14/09/2026
✨ A new name, and an old idea
You may have noticed something new out the front. Our sign now reads Echunga Family Church.
In one sense a name is not that important. A church is not made by what is painted on its sign, but by what happens among the people inside it and whether Christ is honoured there.
But we chose this one carefully, because family is not a marketing word. It is one of Scripture's central pictures of the church. Paul tells the Ephesians they are no longer foreigners and strangers but members of God's household. Jesus, looking around at the ordinary people seated in front of him, said that whoever does the will of God is his brother and sister and mother.
None of us earns a place in that family. God welcomes us into it through Jesus, as sons and daughters, by grace rather than by merit or background. That is why the door stays open, and why the people we sit beside on a Sunday are not simply a congregation we have joined but kin we have been given.
🌿 Our new logo says the same thing in picture form. Its outline is the shape of our own front door, the one that has been welcoming people in for 144 years (170 years in total if you add the first building!). Inside it are the hills and fields of this district, with a path running through them toward the cross at the centre, under a rising sun. A way home, for anyone who will walk it.
One thing worth saying plainly: nothing else has changed. We remain part of the Uniting Church in Australia and of Generate Presbytery, in the same building, with the same people, at the same time each Sunday. The conversation began at our leaders' retreat in January and was worked through with Council and the congregation before anything was settled. Thank you to all who shared their thoughts, and to Jude and those who got the signage in place.
🕙 Sundays, 10am. You would be welcome.
