World-Class Design Firm Lesson - Be REALLY Different

After almost a decade in the design and branding industry, I’ve become convinced of something: The fastest and best way to a tangible community impact through a vision-driven church is by kingdom-first branding. Of course, not every church is ready to focus on branding… stability and trust need to come first. But if your congregation has those pre-requisites checked off, a kingdom-first brand is the most powerful way to galvanize your members and reach your community with the gospel. The idea of being kingdom-first isn’t something I came up with — it’s firmly grounded in Scripture. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. — Matthew 6:33 Jesus tells us to make God’s kingdom our priority, and he will provide for every need we have. Pastors have all kinds of desires for their ministries. Some want to see their church grow and multiply, so they can plant in nearby neighborhoods and cities. Some want their congregation to be more unified, healing fractures and restoring broken relationships. Some want to be known for their generosity, partnering with local organizations to serve their community. Some want to see members of their congregation discipling one another into a deeper knowledge and love for Jesus Some want to influence local and state politics, advocating for causes that align with God’s law Some simply want to resist the spiritual depravity of the culture around them I think it’s clear from scripture that God wants all of these things for every church, and much more. But these goals are not our ultimate priority. Advancing Christ’s kingdom is. So what does a kingdom-first brand actually look like? A kingdom-first brand doesn’t worry about attracting members from other churches (the kingdom doesn’t grow when we play “church musical chairs”). A kingdom-first brand avoids losing your church’s unique story in an attempt to look trendy A kingdom-first brand makes Christ the cornerstone of your communications. He is the cornerstone of the church, after all (Isaiah 28:16-17; Matthew 16:18; Mark 12:10; Ephesians 2:19-21) A kingdom-first branding approach gets to the heart of this question: how does your ministry uniquely relate to Christ, Congregation, and Community? I’ll be exploring those 3 C’s in the near future. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.

Galvanize your congregation. Build trust and unity. Can branding do that? A healthy church brand actually provides a mental framework for your members to fit their knowledge and experiences into. If you’re like me, and most other humans, you need “hooks” to hang information on. Otherwise you forget it. As your congregation participates in the life of your church, they are becoming disciples of Christ. They are being taught God’s word and how to follow it. Through branding, you can give your people more hooks to hang that knowledge on. A Christ-centered brand can help them connect the dots between their shared identity and their shared purpose. In other words, you’re drawing that connection between who they are as a local church body and the ultimate reason your church exists. Let’s look at an example. One church I worked with recently was Heritage Church in Shawnee, OK. Heritage had identified five core values or purposes that they wanted their congregation to live out each week. Through this rebrand process, we turned those core values into icons, each with a color that represented part of their vision. Those core values icons integrated into their logo and helped them teach the distinctives that made Heritage unique as a local church. We also turned the icons into a pattern that they could use on everything, even down to bookmarks. The best part was, each of their core values is more memorable and “sticky”. Every design pointed back to the brand Heritage had created around their shared identity as a church body.

I was looking through a “Church Creatives” Facebook group I’m a part of and I came across this post: While the top comment here is a little snarky, he’s absolutely right: Having a well-defined visual brand all starts with defining your vision. What does your logo stand for?

For most people, the word “branding” brings to mind symbolism. Brands use symbols to convey a bigger message and create an association between ideas, people, and products. There’s also a strong Biblical precedent for visual storytelling and symbolism. Moses lifted up the image of a serpent in the wilderness. The Lord’s instructions for his tabernacle were packed full of icons and symbols. The early church used the ichthys to represent their shared Christian identity. Applying this to a church communications, we focus on the logo as the main visual symbol, and most people naturally want it to represent as much transcendent meaning as possible. Here’s my hot take: All the symbols in the world can’t make up for unclear foundational ideas that underpin your church identity. Symbolism in a logo means nothing without core distinctives. How do you know what those distinctives are? You have to do a little digging. Tending your brand sometimes means breaking out the shovel and getting to the root.

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 welcome brochure is one of the things I often find myself helping churches design, despite the fact that I never suggest or recommend it. Why don’t I encourage churches to create these? Well, because to be honest I don’t pick them up myself. If I see a stack of flyers sitting on a table when I walk in your church door for the first time, am I going to grab one? Probably not, no matter how good the design is. I’m looking for a familiar face to connect with, not a colorful piece of paper. If I want to know where to find you on Facebook I’m going to Google search it. If I’m needing to read about your beliefs, I’ll find them on your website. However… I’m a millennial. For older folks who aren’t addicted to their phones and dependent on ChatGPT/Google, a well-designed welcome brochure is often the perfect way to communicate key info and help them get familiar with your church. So it’s worth it to have a welcome brochure in some cases. The important thing to ask yourself is this: Who are you trying to reach? Is your community one that will actually engage with flyers and brochures? If not, then your efforts and money are probably better spent elsewhere.

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.

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.