Don’t Rebrand if Your Church Has One Thing… (Do This Instead)

rebrand refresh consistency
Braden East

I recently reconnected with a distant cousin who was just starting a new role as a Worship Pastor in Texas.

He had been immediately tasked with redesigning the church bulletin and some other collateral - a classic “worship-leader-becomes-graphic-designer” scenario.

But he found something totally unexpected. More on that in a minute.

See, my cousin had started with an audit of the church bulletin. It was bad. I’m talking 1990s clip-art, 10 different fonts, and a migraine-inducing layout.

Then he looked at the rest of the campus. Signage looked different in every hallway, and anything designed had that general “patched together” kind of vibe. The pastors all knew this stuff needed a redesign.

The church had a logo people had grown to love and brand equity that was worth preserving. But without clear guidelines in place, things had slipped into visual inconsistency - badly.

So, I asked them a simple question:

“Have you thought about brand guidelines?”

Their response?

“No, but now we’re interested!”

Until that moment, they had been focusing on the immediate problems that were painful, but they were treating the symptoms, not the disease.

I explained to them how a brand refresh often benefits churches in their exact position.

When you refresh your branding and put together brand guidelines, you’re not looking to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch. Instead, the goal is to bring clarity and consistency to what you already have. This is about making sure everything from bulletins to digital media feel like it belongs to the same church family.

A brand audit and fresh set of guidelines can be perfect for maintaining the identity people recognize while elevating your overall quality and professionalism of communication.

Neither my cousin nor I had expected this, but the church hired me on the spot, and we’re getting to work together to unify and future-proof their church branding.

True story!

If that’s something you’re thinking about for your brand, book a call with me and we can talk more about how to represent the work God is doing in the life of your church.


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Refresh vs Rebrand, Which is Right for Your Church?
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“All our digital and print stuff looks inconsistent, but I don’t know where to start fixing it.” “Our logo is good, but the rest of our branding is a mess!” Sound familiar? I’ve had more and more churches lately tell me this story. If that’s you, then the odds are you don’t need a full rebrand. Normally, I see rebrands working for churches who are in a pivotal moment - one that’s going to shape the identity of their congregation for a long time. Think about your church brand like a house. When you go for a full rebrand, it’s like you’re tearing that house down to the foundation and starting over from scratch. Sometimes this is the right call, especially when there are serious structural problems or the house doesn’t serve your needs. You’re changing a big part of the structure and framing out something new. Conversely, brand refreshes are for those who have a solid foundation and structure, but need a renovation. This is the chance for a church to fix leaks, re-do the kitchen, and get a new paint job. Sometimes all brand refresh calls for is just a set of brand guidelines with a few Canva templates. Other times it’s an intentional tweaking of the logo, and a redesign of everything else. The main idea behind the refresh is bringing that rogue branding into alignment. When you consider a refresh vs a rebrand, ask yourself, do we need a rebuild, or just a minor renovation?
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