“You need a vision for that”

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.

Today I want to exhort you. Keep up the good work! I’m encouraged to keep pressing on when I hear stories or see online that you’re tending your church brand. Here’s how I’m trying to follow suit! Writing Daily I’ve been a lot more intentional about this, and people are noticing. Writing daily has helped me collect lessons learned in my work and articulate my unique philosophy around church branding. This has also given me content to pull from for social media posts. I’ve been able to easily share a combination of quick quotes from this newsletter and finished rebrands without having to switch into writing mode for every post. Understanding My Audience I’ve started paying attention to which of my brand’s touch points are having the biggest impact. To do this I have some website analytics running and some questions I ask now on introduction calls. This helps me focus my writing and website copy on what’s relevant and engaging for my audience and clients. Community Participation This year I’ve made it a goal to give back to pastors and churches wherever I can. Part of that effort has been interacting and responding to posts in a Facebook group called Church Creatives. This is a wonderful community of 80,000+ pastors and church staff who appreciate the value of creativity/ design for churches and ministries. The second thing I’m doing is distilling my branding experience into free resources that pastors can use to align their branding with their vision, prepare for a rebrand, and make a bigger impact. More on these in the near future. That all seems like a lot, but what’s made it manageable is a daily cadence and habit of tending my brand, even if it’s just 10 minutes of jotting down some notes or reacting to a Facebook post. So take it as an encouragement: You can do it too!

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.