Eastside Foursquare finds temporary home;

Freedom House still looking

By JOHN FORTMEYER
CNNW publisher
     PORTLAND — With the surprise sale of its property and unique business activities now completed as of last month, Eastside Foursquare Church had to quickly find temporary locations for both its offices and worship services.
     It did so, but another ministry that is briefly still housed at the property — the Freedom House men’s programs and shelter for addiction recovery — continues to seek a new home. While the church has vacated its former site at 9727 N.E. Sandy Blvd., Freedom House has been given until Sept. 7 to relocate.
     Freedom House founder, Pastor Jim Cottrell, said he fully expects God to supply through His people, but that the miraculous answer for which the ministry is looking hasn’t been revealed yet.
    “Being totally a charity with no parent organization, we definitely need God’s miraculous provision and the faithfulness of Christians,” he said.
     Cottrell said Freedom House needs a Portland-area facility that includes residential rooms, a bath, classroom space, a dining hall and kitchen facility, office space, chapel area, library space, shop space, laundry and storage. Also desirable would be potential retail space.
     Anyone who has an idea is invited to contact him at 503-347-9966.
     Meanwhile, Eastside Foursquare has set up its offices at 1122 N.E. 122nd St., Suite 216. Worship services will be held, starting Aug. 1, at Open Arms Seventh-day Adventist Church, 15150 N.E. Glisan St.
     “We’re still looking for a permanent location,” said Eastside’s pastor, Eric Bahme.
     Under Bahme’s leadership, Eastside drew national attention because of its unusual pairing the past six years of a church and hotel business — specifically a Quality Inn & Suites and Rodeway Inn that the church owned and operated. Bahme’s “Mission-Based Enterpreneur” model combines churches with the business world.
     But about 10 days after an accidental fire did an estimated $2.5 million to the church’s meeting space, maintenance area and coffee shop, Bahme was unexpectedly notified that the entire property was being sold by the church’s parent denomination to a secular hotel company.
     A spokesman for the denomination said the decision was made reluctantly because the church was never able to fund ministry opportunities from its operating business profits and also because the denomination incurred a significant debt in acquring and redevoping the property. Bahme acknowledged that Eastside was on track to make the hotel business profitable until the current recession hit.
     Despite the events of this summer, Bahme remains convinced that there is a strong future role not only locally, but nationally, for church-business partnerships, and that Eastside will be on the forefront.
    “We’re still looking to a new entrereneurial model,” he said.
     Cottrell has been in ministry since the 1970s and in faith-based recovery outreach since 1988; he founded and directed the Portland Teen Challenge program until 2005, when he founded Freedom House. He said Freedom House had about 125 people go through its program since then, and currently has about 13 people enrolled but needs space for about 20.
     He said such outreach is “hard, challenging work” but that Freedom House’s team is well experienced and convinced of the importance of such work.
    “If every person reading this article recognized the high cost of alcohol and other addiction problems in their own immediate extended family, then they would see the significance of the mission field that surrounds us and want to help,” he said.
     He said the current uncertainty is simply an opportunity to see God act.
     “God allows these kinds of testings, to open the door for something new,” Cotttell said. “We will see this thing through, and (Eastside) will see it through, and down the road, we will all marvel at what God has done.”