Does Your Church Need A Welcome Brochure? The Hard Truth

If you’re looking at getting new signs or updating your building, don’t miss this opportunity to update your branding as well! It’s one thing for a sign to look nice and be functional, but branding and design has the power to do much more than just help people find the nursery. Every bulletin, banner, and coffee cup is an opportunity to shape the culture of your church through intentional, vision-aligned branding that stands the test of time. If that’s your ultimate goal, then updating your signs without rebranding first would be a massive waste of time and money! Schedule a time to talk and I’ll walk you through what a brand refresh could look like, so you don’t have to re-do your signs AGAIN in a couple of years.

For way-finding signage, there are three critical things to get right with typography: Size, Style, and Grouping. To figure out how big the font size should be on your signs, think about the furthest possible viewing distance for that sign. Will visitors be seeing it up close every time, or is it at the end of a hallway? A general rule of thumb is that the main headings on the sign should be legible from 40ft away for someone with good eyesight. This applies mostly to directional signage, and isn’t necessary for things like room labels. Now on to font style. Legibility is absolutely critical for way-finding, so you want to choose a brand-aligned font that is easy to read. For the thickness or weight of the text, lean bolder rather than lighter. In this example, we’re using Larken, the main brand typeface, for the headings. The secondary typeface, Plus Jakarta Sans, was better suited for the other information and is more legible at small sizes. Finally, consider the grouping of information and arrows in your layout. You want to make sure that you have grouped relevant information together in a way that will quickly make sense to someone who is late for Sunday School!

Let's say your brand’s hero color was a bright red. Your wayfinding signs should be red to be on-brand, right? Not so fast! Would you put a bright red couch in your living room? What about multiple bright red paintings throughout your home? Again, probably not. For environmental signage and way-finding, we have to think more like interior designers and accessibility experts than graphic designers. Earlier in the rebrand process, we had developed a brand color palette for this particular church with a dark charcoal color we called “Forge Black.” Using this darker, more neutral color as the main background was a good choice for three reasons: It wouldn’t clash with the paint, flooring, and other interior colors of the building. It wouldn’t show dirt as easily as a lighter color. It would allow for the most legibility and contrast for the text. As you can see, we did bring in the red hero color, but only in a very intentional, minimalist way. Even the logo on the signs was intentionally subdued and understated to make room for more important information, like “¿donde esta el baño?”

I recently helped a church in Kansas City rebrand, and this project took much longer than we anticipated! This church needed collateral designed in preparation for their official launch of the new identity. Collateral like wayfinding signs, and A LOT OF THEM. 85 signs, to be exact. If you have a church building, chances are you have these! Way-finding signs are the built-in guide to your building, both for first-time visitors and those forgetful members who could probably get lost in their own house (you know who I’m talking about). Here’s the thing: there are some HUGE blunders that are easy to make with this type of signage. So, to save you from those, I thought I would show the design process I went through with this Kansas City church and their way-finding signs. In design, way-finding falls under the category of what we call “environmental design.” Most of these signs were going to be a part of the building, so we had to treat them more like a piece of furniture than a graphic or a poster. I'll be going over each one of these in future posts, where we'll explore what that looks like through two key considerations: Color and Typography. Stay tuned!

As I’ve continued to go deeper into the branding and design industry, I’ve encountered something that is probably not just a hang-up for me, but for a lot of pastors and churches. If you do any research on marketing and branding, you’ll very quickly find lots of resources that are very focused on businesses. For example: “Speak to your ideal customer.” “Drive revenue with these marketing tips” “Create a story that makes customers keep coming back” The customer-centric, profit-driven approach can absolutely work for businesses, but for me, I’ve never felt like it applied well to the church. On one hand, you’re leading a congregation of believers who need to feel united around your vision. They need clarity, language, and visual cues that reinforce who you are as a church and where you’re going. When done well, branding can give your people something to rally around—a shared identity that goes deeper than a logo and helps every member see their role in the mission. But unlike a business, you’re not just trying to “sell” something to a customer. You’re also extending an open invitation to your community. These people are skeptics, seekers, and those who may not understand what your church is really about. For them, branding becomes a bridge. It’s the first impression that points them to Jesus Christ and communicates: This is a place for you. It signals your heart, your values, and the kind of welcome they can expect before they ever set foot inside. Where most churches struggle is trying to speak to both groups at the same time without a clear strategy. The result is confusion, inconsistency, and branding that unintentionally speaks more to insiders than outsiders… or vice versa. The approach I’ve developed in response to this problem is to make Christ the cornerstone of your brand. This seems obvious, but it’s truly countercultural when you compare it to how most agencies and designers work. I believe that a kingdom-first, vision-driven brand matters. It helps you communicate so your congregation is aligned and your community is invited, without compromise on either front.

