Jesus in the Upper Left

Multiply PDX
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Christianity
  • Updated Weekly

"Jesus in the Upper Left" is a Portland-based, thought-provoking podcast that explores the unique challenges and opportunities of ministry, church planting and Gospel multiplication in the Pacific Northwest. Packed with inspiration, ideas, and connections, each episode delves into topics like racism, the history of movements and renewal, mistakes made, lessons learned, creative ideas and more.  With a focus on personal stories and honest conversations, "Jesus in the Upper Left" offers a fresh look at what it's going to take to saturate our region with the love and community of Jesus. Whether you're a leader, a learner or a skeptic, this podcast will challenge you to engage with the culture around you in a more intentional and compassionate way.BONUS CONTENT: Don't miss the behind-the-scenes, raw comments & extras at https://www.togetherpdx.org/multiplypdx.

  1. Sep 25

    Navy Ships, Billy Graham, Suicidal Neighbors, 50 Years of Disciple Making | Dennis Blevins

    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 faith one bunk at a time, then saw it spread ship to ship across San Diego's 32nd Street Naval Station. He carried the same one-on-one method to Point Loma University, San Diego State, the University of Oregon, and eventually to Portland, where he coordinated follow-up for the Billy Graham crusade, Promise Keepers, and Luis Palau's city campaigns. Now serving as the Navigator city leader for Portland, Dennis is connecting an ecosystem most churches don't even know exists: first responders who follow Jesus, a mechanic in Battleground fixing cars for Muslim immigrants, a former detective praying with Portland's city manager at City Hall, and a plan to embed 50 trained Christian students into summer jobs at Oaks Park. His framework for helping churches assess their disciple-making gaps (explained through a golf analogy that lands better than it sounds) is one of the most practical tools a pastor in the region will encounter. For leaders who believe Portland can be saturated with the gospel but need to see what the actual mechanism looks like. dennisforpdx@comcast.net

    Navy Ships, Billy Graham, Suicidal Neighbors, 50 Years of Disciple Making | Dennis Blevins

  2. Sep 11

    23 Parking Spots, 5 Churches, 40 Years: Why This Pastor Never Built Bigger | Scott Rivley

    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 turned out to have a deck overlooking Mount Hood for $75 a month, and walked to the nearest church that first Sunday. He never left. What started as West Lynn Baptist Church is now New Life Church: five congregations across West Linn, Wilsonville, Gladstone, and Oregon City, including a Spanish-speaking congregation and an adopted church that asked to be taken in. None of it happened at mega-church scale. Scott sent 40 people under 40 to plant Oregon City. His elders volunteered to be the first launch team. He gave his son a "restricted headhunting license" to recruit. The whole philosophy is built on the idea that not everybody gets a combine harvester: some people get a sickle, and you just have to say "let's go." This conversation covers lead measures vs. lag measures, why the bottleneck is always at the top, and what it takes to build something that doesn't depend on you. scottreavely@newlifenw.com

    23 Parking Spots, 5 Churches, 40 Years: Why This Pastor Never Built Bigger | Scott Rivley

  3. Sep 4

    He Lost 90% of His Church on Purpose (And Still Works at a Bank) | Chris Snodgrass

    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 slow, painful transition from centralized Sunday services to a decentralized network of micro churches scattered across the west side of Portland: living rooms, coffee shops, kitchen tables. The cost was real. Coaches warned him he'd lose up to 90% of the people. He thought maybe 30%. It was 90%. But the church is numerically the same size today with entirely different people, and the fruit looks nothing like what most churches measure. A secular performing arts company now uses the building and tells Chris they've never seen generosity like this from Christians. A local dance center asked Remedy to teach them how to serve. Coworkers at the bank where Chris still works keep coming to faith because they can't figure out why he keeps turning down promotions. For leaders wrestling with whether decentralized, co-vocational ministry can actually work in the Pacific Northwest: this is one honest, five-year report from inside the experiment. chris@remedycitypdx.org remedycitypdx.org

    He Lost 90% of His Church on Purpose (And Still Works at a Bank) | Chris Snodgrass

  4. Aug 28

    He Turned $500 Into a Million Meals with No Degree and No Plan | Jacobsen Valentine

    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 is launching a network of free meal freezers across the city with zero eligibility requirements. No paperwork. No income verification. Roll up in a Lamborghini and you're hungry? You get a meal. This conversation traces how a kid from Hilo, Hawaii who experienced racism for the first time at 11, blew a track scholarship chasing freedom from a violent home, and drifted through restaurant kitchens for eight years found his footing by teaching church kids to cut a watermelon with a debit card on a San Francisco sidewalk. From there: a calling, a terrifying leap out of a Killer Burger management job, and a series of God-sized provisions that he can only explain one way. Jacobsen's philosophy of service is blunt: if you're only serving when someone's watching, that's performance. The people he trusts most are the ones doing dishes when nobody's looking. feedthemass.org

    He Turned $500 Into a Million Meals with No Degree and No Plan | Jacobsen Valentine

  5. Aug 21

    Agnostic Dad, Gay Son, Catholic PhD: Why This Professor Stopped Arguing | Brad Harper

    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. Louis University, pastored alongside hundreds of ex-Catholics navigating their faith, co-wrote a book with his gay son about staying connected through radical disagreement, and after 24 years teaching at Multnomah landed on something the apologetics books never told him: people don't come to Jesus because you won the argument. They come because you stayed in the room. In this conversation with Tim Osborne, Brad traces the thread from his family dinner table to the church's current entanglement with Christian nationalism, making the case that every time the church has reached for power instead of proximity, it's lost the thing it was trying to protect. He unpacks what healthy eldership actually looks like, why younger generations are drawn to liturgy, and what it meant to hear high school classmates at his 50th reunion say "you're the reason I followed Jesus." For pastors wrestling with faithfulness without combativeness. For parents navigating deep disagreement with their kids. For anyone wondering if the church can still be compelling without winning the culture war.

