Jesus-Centered
Everything we do is centred around Jesus Christ. We believe God's son who took on flesh to be with us, taught us to love God & one another and died for our sins on a cross (more on this in our “Statement of Faith”). We believe that he is inviting all to follow him into his new way of life where He is making all things new.
Renewal
We believe God is working to renew or transform us into the image of His Son Jesus. Spiritual renewal is intended to touch every aspect of our lives and our community’s life. Individually, God desires to transform our thoughts, attitudes, words, actions to be more like Jesus. Corporately, God’s work within us will result in all of us fully expressing our gifts to serve God and those around us.
The Bible and Holy Spirit
We believe that two of the primary ways God speaks is through the Bible and His Holy Spirit.
We believe that the Bible is the authoritative book that guides our community. Because of this, we commit to learning from the teachings of the Bible every Sunday and encourage all community members to actively engage with it in their lives.
As the Holy Spirit was essential in the inspiration of the Bible, so too the Holy Spirit is essential in helping us, individually and corporately, to apply the Bible, to grow in love for God and one another, to worship and more. It is this work of the Holy Spirit that enables the Bible to bring freedom rather than bondage in legalism. Therefore, as a community, we seek to develop an intimate knowledge of both the Bible and the Holy Spirit.
Baptism and Communion
We believe that Jesus has given two ordinances to the church: baptism and communion.
In Baptism, an individual gives testimony of having personally accepted Christ by faith and of being united with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. This is open to anyone who has accepted Jesus as their Lord and wants to publicly declare that faith by being immersed in water as a symbol of the new life they have found in Jesus.
ECC celebrates Communion, known also as the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist, weekly as a central part of our Sunday worship. Communion on Sunday mornings is overseen by the leadership team but can be led by anyone at any time during the week in formal or informal gatherings.
At ECC, Communion is a representative meal. Its primary purpose is to remember and respond to Jesus and His death. We remember Jesus’s sacrificial death on a cross by eating bread, a tangible reminder of Christ's body broken for us, and drinking juice, a tangible reminder of Christ’s blood shed for us. In Communion, we, in unity with the world-wide church, respond to Jesus by thanking him, trusting him and proclaiming that He has forgiven our sins. We are also responding in hopefulness of what He is still doing in our lives today.
Because Communion is an act of remembering and responding to Jesus, we invite all who wish to participate to consider their response to Jesus and come to him with reverence and trust. All those who are not in a place of trusting Jesus are welcome to pass the elements by.
Children are welcome to take part in Communion with the blessing of their Christian parents. When children join in the act of Communion (much like Jewish children have an actual role in the Passover meal), they join in the wonder of what the bread and the juice represent, at their level of understanding. When parents explain the importance of this act, in age-appropriate words, this can be a very meaningful time for both children and parent/s. Participating in Communion reaffirms children’s inclusion in the community.