For those who know me well, I have been known to mention the name “Portland, Oregon” with a dreamy twinkle in my eye. My wife has gotten to where she simply sighs and rolls her big green ones after years of hearing about it. Enough with Portland, already. But I cannot shake the niggling in my mind, or spirit, as the case may more accurately be, that I am somehow tied to that city (“ooooh, Scott’s getting spooky on us…”) and that I may wind up there someday? Time will tell.

In the meantime, I came across some notes from a conference held in the City of Roses recently whose topic included a phenomenon called “City Reaching.” The plenary speakers were Tom White, of Frontline Ministries, and George Otis, Jr. Some years back, Mr. Otis produced a groundbreaking video called “Transformations” (1999) in which he and his team at the Sentinel Group identified four international cities that had undergone true sustained spiritual transformation. Within a few years, that number had quadrupled affording a second documentary (“Transformations II”) and now the number has multiplied to include 250 cities worldwide* that have been touched by a sustained move of God to transformation. Continue reading »