    Agnostic Dad, Gay Son, Catholic PhD: Why This Professor Stopped Arguing | Brad Harper

  6. Aug 14

    Planting a Church With My Brother, Losing Him, and 17 Years of Staying

    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: growing up as a pastor's kid in rural Oregon, planting out of Imago Dei Community in 2009, the scrappy church-in-a-box years of setup and teardown, the hopeful merger with Calvary Downtown in 2016, and then the gut punch of losing his co-pastor, his brother, barely a year later. But this isn't a grief story. It's a formation story. Adam talks about what crisis did to their congregation (it didn't scatter them, it forged them), how their community became unexpectedly trauma-informed before that was a buzzword, and why their Sunday liturgy intentionally makes room for lament alongside joy. There's a story about a four-year-old who told his mom "I accidentally got sad" at church that became an internal motto. Adam closes with the one thing he'd tell his 20-years-ago self: tend your own soul. Innovation and strategy mean nothing without it. For pastors, planters, and anyone thinking about the long game of ministry in the Pacific Northwest.

    Planting a Church With My Brother, Losing Him, and 17 Years of Staying

  7. Aug 6

    They Shut Down Multnomah. Now There’s a $30M Moral Problem | Dr. Gary Friesen

    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 questions now being raised by the Multnomah Legacy Project. Dr. Friesen shares why his team believes Multnomah’s community did not receive what it was promised, how private conversations with Jessup developed into an open letter and public campaign, and why the group made a $12 million reconciliation offer despite having no money or formal authority. They also discuss: Why Dr. Friesen believes Multnomah lost sight of its original mission  The reported loans secured against the Portland campus  The leadership changes that followed the controversy  The possibility of a new Bible college emerging from Multnomah’s legacy  How alumni, churches, and supporters can respond  Dr. Friesen’s work training pastors and building Africa’s largest theological library in Rwanda  Why he believes pursuing justice matters even when success appears impossible   This conversation reflects Dr. Friesen’s perspective and his account of an ongoing situation. Listeners are encouraged to review the available documents and reach their own conclusions. Learn more about the Multnomah Legacy Project by searching “Multnomah Legacy Project.” For more episodes, resources, and opportunities to connect with gospel-centered leaders across the Pacific Northwest, visit UpperLeftShow.com. Subscribe, share this episode, and join the conversation about gospel multiplication in the Pacific Northwest.

    They Shut Down Multnomah. Now There’s a $30M Moral Problem | Dr. Gary Friesen

  8. Jul 25

    Why Most Pastors Can't Reproduce Disciples

    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: the gathering works, small groups work, but one-on-one life-on-life discipleship barely exists as a culture. Most Christians agree they should be making disciples but feel completely unqualified to start, largely because no one ever did it for them. The conversation covers what Expand is seeing work in Uganda (where 500 inmates have come to faith across 11 prisons in four months and they're now solving for discipleship at scale inside prison walls), why busyness signals unavailability to the very people looking for mentors, and how Discovery Bible Study gives everyday Christians a reproducible tool simple enough to use next week. Naomi breaks down the DBS format step by step: retelling, application, the uncomfortable "I will" statement, and the built-in multiplication question of "who will you share this with?" This one's for pastors who suspect they're unintentionally blocking the thing they preach, for empty nesters who don't think they're qualified, and for anyone who's wanted to disciple someone but didn't know the first practical step. Naomi Federiuk, Director of Discipleship Training, Expand Network Tim Osborne, Dean of Portland Seminary Gabe Kolstad, Lead Pastor, Westside Community Church Subscribe and hit notifications so you don't miss a single episode. Find bonus content, resources, and ways to connect with others doing this work across the city at UpperLeftShow.com

    Why Most Pastors Can't Reproduce Disciples
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
10 Ratings

About

"Jesus in the Upper Left" is a Portland-based, thought-provoking podcast that explores the unique challenges and opportunities of ministry, church planting and Gospel multiplication in the Pacific Northwest. Packed with inspiration, ideas, and connections, each episode delves into topics like racism, the history of movements and renewal, mistakes made, lessons learned, creative ideas and more.  With a focus on personal stories and honest conversations, "Jesus in the Upper Left" offers a fresh look at what it's going to take to saturate our region with the love and community of Jesus. Whether you're a leader, a learner or a skeptic, this podcast will challenge you to engage with the culture around you in a more intentional and compassionate way.BONUS CONTENT: Don't miss the behind-the-scenes, raw comments & extras at https://www.togetherpdx.org/multiplypdx.

Information

  • Creator
    Multiply PDX
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    115
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Jesus in the Upper Left
  • Show Website
    Jesus in the Upper Left

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