If you’re one of many (or even a few) churches in your area, branding that stands out should be at the top of your mind. A lot of pastors feel guilty upping their branding game because of their kingdom mindset. “We don’t want to just attract people from other churches because of our aesthetic.” That’s a logical concern, but it’s wrong. People from the harvest (the lost, those who aren’t attending church) are looking at your aesthetics too. When they see a church that looks and sounds the same as every other church in the community, what do you think they’re going to do? They're going to dismiss you. But what happens if you have a logo breaks the mold of the “average” church logo? What if you choose your colors and a tone of voice don’t play it safe like everyone else? You short circuit that pattern recognition many people have for churches. In the sales world they call this a “pattern interrupt.” Violate people’s expectations in a positive way (positive is key here), and you’ll disarm them, making them open to hearing the life changing news of the gospel. I want to be very clear, I’m talking about your church branding and core communications. Here’s what I’m NOT advocating your church look like on a Sunday morning. This church looked different by removing everything that would make them look Christian and simultaneously infringed on a dozen trademarks. Don’t do that! But, here’s my final thought: You’re not being inauthentic by branding yourself as different from others. You ARE different from others. God is doing a unique thing in and through your congregation. So capitalize on that!

How do you describe and brand your church without scaring visitors away or pretending to be something you’re not? Pastors will try, and most of the time the result is something like “We’re a church for everyone.” Or in more words, “We’re a welcoming community of people who love God and want to see the gospel reach every nation.” That’s great - so is every other Protestant church! This is a mistake I see pastors making all the time with their distinctives - stop it! What church leaders are trying to communicate (most of the time) is something like “we won’t turn you away because you’re different,” or “we’re welcoming and not judgmental.” But being hospitable and welcoming are just general marks of a Christian community, not distinctives. It’s great that you can say those things about your church, but they’re not something your congregation will rally around. Those things don’t give people a sense of unique belonging or identity, because they describe every other church. When you say, “We’re a church for everyone,” what you’re actually saying is, “We don’t know who we are.” I can hear some of you thinking “But we’re just your average church. The only thing distinctive about us is our street address!” I’m not saying you should pretend to be something you’re not. And I’m also not saying that every church should be trying to put their own spin on the gospel. Here’s my point: God is uniquely using your church to reach a specific group of people who are, by definition, not “everyone.” Rather than blurring the edges of that calling to be more inclusive or not scare people away, lean into it! Be known for your distinct church identity!

Whether you visit a Presbyterian church in Albany or a Baptist church in Santa Fe, there’s one thing you can always expect to find, one common element of our worship, one universal truth that unites us all… The worship bulletin. …and hopefully the gospel, but my point is that worship bulletins are basically ubiquitous in American Protestant churches. “You can’t move the announcements to page 3, it’s in the bylaws!” Joking aside, there’s something about worship bulletins that I want to touch on today, which could be the difference between visitors coming back to your church or looking elsewhere. That thing is what I’m calling a “handout half-life.” This is referring to the amount of time a handout survives before it’s tossed in the trash. Bulletins have an exceptionally long half-life, so they require special attention. I’ve never conducted a formal study on this (why would you?) but if you're like most churches, your bulletin is the one thing that visitors spend the most time staring at and interacting with (by a long shot). Think about it: They are handed one when they walk in the door. They take it with them to their seat. They look at it during announcements. They write on it or fiddle with it during the sermon. They take it home with them after the service, or at least to their car. Your church bulletin should be designed with this long half-life in mind. Does your bulletin look like something visitors will want to keep on their kitchen table and review later in the week, or does it look like it a piece of garbage? Short answer: Without an outside designer perspective, probably the latter.

When it comes to church branding, I try my hardest to take an wholistic approach. Why? Because I believe that everything in your church - all the way down to your coffee cups - can be used to point people to Christ. Wayfinding signage is a part of this wholistic approach, and it’s way more important than you might think. Put yourself in a visitor’s shoes for a moment. This is your first time at the church on a Sunday morning and you brought your young family with you. People are beginning to stream into the sanctuary, and you’re still looking for the nursery. The number of people in the hall dwindles, as you scan for someone to ask for directions. There’s nothing worse than being confused or lost on your first visit to a church! Tend your brand and help visitors feel welcome in your church through design.