planning

If you’ve ever thought about redesigning your church’s logo (or even just giving it a refresh), then you might’ve realized a unique challenge: The hardest part is finding a designer who won’t mess it up. To solve that, there are questions you should be asking which will save you loads of wasted time and frustration. Ask you logo designer this: Have you worked with churches before? What happens if we don’t like the logo? When we decide on the new look, how do we transition from old to new? Do you check for unintentional symbolism? Will you license fonts for us to use? Will you wait to share the project online until after we announce it? Do you use templates or pre-made designs? I can tell you these are important questions because they’re all based on real-world concerns, goals, and experiences. Anything you would add to his list?

Last weekend, I went hiking in the Ouachita National Forest with a friend from church. It was my first time on that particular trail, but thankfully he had hiked this trail multiple times and knew it like the back of his hand, or so I thought. I started to get nervous when he stopped in his tracks and said, “I’ve never seen this bridge before.” He crossed the bridge and ventured on a little further. “I don’t remember passing through this open area.” We figured we had missed a fork in the trail, so we crossed back over the bridge and backtracked for a mile or two. No sign of a turnoff or any other indicators of another trail. We were forced to go back to the bridge again. At this point, we had hiked nearly 3.5 miles of detour, with nothing to show for it. What would have helped us avoid that unexpected pain? A guide who had brought others along that trail dozens of times. A map of the entire trail, with a “You Are Here” indicator. The reason I’m sharing this story is: My friend thought he remembered the trail, but there were critical things he had missed the first few times. Whether you’re hiking a secluded trail or rebranding, it’s smart to get expert insights and a proven roadmap before you waste time on detours and roadblocks. Thankfully, after exploring a bit more, we realized we were on the right path after all. We ended up having a great trip.

I want to share a quick story to illustrate the danger of cognitive blind spots. Every night, we bring our 7 goats, 20 chickens, and two dogs inside a perimeter of electric netting. I could do this routine blindfolded in my sleep. But this time something was different, and I almost missed it. To power the fence, we have a switch and an energizer mounted next to a hay bale, but what I almost didn’t notice was that the fence charger had disappeared. I flipped the switch on and turned toward the house when I heard a quiet “click” sound coming from the ground, under a pile of hay. The energizer had been knocked off its mount and was totally concealed under loose hay and straw. I was so used to my routine that I didn’t even notice when something critical was missing. Here’s the point: Something can be wrong or missing right under our noses, and we don’t notice because we aren’t looking for it. It’s why people bring in outside perspectives, and it’s how I’m able to help churches with their design and branding. If you’re not keeping tabs on everything all the time, or if you don’t know what to look for, you’ll probably miss something.

Last weekend I decided to finally clean the garage. It was dirtier than I thought - filthy, actually. That’s why I was amazed when I finished the whole project in under 3 hours. When it comes to your church branding and design, there are probably some things that you’ve thought about cleaning up but have been wary of starting. What if it takes longer than you thought it would? What if it’s going to cost you money to fix? It can be easy to ignore these minor issues until they turn into bigger ones. The problem is that we often underestimate how bad things really are. If you looked into it, you might find that your website actually doesn’t work on certain browsers, or that there are 7 different versions of your logo floating around. This spring-summer season is a great time to clean up those divergent designs and maybe even do a light branding refresh. Tending your brand means addressing problems before they accumulate for too long, or it will quickly get out of control.

A well-defined problem is the foundation of strategy. In other words, the clearer the problem, the easier it is to find a solution. Maybe you know your church needs brand work, or maybe you’ve done some already. But what problem is that work actually solving? I’m not talking about “our problem is that we have an old logo.” I’m talking about the “why” behind that, and the “why” behind that “why”, and probably even the “why” behind that. If you don’t know what your problem is at the outset, you’ll struggle to choose a strategy for solving it, and worse, you’ll not be sure how to measure success. One way is to identify the types of problem your brand is facing, and I want to share the three most common with you here. Most churches are trying to either… REFRESH their existing brand REPOSITION their brand under a new vision or REACH OUT with their message It would be great to have all of these at once, but my experience has been that you can really only do one of these at a time. So at your church, are you facing a refresh, reposition, or reach out problem? Figuring out which one you’re solving for is pretty easy, and I’ll break it down in a future post with a real-world church brand example.

“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?

I recently got on the phone to catch up with an old friend who I hadn’t talked to in 10 years. We’ll call him Dave. Dave had been a pastor of a large church back when I knew him, and since then he had also spent 5 years as the president of a large nonprofit ministry. Eventually the Lord had called him back into the pastorate and he faithfully obeyed. Despite being a sought-after preacher with decades of experience at larger churches, Dave followed the Holy Spirit’s leading and humbly accepted a role as the pastor of a small rural church in the deep south. And when I say small, I mean SMALL… The Dying Church Revives When he started, the church was on the verge of dying. Their small community had been hit hard by COVID and the congregation had been let down by previous leadership. Dave told me there were some Sundays that his wife and children accounted for more than half of the total attendees. So we’re talking about teens or single-digit attendance most Sundays. Through preaching the word and ministering with a multi-generational, discipleship-oriented model, God started a new work in this church. Over 4 long years, they slowly grew into a thriving congregation once more. Week after week, Dave would faithfully preach the Word, and the next week more would come. He started to see faces show up on Sunday morning that nobody in the congregation recognized. He didn’t know how they had found the church on the country backroad where it was located, but there they were nonetheless — hungry for the gospel. By 2025, the church had grown to 100-120 members. They experienced a season of weekly baptisms, people getting saved, lives being visibly transformed by the gospel. Praise God! So, Dave was familiar with my branding work, and he was curious what my branding process looks like for a church that size, and if I had any recommendations for them. Of course I shared my process with him, and I had reviewed the church’s website so I knew a bit about what branding they had done up to that point. I told him, “look I’m probably not in your church’s budget right now, but if you keep growing I would love to help you develop your brand and start reaching beyond your local community.” He was understanding of that and I started to mentally wrap up the conversation. The Problem But Dave suddenly stopped me and said, “Braden, there’s something else I need to ask you about…” I could hear the concern and uncertainty in his voice. Now keep in mind that I haven’t talked to Dave in 10 years, and we’ve had no other interactions that I’m aware of except through Facebook. So my mind is suddenly racing — What could he possibly want? “Yeah… um… ask away.” “I don’t mean to sound conceited, so please don’t hear it as that, but I’ve 30 years of all different kinds of ministry, preaching, and speaking experience…” It’s true — Dave was an exceptional communicator. He went on. “I feel stuck… I have so much I preaching leftover each week to share with more people than just my congregation” This church didn’t livestream or record his sermons due to their small size, and he had started to realize that this was handicapping his personal ministry. Without recent sermon recordings to share, Dave was missing opportunities to speak at conferences and partner with other churches to help with revivals. Because he was very pastorally-minded, he had all this content that was ready to publish under his own personal ministry, but no way to get it out there into the world.