Cascade Church Portland

Reason to Sing:: Nothing is Holding Me Back

Have you ever considered the number of "thank yous" you say on any particular day? 

I started off thinking that I very rarely say "thank you", but after paying attention I've noticed that I say it all the time.

When I get my order from a coffee shop
When my sons do what I've asked them 
When someone holds a door
When someone lets me in on the freeway
When someone pumps my gas

The thing is that all of these "thank yous" are basically unconscious. I didn't think I said it very often because the reflex of saying it and a feeling of gratitude aren't the same thing.

What's really interesting is when you last said a "thank you" that you really, deeply and truly meant. When did it come tumbling from your lips because you were so full of gratitude? When was the gesture or act of service so profound that you wanted to say more than "thank you" because those words couldn't capture what you felt.

I was in a Fred Meyer buying a pack of Pokemon cards for my son for St Patricks Day. Leprechauns are both generous and avid consumers, it appears. I was pulling this off with my four-year old sleeping on my shoulder. A woman in front of me in line grabbed the pack of cards and put them on her side of the plastic dividing wand. I tried protesting in a whisper to keep my son asleep, but she was having none of it. 

"Thank you. That's so incredibly kind of you."

This was an out of the blue unexpected grace that I was compelled to respond to. She was making a decision to forsake social norms and just buy the thing for my boys. I was so very aware of that "thank you". It didn't slip past me without notice. I was fully awake to that gratitude. 

Singing in worship can be this exact same kind of gratitude. We can have experiences of thanking God for grace, peace, the ability to breath, the beauty of creation or even the fact that we're still standing. We can also have experiences of passive praise where it's akin to having your gas pumped or having your coffee delivered. 

The encouragement for this week is to explore ways worship can be engaged as gratitude. We can acknowledge the things in our lives that are really difficult and also acknowledge the things that are really, really good.

Jonathan Martin:: Shaken, Not Stirred

Jonathan Martin shares with Cascade about the nature of things being shaken up in our lives. The same shaking can be freedom for some and chaos for others. Who are God's people called to be in the midst of the shaking in personal, communal and even national spheres? How are we invited to both receive care and deliver care in the midst of shaking? 

Reason to Sing:: Great is Thy Faithfulness

Music has taught me so many things over the years. I would guess that many of life's most important messages were received through the miracle of song. 

Want proof? 

Cyndi Lauper taught me that fun is something that girls just want to have. 

Pat Benatar taught me that love can be a battlefield. 

Journey taught me the that giving up on belief is a bad idea. 

Nirvana taught me about the scent of adolescence. 

TLC taught me to value rivers and lakes over the fickleness of waterfalls. 

MC Hammer taught me that there were things that I should not touch. 

Creed taught me the proper way to hold my arms is wide open. 

If I did my job well you are still singing along with at least one song. 

The power of music is evident when you hear a song you know and you can feel yourself transported. You can see, smell and feel all kinds of things that were significant when you first heard that music. It informs us about how life works and how we deal with joy and pain. 

This is one of the major roles that worship music plays in our life. There are certain songs that play on mental repeat in times where we're struggling or in pain. "It is Well With my Soul" has gotten me through many a difficult night. 

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul
 

Listen as we explore the role of worship music as education. There's an opportunity to learn something new or reinforce something familiar, if we have have eyes to see it in worship. 

Reason to Sing:: In Christ Alone

A couple years back I was leading a group of folks on a trip in Kenya. We were there to support work being done with orphans. One of our projects was to help clear branches and small trees by using a machete. A chance to pretend I knew what I was doing with a sword?!? You know I was all about it.  I was trimming smaller branches off larger branches and tossing them in a pile when Travis Baker, one of our Cascade Kid's volunteers, yelled at me to freeze.  One of the things you don't want to hear while working in brush in Africa is, "Don't move! Don't move! Don't move!" He walked up and pulled one of these off of my back... How adorable is that?!? We were so pumped that we had found this little guy that we walked around showing him off.  One of the leaders of the organization came up to us and asked if he could borrow the chameleon. He was pretty excited to show us something amazing.  He walked up to a group of kids nonchalantly and pulled his hand back to reveal the chameleon.  It was like someone had just turned on an industrial fan and blew these kids back 8 feet. There was screaming and running and general mayhem.  Now, I had heard about a King Cobra sighting on my last visit to this region. Some people debate if Black Mambas can live at that elevation in Kenya, but others swear that they've seen them there.  One of the only animals I was confident couldn't harm me in that place was causing mass chaos with the locals. What in the world was going on? Apparently its a pretty common myth that parents tell their children involving the chameleon as a bearer of bad omens and even death. The fact that it was physically harmless didn't matter at all.  This is the importance of framing. Framing is the stories or information that we allow to shape our understanding of the world. We are all listening to different stories that influence if we approach the world with fear, joy, anxiety or anger. Join us this Sunday we we look at the role that singing in worship can play in the framing our experience of God.

