Cascades Conversations

Church Of The Cascades
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Christianity
  • Weekly

Continuing the conversations beyond Sunday.

  1. 1d ago

    November 8th: Cascades At The Core - Faith Requires Risk!

    Most of us want to know how it ends before we take the first step. Faith doesn’t work that way. Pastor Anthony continues the church’s core-values series with “Faith Requires Risk.” He opens with Katie Davis, an 18-year-old from Nashville who went on a short-term mission trip to Uganda and came home knowing God was calling her back. She didn’t know how the story would unfold. She took the first step, and God met her there. Anthony points out that most of us, himself included, want the five-year plan before we move. From Ephesians 3:20-21, he starts with the foundation: God is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine. Faith is confidence in His ability, not in ours, and it isn’t a blank check or a vending machine. Then comes the step. In Luke 5, Peter, exhausted after a night of catching nothing, says five words that carry the whole message: “But because you say so.” Anthony draws on his own story, from a jail cell at 17 to pastoring a church today, to show that obedience often comes before certainty. He also takes on the harder side. Sometimes obedience doesn’t lead where we expected. Corrie ten Boom’s family hid Jews in the Netherlands and ended up in a concentration camp, in a barracks infested with fleas, where Betsy told her to give thanks in everything. Revival broke out in that barracks, and the guards never came in because of the fleas. Faith isn’t trusting God because we know the outcome. It’s trusting Him because we know His character. The message ends with Ephesians 3:21: we get grace, and God gets the glory. The panel asks why it’s easy to believe God can do the impossible for someone else but hard to trust Him with our own lives, how to tell a step of faith from an unwise risk, what keeps us from taking the next step, and how to keep trusting God’s character when obedience doesn’t turn out the way we hoped. Key topics: Faith requires risk | God is able | “Because you say so” | Ephesians 3:20-21 | Luke 5 | Corrie ten Boom | Faith vs. foolish risk | Trusting God’s character | God gets the glory

    November 8th: Cascades At The Core - Faith Requires Risk!

  2. Nov 7

    November 1st - Cascades At The Core: We before Me.

    You can be politically engaged without being relationally enraged. Pastor Anthony continues the church’s core-values series with the value of unity, “We Before Me.” He starts at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where the most sacred spot in the city is surrounded by division. He asks how something so sacred can be so divided, and why that is also true of the church. His answer comes from Ephesians 4:1-3, Romans 12, John 17 and Ephesians 2: we don’t have to agree on everything to love one another. The message moves through three points. First, we belong to each other. Paul’s picture of one body with many members means we’re family, not consumers asking what the church has for me. Second, we fight for each other, not against each other. Unity isn’t the absence of conflict. It’s the commitment to love through it, and it means knowing the difference between defending the gospel and defending your ego. Third, we witness through loving each other, because Jesus prayed that His people would be one so the world would believe. The panel conversation gets personal. It covers how to put “we before me” into practice when the stakes are high and when they’re small, how to hold your convictions without needing to win, why pastors lay down their own preferences every day, and how to repair things after you’ve been selfish, including at home. Key topics: Unity in the church | We before me | Core values series | Romans 12 | Ephesians 4 | John 17 | Disagreeing without being disagreeable | Church hurt | Humility and reconciliation Church of the Cascades | Bend, Oregon | Values series

    November 1st - Cascades At The Core: We before Me.

  3. Oct 31

    October 25th - Cascades At The Core - Growing Together!

    “I got this” is one of the most dangerous things a Christian can say. Pastor Anthony continues the core-values series with Value #3: growing together. He opens with a story about a bathroom in Israel, where he walked in saying “I got this” and realized he should have asked a few more questions. From there he builds toward the point of Ephesians 4:11-16: Jesus grows us through one another to become more like Him. He walks through three movements in the passage. First, put your faith to work. The Dead Sea has water flowing in and nowhere for it to flow out, so nothing can live there, and a faith that only takes in and never practices what it hears goes stagnant the same way. Second, Jesus is the standard, not the person next to you. That includes learning to say “I don’t know,” and to speak the truth in love instead of unloading your frustration. Third, find your people and play your part. Even the parts of the body nobody notices matter, and you can sit in a full room on Sunday and still be deeply alone. The episode closes with a panel conversation on how to tell whether you’re consuming or practicing, how to measure spiritual maturity without comparing yourself to others or condemning yourself, and practical steps for building real community in the church. Key topics: Growing together | Ephesians 4:11-16 | Putting faith into practice | Jesus as the standard | Truth in love | Finding your people | Spiritual maturity Church of the Cascades | Bend, Oregon | Values series

    October 25th - Cascades At The Core - Growing Together!

