Our Worship Style

OUR WORSHIP AT CASCADE COVENANT
Our prayer is that our Sunday morning worship service will help people encounter the living God in an authentic way. Our hope is that our corporate worship will be:

• A place to begin – for spiritual seekers
• A place to become – for people who are seeking spiritual growth 
• A place to belong – as people are welcomed to CCC
• A place to bring along – as people invite their friends to join us

Our Sunday morning worship service is designed to help the newcomer feel relaxed so they can “check things out.” We don’t want people worried about being pressured or embarrassed. We don’t point people out or ask them to say anything in front of everyone.

We want to welcome people who are at various places in their spiritual life. We want to help the spiritual skeptic or seeker hear the message of life in Jesus Christ in a way that is clear, gracious and respectful. We also want to help the Christian believer worship God as they move towards stronger maturity and growth in their walk with Christ. Each service includes some time of singing together and a teaching message from the Bible. The message is designed to give us practical assistance as we explore how our faith in Christ relates to our everyday life.

WHAT OUR WORSHIP LOOKS LIKE

• Our service usually goes about 70 minutes
• The atmosphere is pretty casual. There is no dress code!
• We like to sing! We usually have a 6-8 person worship team leading us each Sunday.  
• We usually have a teaching message from the Bible from our pastor which goes for about 30 minutes.
• Other components to our service might be special music shared by an individual or group, responsive readings, dramas, prayer, people sharing about their life/ministry/faith and brief announcements about CCC events.
• We typically share in communion on the first Sunday of each month.
• Our morning attendance that combines both services and our kids groups is usually around 425+
   

SOME THOUGHTS ON WORSHIP
Worship is a powerful word. It is a powerful concept to consider worshipping anything. Worship can be understood as a response involving our praise, obedience, commitment, and trust. In a sense, to worship God is to surrender to Him. Worship involves our mind, emotions and our will. Worship is inevitable. We all give ourselves to something or someone. Who or what we worship can change during our lives. As we worship God, He changes our life! 

Ultimately, we worship God because of who God is. We also worship Him because of what he has done, is doing and will do. Our living God is an awesome God who is worthy of our deepest devotion and highest praise. God offers us the gift of himself and his incredible love and grace! He has also called us to worship Him. God wants us to worship Him with clear minds and open hearts. In worship we give God all that we are because of all God is and all he has done. Spiritual worship is a response that involves love, joy, understanding, humility, obedience and awe. We can worship God individually anytime and anywhere. There is also a dynamic of corporate worship that can be invaluable to us. 

“Worship the Lord with me; Let us exalt his name together.” (Psalm 34:3)

Our corporate worship can help us develop a lifestyle of worship. Worship becomes more than a Sunday event. Our Sunday worship with others can help us develop a rhythm in our lives where we connect with God and grow in our walk with him in a powerful way.

“Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God. Worship is the time and place that we assign for deliberate attentiveness to God – not because he’s confined to time and place but because our self-importance is so insidiously relentless that if we don’t deliberately interrupt ourselves regularly, we have no chance of attending to him at all at other times and in other places.” (From “Leap Over the Wall ” by Eugene Peterson)

"So what happens when you worship the creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished by the Lamb who was slain? Worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover what it means to be fully alive."

(From N.T. Wright in "Simply Christian"

A Word About Our Service:

We have a service style that is primarily contemporary in style with some intentional touches of  our traditional heritage. Is there a song that’s not your cup of worship tea? Use that time to pray, to meditate on the words,  or to thank God that the song is blessing others in our church family. If there is music from your  past worship traditions that you miss, we encourage you to incorporate those favorites into your personal worship during the week through some of the many music resources widely available today.

Communion at CCC:

At CCC we have communion as part of our worship service about twice a month. You don’t have to be a member of CCC to participate. We view this as the Lord’s Table, not the table of our church. Participation is available to everyone who trusts in Jesus Christ as his or her Lord and Savior. You can receive communion during out worship as a way to affirm your faith in Jesus Christ and worship Him. At the same time, we want people to feel very free to not take the bread and the cup. Every week there are people at CCC who are spiritually exploring and who have not begun a relationship with Christ. If this describes you please do not feel any pressure to take the bread and the cup. We are honored you are with us and we hope you will sense God’s love here. Again, communion is a way for people to affirm their faith in Christ and if this is not where you are in your life, it would be better to not participate than to take communion in an inauthentic way.

We invite people to use this time around the Lord’s Table for worship, confession, prayer, reflection, and reading the scriptures. In communion we remember and celebrate the achievement of Jesus Christ on the cross where he died for ours sins. (I Peter 3:18) On the cross Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The victory of God on the cross is at the center of our life and faith. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the center point upon which world history turns. In communion we remember and celebrate God’s grace and forgiveness.  Parents are encouraged to talk about communion with their children and then decide when they feel their child is ready to participate. You are invited to talk with any of our staff or leaders if you have questions about communion.

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” I Peter 2:24

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Romans 5:1-2