Lead Pastor
Lead Pastor Matt Payne first felt called to plant a church during his last semester at Lincoln Christian College. He took a one week, one credit elective on church planting. Before that time he only thought of church consolidation as he grew up in a county of 15,000 people with 14 Christian Church churches. During that class his eyes were opened to the need for planting more churches.
While pastoring at the West Burlington Christian Church and the Waterloo Church of Christ in Iowa, Matt kept his eye on C.E.M. which is a church planting organization for the state of Iowa. He watched a few churches start and become successful reaching his generation. He and his wife Cindy saw the hard work it took but they also saw God bless in some amazing ways. He was further convinced that God had called him to plant a church.
After an opportunity to start a church in Peoria, IL came up, John Wasem, church planting professor at Lincoln Christian Seminary, made a statement that confirmed what God was saying. He said, "If you are going to plant a church I can think of more strategic places than Peoria, IL, not that Peoria doesn't need more churches."
For the next year or so they began to pray about where God wanted them to start a church. They looked at an internship possibility with a large church in California but felt that God had something else in mind for them. Cindy grew up in Lake Oswego and the Paynes vacationed there every year. They began to feel God calling them to Portland where almost 9 out of 10 people do NOT go to church regularly.
In the Spring of 1999 they talked with Tom Brown from the nwcea and found out that there were going to be lots of churches started in in the Pacific Northwest so on faith they moved out without jobs. They loaded all their stuff into a 24 ft Ryder truck and drove it 2000+ miles to Lake Oswego. God provided a job for both of them within a few weeks and they began to volunteer with the Harvest View Christian Church which was just 6 months old.
God provided a computer consulting job for Matt in where he was able to drive around the Portland Metro. He was drawn to the Westside and the Silicon Forest around Beaverton/Hillsboro. In the fall of 1999 he pulled off to the side of the road and prayed sensing God was going to do something great in that area. That area was a new community called Orenco Station. Since that time Our Place Christian Church was started and God has done something amazing as the church has exploded with growth baptizing over 200 people in the first three years. In 2004 Matt came on staff at Our Place as their next church planter.
In January 2006, Matt and Cindy began gathering a group of people to form a launch team for Church! at bethany. The launch team grew from an initial group of 12 adults to over 50 adults before launching weekly services on October 1st at PCC: Rock Creek.
Having moved to Portland 8 years ago Matt and Cindy have experienced a little bit of what people feel like when they arrive. They have lived wall to wall with their neighbors and yet felt disconnected. Matt's passion is to help connect people to God and to others through Jesus Christ.
Matt and Cindy have been married for 16 years and have two wonderful kids. Kyle, age 14, and Allison, age 11.
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