More on Echo

What is Echo?
Echo is a community of people learning what it means to become followers of Christ together and be part of God’s mission on the earth.

What makes Echo a community?
In Echo we consider relationship with one another as the bedrock of our community.  We meet regularly in each other’s homes to eat together, and see hospitality as one of the key elements of cultivating those relationships. The context of these meals is inclusive to all, personal, and flowing out of our everyday rhythm of life.  Our aim is that these are more than a dinner party with friends. Bread and wine are taken at each meal as a way of acknowledging that we as individuals and as a group are deeply connected with and flow out of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus

How else does Echo gather?
Every few weeks we get together to worship and explore God’s word. Our desire is that worshipping God is inclusive (not isolating to newcomers), honest (that our lives reflect our words), creative (using our own language/music/art as well as others), God-centred (drawing us to focus on Him) and communal. We want our worship to create an atmosphere of encouragement and well as challenge to live our lives more fully for God.  In terms of our overall spiritual formation we see worship as a way of engaging our hearts with Gods story, drawing us into fullness of life in Him.

What parts of God’s story have you been looking at?
Much of the biblical focus of Echo has been centred on the life and message of Jesus.  To provide some background to this we looked at God’s story throughout scripture as we recognised that Jesus’ life and our lives are in the context of this narrative.  We have looked at the message of Christ as declared in his inaugural speech in Luke 4 and at some of the statements Jesus made about himself in John’s gospel; “I am the Light of the World”; “I am the Good Shepherd” etc.  More recently our focus has been on the Kingdom of God and we have discussed the various metaphors Christ uses about the Kingdom.  With all of our exploration of scripture our aim has not been to create intellectual discussion but to engage vulnerably and ask ourselves what this message means for us as individuals and as a community.

And how is Echo part of God’s mission?
We recognise that Echo does not exist solely for those who are part of the core community and who come to the gatherings.  We believe that God has blessed us that we might be a blessing to others and our heart is to join with God’s ongoing mission and see His Kingdom come on the earth.  In Echo we recognise that our homes, friendships, work places, sports teams and other communities are all spheres where God has placed us and called us to be good news.  We sense that as a community we have a responsibility to join in the mission of Jesus in Edinburgh and we purpose to discover together what our unique contribution is.

It sounds a bit like cell, is that the idea?
There are some differences between Echo and a regular cell group.  When Echo began in 2006 there was a desire amongst us that the gathering of community would flow naturally with the rest of life.  We did not want to create a focus on a meeting or service but wanted to become an intentional community sharing life and following Christ together.  There is lots of space between our organised gatherings to allow things to develop organically and there isn’t a cap on the number of people that can join echo.

So where is Echo going?
We do not have a fixed outcome in mind, but we do want to explore how we can outwork the core values of CCE through different expressions of church in future.  There is a drift away from institutionalism in our society, and this has affected churches.  We remain convinced that intentionally forming a Christ centred community and engaging with God’s mission is vital, and we are embarking on a journey to live that out here in Edinburgh.