Don’t “Sever” Your Church Members: Tend Your Brand Instead

In 2021, my wife and I moved back to our home town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma and joined the church we now call home - Hope Presbyterian Church. The church had hired a Ukrainian designer on Fiverr and got a fantastic logo design (it even won an award). But there was a problem… All they had was that logo. Their whole “brand” was limited to a gold color and a couple of webp’s. While the logo was aesthetically pleasing, it wasn’t enough to help their people “get” the mission. Each billboard, banner, and invitation card was inconsistent and time-consuming, even for the creative associate pastor. The more they tried to make their branding work in the real world, the more things got messy and out of alignment. Members with design experience were called on over and over again to come in and help “fix” designs, which always ended up being a band-aid for the real issue. What my home church went through is the result of a logo design without a true brand. They needed an easy-to-use branding toolkit with theological depth - one that would represent more than just the name of their church. A kingdom-first brand would have given their congregation ownership of the vision their leaders were casting, and would have attracted more visitors who resonated with the message they preached. And that’s why I stopped designing logos, and started developing kingdom-first brands instead.

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.

A pastor scheduled a call with me last month to talk about a new congregation his church is planting next year. I can’t tell you the name right now, but it was a church who was running over 500 and was starting to struggle with shaping the culture and collective mission of that many people. If they didn’t get their branding and a visual identity in place before the plant, rebranding would have just gotten more expensive and difficult. They didn’t want to miss the opportunity but they lacked the confidence to rebrand with their internal team alone. Where do you start? To even begin a branding project, we needed to figure out the problem they were trying to solve. Did this church need to… REFRESH their existing brand? REPOSITION their identity under a new vision? or REACH OUT with their message? The church had just undergone a name church that was being announced later in the year. Their leaders were trying to cast a vision that was outward-focused and kingdom-minded. At first, this made me think it was a REACH OUT case, but the more I dug in, the more I realized what they actually needed was to REPOSITION. Why? Well, let’s look at their goals. The outward focus was a culture they wanted to create in their church body. While they ultimately wanted to reach out with their message (all churches should), they couldn’t do that effectively until they first grounded their church in a collective vision that included more than just their immediate membership. Their brand didn’t reflect the long term vision for the church, and it needed to visually align before both congregations could shift their focus to their region and community. Hopefully you can see how the REPOSITION approach was needed for this case. Instead of jumping in trying to scale up misaligned branding, we needed to build on their values and rework the brand identity from the ground up.

I’m an extreme sports fan, and those who know me know that I would never pass up a chance to try one. Of course, I’m no Red Bull athlete, so it usually looks like me attempting the low-stakes version of whatever the true pros are doing. One of those sports I’ve casually enjoyed since high school is rock climbing, and believe it or not, there’s a nice analogy to branding here. In bouldering (climbing lower with no ropes above a crash mat), a route or particular climb is called a boulder problem. A beginner climber like me can climb any V1 boulder problem with ease and most V2s with moderate difficulty. Some V3 problems are too challenging at my skill level, while others are doable after a few attempts. (Don’t be too impressed - the scale goes up to V17). There was this one V3 problem giving me trouble on my last visit. I kept falling over and over, until I eventually felt so fatigued and frustrated that I gave up. Why am I sharing this story? I think it’s appropriate that they’re called “problems,” because they have a solution that takes more than brute force and raw strength to solve. They take strategy. All around me were more experienced climbers who could have showed me the trick to get past my sticking point. With their expert advice, I could have probably reached my goal with only a couple of tries. Even better, I probably could have learned tips from them for other problems too. Here’s the thing: If you want the fastest way to your goal, don’t be afraid to seek guidance from someone who’s done it before.

In 2021, my wife and I moved back to our home town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma and joined the church we now call home - Hope Presbyterian Church. The church had hired a Ukrainian designer on Fiverr and got a fantastic logo design (it even won an award). But there was a problem… All they had was that logo. Their whole “brand” was limited to a gold color and a couple of webp’s. While the logo was aesthetically pleasing, it wasn’t enough to help their people “get” the mission. Each billboard, banner, and invitation card was inconsistent and time-consuming, even for the creative associate pastor. The more they tried to make their branding work in the real world, the more things got messy and out of alignment. Members with design experience were called on over and over again to come in and help “fix” designs, which always ended up being a band-aid for the real issue. What my home church went through is the result of a logo design without a true brand. They needed an easy-to-use branding toolkit with theological depth - one that would represent more than just the name of their church. A kingdom-first brand would have given their congregation ownership of the vision their leaders were casting, and would have attracted more visitors who resonated with the message they preached. And that’s why I stopped designing logos, and started developing kingdom-first brands instead.

Strip everything away, give your church a generic name, and make the logo a cross. Go black and white with your color scheme. Congrats - you have a timeless brand! I’m being a little bit sarcastic, but there’s an element of truth here. Over-simplification is usually the fastest, easiest way to a truly “timeless” look. However, it’s not the only way. And for churches, it’s almost never the best way. The history of the world is timeless by definition, but definitely not simple. God’s creative and recreative work is anything but minimalistic. The way God works is simple but deep, focused but rich with meaning. So too is the story being woven together in your ministry, whether it’s 200 years old or a brand new church plant. What is God’s perspective of your church? If you want a timeless brand identity, this is the question you have to answer. Once you start narrowing it down, your logo colors and fonts become clear and easy choices. Rather than trying to become timeless by using Helvetica and no colors in your brand guidelines, you should be looking for ways to incorporate the truth of who God says you are as a congregation. Does it take more work and intentionality? Absolutely. Is it hard? Anything worth doing is.

