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A Portland, Oregon, pastor believes people are ready for a spiritual revival in the deeply secular city, after tens of thousands of people responded to Christ at an evangelism event his church hosted earlier this month.
“We’ve become known as a dark city,” Athey Creek senior pastor Brett Meador said, referencing the city’s reputation for homelessness, drug abuse, strip clubs, and human trafficking. “Our goal was to shed the light of Christ.”
The “PDX Crusade” — a free, two-night event inspired by famed evangelist Billy Graham’s crusades — drew 35,000 people to Portland’s Moda Center on August 2-3 to hear the gospel message and worship with popular Christian artists Chris Tomlin, Zach Williams and others.
Around 4,000 church volunteers handed out Bibles to the 3,200 people who committed their lives to Christ at the event, Meador told Fox News Digital in an interview this week. Local reports noted it was Portland’s largest gathering of its kind in decades.
Athey Creek pastor Brett Meador said 35,000 people showed up to the “PDX Crusade” in August. (Athey Creek)
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Meador recalled “powerful” moments from the event, including praying for a 10-year-old boy and his mother to accept Christ, and seeing venue staff come down to the arena floor to be prayed for.
“It was kind of overwhelming, the response just from people who heard the good news,” he said. “We have countless testimonies pouring in right now.”
Meador said he followed a spiritual calling to move to Portland with his wife nearly 30 years ago to plant a church in what he said was then known as one of the “the least-churched cities in America.”
That reputation hasn’t changed much. The Portland-Vancouver metro area stands out as the only region among the 34 largest U.S. metropolitan areas surveyed, where religiously unaffiliated people outnumber Christians — 44% to 42% — according to the Pew Research Center’s 2023–2024 Religious Landscape Study.
Pastor Brett Meador said that Moda Center venue staff came to the altar to pray with church volunteers at the Portland revival event. (Athey Creek)
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Starting a church in such a secular environment wasn’t easy, Meador said. Despite pushback, Athey Creek has continued to grow, from zero members to nearly 15,000 people who now attend services.
He believes the spiritual climate has shifted over the past five years, especially after months of rioting and rising crime following George Floyd’s death in 2020.
“Jesus talked about how the field was ready for harvest,” Meador said. “And I think that Portland, in the last five years, since the 120 days of rioting that we had in 2020, and just the problems we’ve had, I think people are realizing this isn’t working out very well. And because we’ve been post-Christian for so long, I think that people are hungry for something that’s real and powerful and true.”
“We’re seeing an opportunity to give people an alternative from the darkness to follow the light,” he continued. “I think people are realizing that there’s just a much better way and that Jesus is actually the answer to all the problems that we face.”
A recent revival event in Portland was the largest evangelism gathering in decades, according to local reports.
Church leaders are now prayerfully considering whether to make the crusade an annual event.
“We’re praying that the Lord will open the door for us,” Meador said. “We’re very open to doing it again next year and making it maybe a regular thing.”
The Portland gathering followed another major revival meeting in Los Angeles in July, when about 45,000 people packed Angel Stadium for Pastor Greg Laurie’s Harvest Crusade on July 19. It marked the second consecutive year the stadium sold out for the event, with an additional 200,000 people watching online, according to Harvest Church.
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Kristine Parks is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Read more.
