When we come home after a long journey away, what we perhaps desire most is a bath and a meal. Baptism is our Christian bath representing our cleansing welcome home from ‘the far country', after running from our heavenly Father's house as guilty sinners. The Lord's Supper, Communion or the Eucharist is our meal-‘the body of Christ given for us, his blood shed for us' that symbolizes our belonging to the 'God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.'  These two sacraments form the visible expressions of God's invisible grace to us in Christ.

Baptisms at ECC are joyous and yet serious affairs. They are a time of friends and family to witness one's identification with Christ in which we are united to Christ and to his people; buried with him in his death and share in his resurrection. It's a sign of death to our old selves, but also of new life and a renewal in His Spirit. Baptism signifies not only individual renewal, but we're identified with God's new humanity, the body of Christ-a 'new creation.'

Communion too, is both a sober and joyful celebration, in which we ‘proclaim the Lord's death until he comes' and signifies our participation in his life (1Corinthians 10.16).  Its a time in which we 'feed on Christ in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving' as individuals, yet we do so together, for we are all members of His one body represented by the one loaf of bread.  The  bread and the cup indeed are 'the gifts of God for the people of God'!