(RNS) — Multnomah University was facing the end of its days.

“We have cried, prayed, and walked a difficult path together as a community,” the Christian school’s president, Jessica Taylor, said in a 2023 video. “Without God’s provision, there was no path forward.”

Then, in the fall of 2023, Taylor announced a new “transformative partnership” with Jessup University, a similarly nondenominational evangelical Christian school in Northern California. As part of the agreement, Multnomah would give all its assets to Jessup, including its campus in Portland, Oregon. In return, Jessup would turn the Multnomah campus into a branch location. Jessup would also serve Multnomah students until 2027.

When the partnership was announced, leaders at Multnomah said they were hoping to avoid a “catastrophic university closure,” like the kind that occurred at Concordia University in Portland, a Lutheran school that shut down in 2020. The deal with Jessup ensured Multnomah’s existing students could graduate, and it kept a Christian college in Portland. 

“Multnomah University is making a significant step to ensure our legacy lives on for generations to come,” Taylor said at the time.

Jessup’s president at the time of the arrangement, John Jackson, described the partnership of the two schools as a “merger of missions.”

In a podcast interview about the acquisition, Jackson said a traditional merger would have taken too long. “This is not an asset purchase agreement,” he told the EdUp Experience podcast in March of 2024. “This is not even a merger with a strong and weak partner. This is a merger of missions, but through a contribution agreement.”

The partnership was hailed as a hopeful model for struggling Christian colleges. Then things fell apart. 

In May of 2025, Jackson announced the Portland campus would close. The school’s seminary would move online. Any remaining undergraduates would have to continue their education elsewhere. The staff and faculty in Portland were fired.

For a group of Multnomah alums and former staff, the closure felt like a betrayal. They believe Jessup failed to live up to its promises. They also believe the partnership was doomed from the start.

At the time of the merger, Jessup was facing a fiscal crisis of its own. Without the Multnomah assets, Jessup, which has more than $100 million in debt, would have lost nearly $11 million in fiscal year 2023-2024, according to the school’s audit. Instead of saving Multnomah, the acquisition helped keep Jessup afloat, according to the school’s financials. In June 2024, about two months after acquiring Multnomah’s campus, Jessup took out a $15 million loan against the property. 

“William Jessup University and Jessup Foundation had suffered recurring negative changes in operating net assets, negative cash flow from operating activities, internal borrowings against the endowments, and a significant amount of debt due within the next fiscal year,” the auditors wrote.

Multnomah’s assets were worth $30.4 million (though Jackson had claimed on the podcast they were worth $60 million). The acquisition cost $7.7 million, meaning the transaction netted Jessup about $22.6 million.

College leaders, including Jackson, who stepped down as president in December but remains Jessup’s chancellor, declined a request to comment.

Garry Freisen, a longtime Bible professor at Multnomah, believes that in the rush to save the campus, Jessup’s fiscal woes were overlooked. 

“Jessup either was deceptive so they could get quick help with their debt or they were extremely overconfident and ineffective administrators,” Friesen told RNS in an email. 

Friesen, who taught at Multnomah for 37 years and now teaches at a Bible college in Rwanda, is part of a small group of alumni and former staff who believe Jessup has a moral obligation to return some of Multnomah’s assets. In particular, they worry the campus will be sold to pay Jessup’s debts. 

They want at least some of the proceeds used to continue Multnomah’s legacy. Friesen said that legally, Jessup can do what it likes with the Portland campus — but that does not make it right. 

“Not doing what you promised does not qualify you to sell the campus potentially at a profit and use it any other way that you want,” he said.

The group, which includes grandchildren of the school’s founders, has met with members of Jessup’s board to share their concerns. So far, they say, the answer has been, “We are sorry things did not work out.”

Known as the Multnomah Family Team, the group sees the failed partnership as a cautionary tale for other struggling schools.

“As Bible colleges and Christian colleges fail, we don’t want what happened to Multnomah to happen to anybody else,” Friesen told RNS in an interview.

Jessup did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 

Founded as a Bible college in 1936, Multnomah had long trained pastors, missionaries and other church leaders in the Pacific Northwest from its campus in Portland, Oregon. “If it’s Bible you want, you want Multnomah,” the school co-founder, Willard Aldrich, was fond of saying.

But like many small schools, Multnomah fell on hard times and by 2023 could no longer afford to pay its bills.   

The school had been in decline for some time, Rob Trenckmann, one of Aldrich’s grandchildren, told RNS in an interview. Multnomah tried for years to transition from a Bible college to a Christian liberal arts college, but that transition never seemed to take off. In 2023, the college stopped requiring students to sign a statement of faith in hopes of attracting non-Christians who were open to learning about faith. 

Still, the closing came as a shock. 

“It felt like the loss of a family member,” Trenckmann said. Several longtime professors have recently passed away, adding to the sense of grief.

Gary Stocker, founder of College Viability, a site that helps prospective students and parents look at the financial health of colleges, said the cost of running a college continues to rise, and revenue can’t keep up, especially at small institutions. Last year, 16 colleges announced closures, including five with religious affiliations, according to Inside Higher Ed. Seven other schools announced mergers. 

The story of Multnomah and Jessup is part of a bigger trend.

“It’s just a local symptom of a national disease,” Stocker said. “There’s nothing unique about it other than the names of the colleges.”

Jon Nichols, author of “Requiem for a College,” which details the closing of his alma mater, said there’s a profound sense of loss when a small college closes. It’s like losing your home, said Nichols, who grew up on the campus of Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, which announced it was closing in 2017.

At the time, Nichols, a St. Joseph’s grad, had come back to teach at the college. His brother was also on the faculty, and his father had been a longtime professor.

“It’s like the center of the universe has fallen out,” he said. “You are not sure what the world looks like anymore.”

Bethany Aldrich Myers said that after Jessup took over Multnomah, alumni lost contact with each other. She’d like to see Jessup return the Multnomah name and alumni list to graduates so they could reconnect and perhaps work to further the school’s legacy. “I think the hardest thing is that the alumni network is lost for us,” she said.

Trenckmann said some alumni are thinking of ways to resurrect the school or at least to continue its mission. He hopes Jessup could help make that possible.

“Jessup could work with us in a spirit of friendship,” he said.

Jessup’s current financial status is unclear, as the school’s audit for 2025 has yet to be made public. However, public records show Jessup continued to take on debt, including a $5 million loan from a trust owned by the family of former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, a longtime friend of Jackson. Six months later, another $6 million lien was placed on the Multnomah property.

In mid-January, Jessup announced that Rachael Gelsinger, daughter-in-law of Pat Gelsinger, had joined the school’s board. The school also announced that Pat Gelsinger, along with the presidents of four Christian colleges — Barry Corey of Biola University, Eric Hogue of Colorado Christian University, André Stephens of Fresno Pacific University, and Robin Baker of George Fox University — have been named to an advisory board that will meet monthly with interim President Parnell Lovelace.

Members of the Multnomah Family Team say they are realistic about the future. They know Jessup still has fiscal troubles, and their request to retain some of the proceeds from the sale of the campus may be turned down. Still, they believe Multnomah’s legacy remains alive in its graduates, who are ministering in the Pacific Northwest and around the world. And they are hopeful the story of Multnomah is not yet over.

“God could do something,” said Friesen. “Our involvement is to start praying for Jessup and for a miracle.”