Cascade Church Portland

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16   This one Bible verse filled me with so much hope and so much dread early on in my faith.  The hope was linked to the feeling that my prayers could be powerful and effective. Power and effect meant that I would have the ability to enact real positive change in the world. Cancer could be miraculously healed, relationships could be restored and pain could be avoided if I could unlock this whole "righteous" conundrum.  And that's where the dread came into the picture. There's a terrifying lack of specificity to being "righteous". What was I doing or not doing that could compromise this identification? Had I lied too often? Had I neglected to serve and help enough people? I was pretty sure I was a devout person that loved God, but the elevation to being righteous always felt just out of reach.  Honestly, I thought that if you had ever considered yo

When I was growing up yoga and voodoo were synonymous.  Anything Eastern was to be mistrusted  and it was a way that the devil could infiltrate your soul.  While that language sounds over the top, I can promise you that is a direct quote.  Where does this kind of fear come from? Why would people in relationship with the One God of all people be scared of other religious practices? If your faith requires isolation to be safe, then what kind of faith do you really have?  This isn't to say that I think that every idea is neutral or beneficial. I think there are very real dangerous thoughts that lead to all kinds of very real dangerous practices. The way that I know these ideas are dangerous is because we've seen the harm they've created in the world.  The key difference was that the mistrust of Eastern practices and ideas I was exposed to was rooted in ignorance. Could you really say that yoga and meditation has created harm in our world? This is the same culture that taught me to consume products at an unsu

I was recently reading an article about stand-up comedians who were processing jokes they told early in their career that they now regretted.  Jokes have been a powerful tool for perpetuating harmful thoughts and ideas about people in our world. A joke allows you to share offensive stereotypes without taking any accountability. The person who is offended is the one who needs to "lighten up" and "take a joke". The typical response is to laugh or shake your head disapprovingly with a smirk.  I find articles like these interesting because even though there aren't a lot of pure apologies (a lot of justifying and caveating instead) there is an awareness that we change over time. I actually think Christianity should be leading the charge in these kinds of conversations. We're a community with a specific word and theology for changing ideas and behavior.  Repentance is one of my favorite phrases. It literally means to turn around and go the other way. It's already assumed that there will be times when we gain new

In the midst of this message series I decided to explore a new prayer practice (which is also the subject of our new Sunday morning class). I've been using a drawing workbook (found here) as the centering activity for my prayer time.  Praying through drawing and art isn't something that I would have assumed I would ever do. In our culture of excellence and specialization we rarely pursue activities we don't demonstrate skill in. Drawing only has value if you can utilize it for financial gain, and I have never demonstrated even the tiniest skill in drawing.  But what if the value is found in letting new activities bring to surface beliefs about God, self and the world around you that you couldn't have accessed otherwise? I have been finding such freedom in activities that aren't centered on productivity. It breaks the spell of viewing myself only as a commodity that needs to perform tasks to have value.  I'm the same person who turned my nose up at the adult coloring books trend as a colossal waste of time.

Prayer is weird.  I've heard enough stories about voices, visions, physical sensations and trances to know that prayer creates some real oddities. Even though I like to think of myself as a person who can accept the testimony of others while reserving judgement, I rarely do a good job of it. I think I know why. There was a time in my life where people sharing spiritual experiences was an exercise in asserting spiritual dominance. Had a crazy vision of swans swimming in the ocean and delivering fish to babies? You were a present day Joseph! You might as well get outfitted for that technicolor dream coat.  The voice of God told you personally to go tell that stranger that you've seen them surrounded by an orange light? You're probably the next great prophet, in the lineage of Elijah and Elisha.  These stories were shared at times with me to highlight a spiritual superiority that they had. It caused me to doubt my own relationship with God and deeply desire some kind spirituality oddity to call my own. I wa

Often when people talk about prayer they say that it "just isn't working anymore." We want to take a look at what "working" means and ways that we can confuse the form and function of prayer. This is a discussion about the ways that prayer can be a space for dreams, despair, remembrance and surrender. 

Prayer used to be easy.  I can remember how quickly and easy conversations with God used to come. As a child I would talk to God every night as I fell asleep. I would climb up into my treehouse and talk to God. I would talk to God while I played with my G.I. Joe action figures or while I rode my bike around the driveway.  I would talk to God about my day at school. I would talk to God about what I hoped being a grown-up would look like. I would pray for my dogs or I would ask God to help me find a toy that I had lost. As the youngest child in my family by 8 years, God was like my invisible friend. God was my constant companion who would always offer an open ear for whatever felt significant to me.  Over the years everything has become a lot more challenging. I've prayed fervently for people in dire situations to be healed on mission trips that never happened. I've prayed for friends and family members who never recovered. I've prayed for signs and clear directions that have never come.  The simplicity of

