresham, is Powell Butte, a dormant volcano from which visitors can overlook the hills, homes, and streets of the city around them. At this vantage point Peter Armstrong, pastor of Parklane CRC in Portland, and two of his friends in ministry met regularly to pause and pray for their city during the heavy days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Armstrong had been praying with an established monthly neighborhood prayer group since arriving in Portland in 2017, he said, but when the pandemic began, he and a few friends felt a deeper call to prayer as well. “We just saw so much that was going on, and so much in our community, with racial justice issues and everything, that we wanted to come together more often,” he explained.

With its outdoor public space and views of the neighborhood, Powell Butte Nature Park seemed a good place to pray together. “It’s a really peaceful place in the middle of the city,” said Armstrong. “We started praying up there in the summer of 2020, just three of us. . . . We kept praying together every week.”

Each Wednesday at noon the group still gathers – on Powell Butte in the nice weather during the summer, and at Parklane CRC during the winter months or on rainy days – and it is a larger group now. In the past 18 months many others have joined, said Armstrong. 

When only three were meeting to pray, he noted, they easily fit at one of the picnic tables at Powell Butte Nature Park or in his office at the church. “Then the group just kept growing, and now there’s about 20 people on the list, and there’s 12 or 15 of us every week” meeting to pray, he said.

The group is an ethnically diverse mix of mostly pastors and Christian nonprofit workers, said Armstrong. The pastors are “from nondenominational, Seventh Day Adventist, Wesleyan, and CRC” churches, he said. “There are folks that work for Child Evangelism Fellowship and Love INC – and there’s even a teacher,” he added.

Parklane CRC is near a local public school, and a teacher there learned about the prayer group from the church sign and now joins regularly during his lunch break. 

The local neighborhood they pray for is Rockwood, described on Wikipedia as “one of the most densely populated and diverse neighborhoods in Gresham, and one of the poorest in the state.” 

Unincorporated for much of its history, Rockwood was long considered an undesirable area, said Armstrong. Developers bought the land and built apartment buildings, but the streets are not well planned, and there is a shortage of grocery stores. In recent years, mainly because of its lower housing costs in comparison to much of the rest of the city, numerous refugees and immigrants have settled in Rockwood. 

“That’s been a huge blessing. We’ve got amazing churches here from all different backgrounds,” said Armstrong. “But there have been lots of challenges too. It’s still a pretty violent place. There’s a level of housing density that people in the west are not used to. Some of the density is more like that of a city on the east coast.”

Just a 30-minute drive west of Rockwood are the headquarters of huge companies such as Nike and Columbia Sportswear, bringing wealth and opportunity along with strong, healthy, large churches to southwest Portland, Armstrong said. But on the eastern side of the city, in Rockwood, “there’s nothing like that. We’re in the same county, the same city even, but it’s just way different.”

The people in Rockwood may not be in greater need of prayer than their wealthier neighbors, noted Armstrong, but they might be more aware of their need – so the group comes together to pray for the needs of their congregations, organizations, students, and families. “We’ve seen some pretty direct answers to prayer,” Armstrong added. “It seems like small things, but you know that God is moving.”

A woman connected with the group teaches music at a local Salvation Army church as a way to reach families. For the first few months of the school year, said Armstrong, only three or four children were coming for lessons, so the group prayed for a wider impact. Within three or four weeks, about 20 new students signed up for lessons, broadening the outreach of the church, building into the lives of students, and creating positive relationships in the community.

A young man in the group was running a mentorship program at a church near Parklane CRC, but the ministry lost its funding when government grants were cut earlier this year. The young man often tells others how God rescued him from homelessness, jail, and addiction, and his testimony gives hope to many. The cut in funding threatened to tear down the mentorship ministry, however. 

So the group prayed, and the young man decided to step out in faith and see what God would do. “Within a couple of months,” said Armstrong, “he had raised a whole year’s salary so that he could stay in the mentorship ministry full time. Now he’s working full time at the church and mentoring kids every day, and he’s going to Western Seminary here in Portland. So that has been a huge answer to prayer.”

Connie Hays moved to Rockwood in 1989 when her husband, D. Vance Hays, accepted a call to pastor Parklane CRC, and together they served the church for 27 years. Then, while they served a church in Montana on an interim basis, Connie learned about Love INC and realized it was a ministry that would serve Rockwood well. The organization connects churches in a network to serve the practical needs of people in the community. As a hub for volunteers and a place for people to call when they need a hand, Love INC coordinates church volunteers to provide helpful services such as rides to appointments or home or appliance repairs.

Connie brought the idea to Rockwood. “It took seven years, but they opened their phone bank a month ago,” said Armstrong. “That too was a huge answer to prayer.”

In addition to the Parklane prayer group, a network of pastors and church members across the city keep Portland’s various neighborhoods in prayer. The different prayer groups connect once or twice each year, said Armstrong, and they stay connected through PastorsPDX, part of Together PDX, a ministry that serves pastors, churches, and community leaders in greater Portland. Armstrong said he appreciates knowing his group is one among many in the city, and he noted, “It makes you feel like you’re part of something bigger.”

“It’s been super, super encouraging” to see their group growing, supporting congregations, and bringing positive change to the neighborhood, said Armstrong. “It’s definitely like an anchor in my week, and I look forward to Wednesdays at noon, when we pray for Rockwood.”