  4. Oct 5

    October 4th - Cascades At The Core: GOD CENTERED LIFE!

    Is God at the center of your life, or is He just one of the things you've added to it? Pastor Anthony kicks off the church's annual six-week core-values series with Value #1: a God-centered life. He starts with a thumping washing machine and a bike wheel to make a simple point. A wheel only works when the hub holds the center and every spoke pulls inward. Move something else into the middle, and everything starts to wobble. From there he works through the difference between a God-centered life and a God-added one. He looks at Matthew 22:37, Proverbs 3:5-6, Colossians 1, John 16:33 and Joshua 1:8, and at the prodigal son in Luke 15. Anthony names the things that quietly take the center: success, money, kids, approval, even politics. He explains how drift happens gradually, like a Camaro with one lug nut per wheel that looks fine until it isn't. The heart of it is the difference between working for God and walking with God, and the reminder that the goal is direction, not perfection. The episode closes with a panel Q&A on how to check where your center really is. The panel suggests looking at your checkbook, your calendar, your close friends and your spouse, and talks through the difference between shame and conviction. Communion is next Sunday, and Pastor Michael will preach on loving people first before the church returns to Genesis. Key topics: A God-centered life | Core values series | Idols and drift | Working for God vs. walking with God | Shame vs. conviction | Direction, not perfection Church of the Cascades | Bend, Oregon | Values series

    October 4th - Cascades At The Core: GOD CENTERED LIFE!

  5. Sep 29

    September 6th - Genesis 21 - In The Wilderness

    "You happy?" "No." Two letters that ended a marriage-saving conversation in one word — and started Pastor Anthony's own wilderness story. Twenty years before this sermon, Anthony quit a growing youth ministry, moved in with his in-laws, and started answering customer service calls, all because his wife told him the truth about how miserable she was. That's the doorway into Genesis 21 — Hagar and Ishmael, cast into the desert with nothing but bread and a skin of water, living out consequences they didn't create. Three lessons carry the message. Sometimes the wilderness isn't your choice — Hagar didn't pick this, she's wandering inside decisions Abraham and Sarah made years earlier. Sometimes it is your choice, and Anthony doesn't let himself off the hook there either. But even when Hagar reaches the end of what she can do — laying her son under a bush because she can't watch him die — God hears. Not a polished prayer. Just crying. And when she can't see a way forward, God doesn't create a well out of nothing; he opens her eyes to the one that was already there. The line the whole sermon turns on: you can feel abandoned by people without being abandoned by God. Hagar named him El Roi back in chapter 16 — the God who sees — and Anthony's point is that the same God shows up again in chapter 21, in a different wilderness, because he never left the first time. Key topics: Wilderness you didn't choose vs. wilderness you did | Why God hears messy, unpolished prayers | Provision that's already there before you see it | El Roi — the God who sees, twice in the same story | Consequences vs. condemnation — grace that doesn't erase what came before

    September 6th - Genesis 21 - In The Wilderness

  6. Sep 3

    August 30th - Genesis 20: Why Do I Keep Doing This?!