When I was 18 years old my favorite activity was to go buy clothes at thrift stores. Some of my favorites included; A shirt for "Ben Toilet Rentals" that had a bear and an outhouse on it (since it wasn't "Ben's" I liked to imagine there was a man somewhere named Ben Toilet) A shirt that had iron-on felt letters that read "I'm Going to be a Daddy" (I wore this shirt for my eldest son's birth) A shirt with several quilt pieces that read "The One Who Dies With the Most Fabric Wins" I also found a shirt that read "Straight Pride" and had the classic male and female silhouettes from restroom signs holding hands. I wore it several times until an older friend told me to stop. I couldn't see what the problem was. The LGBTQ+ community could be proud of their sexual orientation, so why couldn't I be proud of mine? He told me that being in the majority meant that you don't go around flaunting it. This was new information for me and it started down a very slow path of wrestling with the explicit teaching from my yout

Last week I sent out this newsletter with a "your" where a "you're" should be.  This is embarrassing, specifically because I put some real effort into these newsletters. I come up with the ideas, type it out, re-read and edit. There are times when I start with a premise that really captures what I'm trying to communicate and there are times I really stink up the joint.  Now, imagine you have something that you've written, you care about and it starts to take on a life of it's own. Imagine people take a work memo or letter you wrote and break it down into chapters and verses. Imagine they start quoting it and start putting sections of what you wrote on coffee mugs, t-shirts and inspirational posters. That may feel amazing, but it may also fill you with a deep sense of dread. That level of scrutiny could take some of your thoughts completely out of context. Even within this email so far you could quote me as saying; "I really stink up the joint"      - 1 Kurt 3:6 Ultimately this doesn't mean that we don't

This Sunday is the Super Bowl and I can really enjoy a game where I don't care about the two teams playing. I'm just here for the commercials, halftime show and the food! If your watching the game with a lifetime of fandom for one of the teams playing it will likely be much different. You'll likely view every penalty against your team as a gross violation of justice. Fans of two opposing teams can watch the same play and have vehemently different interpretations of what happened, usually through the lens of their fandom.  The energy and anxiety levels of a person just watching the game for the love of the sport is hopefully more balanced and fair. They don't have the same lenses impacting their version of events and can really just celebrate the quality of the game and the impressive feats of any player. There's no reason to feel defeated by a great play by the opposition, because there is no opposition.  I wish I could say that this kind of anxious or defensive participation was just limited to sports. Sa

When George Lucas first made and released Star Wars in 1977 it was a huge success, far beyond what anybody could have envisioned. It soon became apparent that a second film would need to build upon this success. In interviews that George Lucas gave around the time of releasing The Empire Strikes Back he stated that he actually had a trilogy of trilogies already created. Around this same time "Episode IV" was officially added to "A New Hope".   There's something that really captures our imaginations about someone creating a huge epic tale that we've only seen a part of. Game of Thrones and Lost are more recent examples of sprawling epics where we start to ask where things are heading and take some solace in the idea that the full story has already been completed.  I wish I could say that was true for Cascade when the church got started in June of 2015.  We didn't have a clear picture of where the church would be in 3 months, much less 3 years. There were key values that drove the creation of the church that

I grew up with a mother who was an adult Sunday School teacher at the church we attended.  For some of you, this may not seem like anything worth mentioning. What's the big deal about someone volunteering their time at a faith community to share a gift they have? Within Christian culture in the US some hold that only men should be allowed to teach at a church. This isn't a widely held teaching of the Bible. There are many stories of women teaching and leading throughout the Bible. The belief comes directly from some of Paul's writings (and I would note that it dovetails nicely with patriarchal society norms)  So, my Mom would share stories of men walking into the class and walking out when she got up to teach. I was baffled by this because of the unique view I had into her preparation and giftedness. My Mom woke up every morning and had time studying the Bible with her commentaries. She put countless hours into prayer, study and developing what she was going to teach.  How is it that because of anatomy my

Whooooooooo's ready for a thought experiment!?!? Ok, so imagine you are watching Wheel of Fortune and after a contestant solves one of the puzzles Pat Sajak tells them they are incorrect even though the answer appears obviously correct.  He then tells them that while the answer was correct, they forgot to ring the buzzer and frame the answer as a question.  Now, most of us would assume this is a classic Sajak and Trabek Face/Off situation, but the rest of us would lead a forceful revolt with pitchforks and flame at Stage 11 of Sony Picture Studios. The rules of Jeopardy cannot be allowed to govern the world of Wheel of Fortune! These are two separate realities and you destroy the fabric of the known universe when you mix the two!! In the words of the immortal bards The Offspring, you have to keep them separated.  In a much more subtle way this misapplication of the rules is how many of us were given the Bible. We're imposing the rules of Jeopardy on Wheel of Fortune, so to speak.  There were common assumpt

Christians have had a complicated relationship with Paul and his writings. It’s amazing to think about the journey of a man who went from attacking followers of Jesus to becoming one of the heroes of the faith. It’s rare that people change that much in the course of their life. But there are also parts of his writings that have been used to support patriarchy and homophobia. We think it would be well worth our time to re-examine Paul and his role in Christian thought and practice. It might be possible that understanding context can shift how we view him and give us fresh eyes on his writings.

Take a listen to Michelle Lang sharing her message with Cascade about creation, worth and all the potential within you!