Reason to Sing:: Be Thou My Vision

At church we arrive, come into the sanctuary and soon afterwards we start to sing. 

Well, you may not sing. You may watch. You may mouth the words. You may sit and pray. 

Our singing experience at church can be odd and we want to peel back the curtain and talk about all the ways that singing can function in the church. 

Take a listen to Bradlee Hersey share about his path to leading worship and his love for "Be Thou My Vision"

Easter Sunday:: The Tomb Is Empty

Life can be a blur of commitments and obligations. 

We move from one day to the next with a humming buzz of routine.

Every once an a while something breaks the certainty of this week looking like last week and we are invited to ask some bigger questions about life. This is Easter.

What is the nature of death, loss and grief? Does God helps us avoid pain or is God giving us a path through it? How do we respond when all hope is lost? How are our expectations for God blocking our ability to experience God? 

And on the other hand, what do we do with unexpected hope, joy and grace? What does resurrection look like in our lives? What does Christ overcoming death mean for us?

Come and see the tomb is empty and that changes everything. 

Good Friday:: Stages of Grief

The Christian story walks directly through pain, suffering and loss. Good Friday is an opportunity to not walk around the difficulty of pain, but to sit in it and find that God is there with us. 

Death's Door:: Good Day to Die

Would you believe you were lovable if you didn't have people who loved you? 

Would you believe your life had value if you didn't have any accomplishments? 

Would you believe in yourself if nobody had ever believed in you? 

We usually can't separate who we are from what we've done or what we've received from others. We may know that we are more that who loves us, what we've done or what people say about us, but that's the constant feedback loop we're all stuck in. 

When things change in our lives we almost always need to recalibrate our identity. It's constantly getting informed by relationships, work, or the opinions of others. When any of those things change we are forced to go back to the place of discovering who we are. 

Jesus pushed into these kinds of places. Who are the disciples when they leave what they've know to follow him? Who are the Pharisees and Sadducees if they don't have all the answers? Who are the blind, lame or leprous once they are healed? Who is the rich, young ruler if he gives away his riches? Who are the disciples as servants instead of heroes? 

Death's Door:: Seeing Past the Shame

We do funny things when we allow our shame to overwhelm us. 

We cease being able to see other people, we cease to be able to interpret reality. 

You've had conversations with people deep inside of a shame cycle and their desctiption of reality is completely skewed. It distorts everything and can leave us feeling incredible defeated and attacked on all sides. 

A lot of our own shame centers around the lack of grace we extend ourselves. We expect to get people and situations right the first time and when we fail we beat ourselves us or place all the blame on others. Our expectations aren't met and that disappointment finds at home at our own doorstep or the doorstep of others. 

What if we grieved perfection? What if we grieved the lie that we have it all together? What if we met our own failings with the grace that Christ brings us instead of the scorn we often extend ourselves? 

Take a listen and wrestle with grace, grief and everything in between. 

Death's Door:: Get Behind Me

If you've ever been in a situation where you know that someone close to you is going to die, it can be an incredibly difficult and painful experience. Most of us have haven't done this a lot and we're not all together sure how we should engage with the process. 

If it isn't a quick experience you can feel yourself torn between praying and wishing for a faster and less painful passing and then guilt for wishing death upon someone. It's torture to feel that however you are responding in your grief is the wrong way. 

There's a swirl of emotions and most of us have to resist the temptation to not check out physically, mentally and spiritually. 

As a church we are getting closer and closer to Easter, which is a celebration of the shocking, unexpected resurrection of Jesus Christ. But before Jesus can rise, he must go into the grave. 

In the book of Mark Jesus warns his followers 3 times that he is going to die. We're going to look at these stories to see how Jesus is preparing his followers for a process of grief. It won't be easy and the acknowledgement that death and loss is coming is the first step in being able to properly grieve.