    Same wife. Same lie. Same king problem. Just a few chapters later — and Abraham should absolutely know better by now. Pastor Anthony opens with a golf illustration that goes exactly how you'd expect — a great range session, a confident walk to the first tee, and then Shank City, two fairways over, every single time. Genesis 20 is the spiritual version of that: Abraham, 20 years into walking with God, having personally experienced God's provision and covenant, pulls the exact same "she's my sister" move he pulled back in Genesis 12. Same fear. Different king. Anthony doesn't let himself or the room off the hook — this is Romans 7 in real time, the thing Paul himself couldn't fully explain about his own recurring sin. Three observations carry the message. Recurring sin usually starts with lies we tell ourselves before anything's even happened — Abraham decided he'd be killed before anyone threatened him. It gets easier to justify the longer we do it — "technically, she is my sister" is the sound of rationalization dressed up as honesty. And it never stays contained to just us — an entire household gets caught in the fallout of Abraham's fear, a pattern Anthony makes personal with his own story of a wake-up call as a teenager. The turn is the whole point: Abraham messes up again, and God still uses him, still heals through him, still calls him back. Grace doesn't mean sin doesn't matter — it means sin doesn't get the final word. The path out isn't willpower or hiding it better. It's surrendering what keeps feeding it — confession first, then replacing the old response with a new one. Key topics: Why we repeat sins we already know are destructive | Catastrophizing and the lies we tell ourselves before anything happens | How rationalization ("technically...") keeps sin alive | Why private sin never stays private | Confession and replacing the pattern, not just resisting it Church of the Cascades | Bend, Oregon | Genesis series

    August 30th - Genesis 20: Why Do I Keep Doing This?!

  7. Aug 19

    August 16th - Genesis 17 - He Kept His End Of The Deal

    Genesis 17 opens 25 years after God first called Abraham — he's 99, Sarah's 90, and everything about their situation says this isn't happening. God shows up anyway, introduces himself as El Shaddai (God Almighty), and does something unexpected: he changes Abraham's name before the promise is even visible. Exalted father becomes father of many nations — a name attached to a son Abraham can't yet see. Pastor Michael walks through what the covenant actually asks of Abraham (circumcision — a response to grace, never a way to earn it), and traces the same shift forward through Jeremiah's promise of a new heart, all the way to Jesus at the table saying "this is the new covenant in my blood." The sermon's whole engine is the gap between the deal Michael made his sister keep as a kid and the deal God makes with us: we haven't kept our end. He kept his anyway. Three truths anchor the message: God is faithful even when the waiting is long. God wants your heart, not just your religion. And our hope was never in keeping our end of the bargain — it's in Christ, who kept his. Anthony and Jackson close things out talking honestly about what it actually looks like to wait on God's timeline instead of manufacturing your own Ishmael. Key topics: El Shaddai and the name change before the promise | Circumcision as response, not payment | God's silence isn't God's absence | Contract vs. covenant | Why our hope rests in what Christ kept, not what we keep Church of the Cascades | Bend, Oregon | Genesis series

    August 16th - Genesis 17 - He Kept His End Of The Deal

  8. Aug 7

    August 2nd - Genesis 14 - The Wrong King

    God gives you the victory. Then someone shows up wanting their name on it. Genesis 14 reads like a war epic — nine kings, a kidnapping, a night raid, tar pits — but Pastor Anthony uses it to ask a much quieter question: what happens to your heart the moment after you win? Opening with Spurgeon's line that God can scarcely trust us with victory before we start "fingering it with our own hands," Anthony walks through four lessons, two from the battle and two from what comes after. Lot drifts into Sodom one tent peg at a time — proof that "direction, not intention, determines your destination." Abraham goes after him anyway, not to lecture him but to rescue him, because private preparation produces public power and grace goes after people who made their own mess. Then, after the victory, two kings meet Abraham in the same valley: Melchizedek, who reminds him God gets the credit, and the king of Sodom, who tries to attach strings to the win. Abraham's refusal — not even a thread, not even a sandal strap — becomes one of the clearest pictures of integrity in the Old Testament, and Anthony ties the whole chapter straight to the cross, where Jesus does for us exactly what Abraham did for Lot. Anthony and Jackson close things out from the church's brand-new amphitheater, unpacking how small compromises become major captivity, why idolatry is sneaky rather than sudden, and the tension between honest self-examination and living in denial. Key topics: Direction vs. intention — how drift happens one degree at a time | Private preparation, public power | Melchizedek as a foreshadowing of Christ | Worship as the answer to pride after a win | Refusing to let "the wrong king" take credit for God's work Church of the Cascades | Bend, Oregon | Genesis series

    August 2nd - Genesis 14 - The Wrong King
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Continuing the conversations beyond Sunday.

Information

  • Creator
    Church Of The Cascades
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Church Of The Cascades
  • Show Website
    Cascades Conversations