About Us

Putting love to work by helping break the cycle of poverty and homelessness

Agape Village is a compassionate ministry community that offers long term support and relationship to anyone looking to break the cycle of poverty, addiction, and/or homelessness. What started as an effort to simply provide a safe place for people to be has grown into a continuum of care and support for those working toward a new life.

Our Story

Our story began with Portland Central Church of the Nazarene's desire to truly live out the greatest commandment - to love God and to love our neighbor. In 2016 the church embarked on a journey to better understand the community they existed and began asking what does it look like for us to love this community like Jesus. After about a year of serving in the community, vision meetings, and planning the church made the decision to move forward with building a tiny house village on the property to provide a safe place for people to stay while they worked on finding housing and accessed other services. Then began the process of working with the city to determine necessary permitting and other zoning issues.

In 2018 Agape Village, the non-profit, was launched and building began. Construction was done with volunteers from Cascadia Clusters, Agape Blitz, Union Gospel Mission, Central Nazarene Church, Tivnu, and many other youth groups, schools, churches, and organizations from around the Portland area and even from throughout the country. It truly was a team effort! After all that work we welcomed our first group of villagers in December 2019.

Since that time we have added staff, added services, and even partnered with Nexus Church in Beaverton to help open a single family shelter on their property! All in an effort to love God and love our neighbors!

Meet The Team

Matt Huff

Founder & Executive Director

Matt has been pastoring Portland Central Nazarene Church for over 10 years. Agape Village started as a result of his leadership and the church’s desire to better love their neighbors. Prior to moving to Portland Matt and his family lived in Prineville, OR for about 7 years. There he engaged in a similar work and helped start Redemption House Ministries. Matt began his work with the unhoused population while in seminary in Kansas City where he served as a chaplain at the Kansas City Rescue Mission. He has been loving his neighbor, specifically the addicted and impoverished, for almost 17 years.

Sarah Chapman

Village Manager/Outreach Coordinator

Sarah has been an important part of our work since the beginning. She joined in the compassionate ministry efforts of Central Nazarene Church helping serve monthly meals to our unhoused neighbors with Operation Nighwatch in 2017 and developed many great relationships. She has lived in Portland since she was 13 years old and raised her children here, so as a heart to see the cycle of poverty and homelessness be broken in the lives of our neighbors. Sarah currently serves as our Village Manager and Outreach Director and has been in that role since we opened in December 2019.

Stacy Watt

Case Manager

Stacy grew up in Sebastopol, CA it is a small farm town in Northern, CA about an hour away from anything fun i.e. San Francisco. From there she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Social Work from Clark Atlanta University. After graduating she spent 8 years in the United States Navy stationed overseas twice in Japan (Sasebo and Misawa) and once in Bremerton, WA. She is currently finishing up her Masters in Divinity at Multnomah University. On her off times she enjoys fishing, hiking, reading, making bread, and working out at her local CrossFit gym.

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Aimee Miller

Village Host

Aimee was born and raised in Oregon City , started a career as a professional hairstylist but struggled with addiction that eventually resulted in multiple treatment centers and ultimately homelessness. She gained victory over her addiction through support from her family, her sober housing at Free on the Outside and her renewed faith and relationship with God. They had their daughter, April, while being house managers at Free on the Outside. When asked if she was interested in working for Agape Village, she jumped at the chance! It had been a place they wanted to live, but it was still being built. She says, "the opportunity to work with those going thru homelessness like I have, and be a part of the process of people finding hope and changing their lives with the support of stable safe housing is such a gift to be able to be a part of! I feel like this is exactly where God wants me to be and I can't wait to see how the village grows and changes over the years."

Sterling Snowden

Counselor

Board of Directors

Dana Harden – Board Secretary

Retired Credentialist – Adventist Medical

Judy Johnson

Retired Attorney

Wayne Aus

Cloud Solutions Engineer – Oracle Corporation

Roxanne Brown

Oregon Pacific District Church of the Nazarene Missions International President

Family & Community Connections Pastor at Oregon City Nazarene Church

Max Jetton

Retired Pastor in the Church of the Nazarene

About Us

Our Story

Meet The Team

Board of Directors

Our Partners