How to Take Inspiration Without Copying

Rebranding can be a tough conversation for some churches, especially when it comes to financial costs. But if you’re like many pastors, you see the value of starting with a clear, cohesive identity that your congregation can rally around and take pride in. How do you manage budget constraints while still investing in your brand? Well, if I had to design a brand identity from scratch with only $100, here’s what I would do: I would use ChatGPT. Yes - seriously! I created this prompt based on my experiences with ChatGPT and it’s surprisingly good go through the entire rebranding process: Act as a high end creative agency that’s going to help me design a visual identity for my church. I’m going to give you my church name and our distinctives, and you’re going to ask any probing questions you need to start putting together the building blocks of our visual brand. This will be an extensive project, so don’t jump into creating images just yet. Our interaction will be conversational and rely on feedback to refine and guide your creative direction. The project should generally follow this 4 step process: 1. Discover - you’ll get a sense of where my vision for the church and generate a brand vibe report with tone of voice, brand strategy, and target audience avatars. 2. Define - you’ll create separate mood boards that we can use to choose a visual style and general direction for the brand aesthetic. 3. Develop - you’ll get input from me on any symbolism from the church’s history, things our region/city is known for, and iconic parts of our building. Then you’ll present text-based logo ideas based on that input. If any of them resonate with me, I’ll ask you to generate images of logo concepts of that idea. 4. Deploy - you’ll generate a full bespoke suite of mockups of branded social media campaigns, video thumbnails, website homepage, stationary, merch, signage, and banners. These mockups should be done one at a time, and shown to me for feedback before we move on to the next. They should be brand-aligned and use the brand elements we’ve developed so far. Paste that into ChatGPT and follow the process through to the end. Don’t be afraid to give it feedback like you would a designer. Pro tip: Buy a month of Premium for faster image generation and access to versions of ChatGPT with the most in-depth reasoning. If you’re not satisfied with the outcome, that’s okay. You’re only out $20 and you probably have a much better idea of what you don’t want in your branding. This is tremendously valuable information if you do go to hire a pro.

Something I’ve only mentioned briefly in this newsletter thus far has been AI. It seems like that’s all anyone talks about these days, so I’ve tried to steer clear, lest I add to the noise. That said, there are some things that AI is extremely good at, one of those being communication strategy. I’m convinced that if you’re not using them, you’re handicapping yourself and your ministry. AI tools are not going away, in fact they’re getting more powerful and more accessible (aka FREE) all the time. So, let’s put it to the test with an upcoming event in your church. This could be an outreach event, a members-only potluck, or a community worship night - the sky is the limit! Tell ChatGPT something like: “You’re an experienced marketer and event promoter with a specialization in working with churches. When I give you information about my church’s upcoming event, I want you to help me come up with an event name, a tagline or short memorable description, and a promotion strategy that one person could reasonably execute. Start by asking for event details and things specific to my church like brand tone of voice.” I’m continually blow away at how effective ChatGPT is at brainstorming. Whether you’re a church of 100 or 1000, AI is an indispensable tool for planning, naming, and developing messaging around events or campaigns. Try using this prompt for your next event and see what happens!

Bonus 1: Use a color palette tool Creating, adjusting, saving and sharing color palettes isn’t actually all that easy. That’s where a color palette website can be invaluable. I mentioned this website up above called Coolors. When I first discovered it, I thought “where have you been all my life?!” Unlike most color websites out there, this one lets you do much more than browse and save color palettes. You can visualize your color palette in different contexts, do global adjustments to the whole palette at once, extract colors from an image, and even use a huge library of unique color names. They didn’t sponsor me, but I really like using it. Maybe you will too. Bonus 2: Ignore CMYK and Pantone …unless you’re working with a pro, that is. When I create a brand guide for a client, I include CMYK and Pantones as a nice addition, fully expecting that they will never be used. Almost all print shops and vendors these days have automatic conversion between color spaces that is usually reliable, accurate, and consistent. Even if you’re having screen printed t-shirts made or running off thousands of flyers, Pantone and CMYK values are only helpful in very specific situations. Long story short, HEX codes are probably all you need. P.S. This week I’m focusing on church brand color selection principles, which I’ve gathered the hard way from years of church rebrands. If you want the complete guide, I’ve collected all of the principles into a single post here.

Look for symbolism Just like with your church logo, you’ll want layers of meaning and depth behind your church color choices. One way to accomplish this is through symbolism. Colors are symbolic because they can bring to mind a mix of material things and abstract ideas. Here are a few examples… but before I share them with you, keep in mind that these colors are broad and have many different meanings associated with them. The symbolism I’m focusing on here is related specifically to churches, and how a church might use these for their brand colors. Don’t start using them without doing your own research as well. Okay, with that out of the way, here are some color symbolism examples: Gold Gold can communicate permanency, age, and class. It symbolizes kingship, wealth, and light. Orange Orange can communicate energy, friendliness, and youthfulness. It symbolizes flowers, fire, and sunsets. Red Red can communicate courage, warmth, and gravity. It symbolizes blood, life, love, and sometimes purity. Purple Purple can communicate spirituality, depth, and confidence. It symbolizes royal robes, heaven, and wisdom. Teal Teal can communicate balance, peace, and renewal. It symbolizes healing, water, and growth. If you want to go deeper, here’s where you can read more on color symbolism and usage (from a secular source). P.S. This week I’m focusing on church brand color selection principles, which I’ve gathered the hard way from years of church rebrands. If you want the complete guide, I’ve collected all of the principles into a single post here.

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.