Your logo isn’t a brand, nor is the name of your church a brand. Your color palette, word mark, fonts, and church website aren’t your brand either. These things only serve to ASSOCIATE your church with the big idea that is your message. Make this association enough times with enough people, and NOW you have a brand. Think about it like this: Branding is the vehicle for your message. It’s the wrapper! The packaging won’t change the chemical make up of the burger, but it can still make the burger taste better, and turn a meal into an experience worth sharing. So, to answer the question how much branding does a church need, the answer is none. None? Right. If you don’t have that big idea clarified and nailed down, you can design the most beautiful identity system and logo in the world and not have a brand.

Many churches when they come to me to consider doing a rebrand say something like “We want people to see that we’re a living, active church.” What better way to show that than with motion? Video is one thing, but moving graphics combined with photos are a good middle ground that can communicate a lot more than just a static image. According to the big players in the creative industry, motion is becoming more important for all brands - not just global ones. More and more, a brand’s digital presence is expected to move, breathe, and approximate “IRL” experiences. Done right, on-brand motion graphics have a high engagement potential, without the expense of shooting and editing actual video. How do you do this well? You need to know your brand’s unique personality. P.S. This is a series of posts where I’m sharing lessons we can learn from the great design agencies of today. These are firms with a massive portfolio of incredible projects for global, billion dollar brands. Their reputation has been built on sound branding fundamentals, which means something very good for us: their approach works just as well for churches!

Your logo isn’t a brand, nor is the name of your church a brand. Your color palette, word mark, fonts, and church website aren’t your brand either. These things only serve to ASSOCIATE your church with the big idea that is your message. Make this association enough times with enough people, and NOW you have a brand. Think about it like this: Branding is the vehicle for your message. It’s the wrapper! The packaging won’t change the chemical make up of the burger, but it can still make the burger taste better, and turn a meal into an experience worth sharing. So, to answer the question how much branding does a church need, the answer is none. None? Right. If you don’t have that big idea clarified and nailed down, you can design the most beautiful identity system and logo in the world and not have a brand.

In the last post, I looked at how vocabulary contributes to a cohesive verbal identity, and can be useful for a church trying to elevate their communications. Today, we’re on to the second part of a verbal identity: tone of voice. Now with AI tools, tone of voice guidelines are even more incredibly useful. Just ask this pastor I worked with on a recent rebrand. He was writing content for a connect card they could use to gather information from visitors, and he was blown away by how helpful it was to have a brand tone of voice. “Bro, ChatGPT is crazy cool… I put in the tone description from our brand guidelines, and it gave me all kinds of good options!” Here’s the tone description he was talking about: “Our tone is bold yet humble—serious about truth, passionate about people, and always inviting others into something real. We speak with clarity, conviction, and warmth, aiming to reflect both the reverence of our faith and the relational heart of our church.” If you saw a social media post with exclamation points, emoji’s and emotional word choice, you would probably expect a passionate, informal, and loud worship service on Sunday morning. Now, what if you showed up to that church and found a conservative Presbyterian church with organ-led hymns and a serious vibe. Would you be confused? Inconsistent writing style can even leave visitors with a subtle feeling of being confused or tricked, rather than edified. In the end, looking the part is critically important, but your visuals are ultimately just the vehicle for what can only be communicated through written (or spoken) words.

In a church rebrand project, I tend to focus mainly on designing the congregation’s visual identity. However, there’s a key part of branding that doesn’t always get as much attention, which I’ve started including in the church brand guides I create. That piece is a verbal identity. A consistent writing style is crucial in church communications, and I’m breaking it down into its two fundamental parts today. If the content of your bulletin reads dramatically different from the content of your website, which reads different from your social media, then your overall message won’t land with the same impact. So, let’s look at the two key facets of a verbal identity: vocabulary and tone of voice. Brand Vocabulary The words you choose to use in official church creative work and communication should be a reflection of who you are speaking to, and how you want them to view you. Here’s an example of brand vocabulary guidelines: “In our church communications, we occasionally use words like ‘y’all’ and ‘fixin’ to identify with our main demographic of ranchers and homesteaders here in rural Oklahoma. These words should not be overused in a cliche way, but should be sprinkled in to add warmth and familiarity to our written copy.” In the next post, I’ll look at the other facet of a verbal identity: tone of voice.

A good friend of mine who used to be a youth pastor just opened up the first brick-and-mortar location for his fly fishing business. It got me thinking about how Jesus made his disciples to be fishers of men (Matthew 4), which, in those days, called to mind an image of casting nets. But what about using a lure? Is it appropriate to “bait” people toward the gospel by making our visuals flashier and our colors brighter in the name of more effective man-fishing? My conclusion is no. Well, usually no. Jesus’ model of evangelism and ministry was markedly NOT seeker-sensitive. If your goal with church branding is to baptize marketing trends and tactics, you’ll be surprised at how few people stick around and put down roots in your congregation. What you win them with is what you win them to. That’s why a brand based on vision and congregational identity can last for decades, while a brand based on cultural relevance and eye candy feels like a “bait and switch.” For my friend, tying flies started as a hobby on the side. He would source exotic materials and study the quirks of different fish species to create unique flies that looked more fine art than fishing gear. These things were beautiful. It’s not wrong to build beautiful buildings, design beautiful logos, or lean into an aesthetic. Those are good things, and they can help to attract people to a church. But those people should be there for what the brand represents, not the brand itself. A well-crafted and positioned brand is a beautiful, visual manifestation of your church’s identity and mission, not a flashy lure.