How to create a visual image that succinctly articulates your mission and message.

As a believer, I must admit that “branding” and “church” are two words that still seem uncomfortable when put together. True believers never want to compromise their faith by commercializing its message. But as a design professional for 20 years, I’ve discovered that a respectful, distinctive branding platform can enhance, focus and ignite enthusiasm for the mission and message of a church. Lawndale Baptist Church (LBC) in Greensboro, NC, is a good example of how this can work.

First, a brand is the image that others have about your business or organization. It is earned – for better or for worse. Your brand is the handshake that your business or organization makes with your audience when no one is around to say how great he or she thinks it is. For this reason, your visual communication must be distinct, consistent and relevant.

Designing a fresh logo
At Lawndale Baptist, senior pastor Dr. Joe Giaritelli recognized that it was time to replace the dated praying hands symbol (in traditional burgundy ink) with a more current logo and to begin refreshing how the church communicated with the community. We discussed that the decision makers in this process would be the senior staff instead of the church body at large.

I think this is a wise approach. More decision makers will cause the design firm to anticipate a longer process due to more rounds of revisions. This means the price estimate of your job will increase accordingly. Additionally, getting feedback from a large committee or congregation is unmanageable, possibly contentious, and results in a muddled and compromised design.

As for the final “fishermen” logo itself, many find its non-churchy feel and contemporary execution of the biblical metaphor friendly yet meaningful. For those who do not immediately discern its evangelistic reference, it’s a great conversation starter. Some nonmembers have made the comment that they are curious about visiting the church just from seeing the logo. The tagline, “The Journey: Vision, Teamwork, Harvest,” was supplied by the pastor and is a fitting mission statement for the church and articulates the symbolism nicely.

Maintaining consistency
With the LBC logo design established, we designed the print collateral such as stationery, office forms, church vehicles and others. These items should be designed, not merely excused by sticking the new logo on them. Adding a logo to an old graphic platform is sort of like wearing a new tie with an old suit – it makes both look out of place.

Your church should receive guidance from the design firm as to the proper usage and application of the logo so that support staff at your church can maintain consistency in how the logo is used, thereby establishing and reinforcing your identity.

Chief among the promotional pieces in a branding campaign is obviously a website. The website at LBC was done as a separate phase of the campaign due to its size, expense and importance. If your church has a membership of more than a couple thousand, with numerous ministries and programs, anticipate a few months for the design, content building, editing, programming and testing before your site goes live. Even after it is live, allow for a few weeks of fine-tuning plus the standard ongoing maintenance and updating.

There were two competing schools of thought for the branding emphasis of the LBC home page: (1) An advertising approach (“Look at our events and programs”), or (2) A philosophical approach (“What brings you to our church?”). Both approaches can be executed effectively, but the chosen design simplified by white space and a single rotating image, emphasizes the latter.

As each photographic image of people’s various journeys is shown, the question, “how’s your journey?” is asked and then punctuated by the invitation, “… join us on the journey.” Take time to decide what message you want to convey in that initial handshake the viewer makes with your church as it will most likely be on the web.

Does it work?
One LBC member asked, “Do we have any assurance that these new materials will bring more people into the church?” This is not a bad question, but it’s slightly misdirected regarding what a good graphics platform actually does, which is to create confidence, credibility and familiarity in consumers (potential church attendees) – not make sales (members) outright.

Judging from the growth and vigor at LBC, the brand seems to be doing its part. Your members and the Holy Spirit are there to do the rest.

Bill Foster is the owner of HigherWerks Inc., a branding and design firm in Oak Ridge, NC (www.higherwerks.com) and is the author of Meet The Skeptic, an apologetics curriculum and ministry.

Everywhere we communicate, we convey emotion and send a message about our identity.

A brand is not a logo, and a logo is not a brand. Phil Cooke, in his great book Branding Faith says, “A brand is the story people tell about a person, product, or organization.” Logos and other forms of visual imagery simply help us to create an emotional trigger that prompts people to associate our story with our name. Or as I like to put it, visual branding helps us to frame our story well.

One of the most common mistakes church leaders make is to jump into the visual design process in search of the nicest looking persona without considering whether the final look really represents our organizational culture or not.

Everywhere we communicate, online or in print, we convey emotion and send a message about our identity.

Warm colors and soft textures convey one feeling, while earth tones communicate a different feeling. Cool, clean imagery communicates order, while grungy, dirty textures give a sense of chaos. One style isn’t necessarily better or worse than another, but our approach to aesthetics needs to reflect who we are.

Intentional design
When we designed the logo for Grace Hills Church, we were rather intentional, even though the logo is simple. We used a diamond shape, subtly connecting us with our roots as a purpose driven church (a movement in which a baseball diamond is often used to illustrate progressive maturity).

And we use bright greens to connect us with the idea of freshness and growth. Our hope is that when people see our logo, their minds recall a story about a place where people can really discover a new, fresh start in life.

Before you hit the drawing board or hire your next graphic designer, do some organizational soul searching and answer some important questions about your identity, such as:

• What are three phrases with which we would like people to describe our church?
• What single iconic image comes to mind as our primary leader describes us? And remember, it doesn’t have to be a dove, a cross or a globe.
• What kind of emotion do we believe people need to feel as they encounter us for the first time, and what kind of color palette conveys that emotion?
• What imagery do we need to eliminate from our current branding to avoid distracting people from our core identity?
• How can we present a unique picture of ourselves that differentiates us from other churches in our vicinity?

Once you’ve gone through a thorough review process, dreaming together and articulating your organizational story, it’s time to design. Whether you handle this process in-house or with help from a firm or freelancer, you must keep your story as the priority over aesthetics consistently. The designer’s responsibility is not to write the story, but to tell it accurately and passionately.

Being consistent
It’s intriguing how many organizations present one style in print and another on the web, while presenting a third version of their story with the decor of their building. Consider the brands you know well.

The imagery of McDonald’s is consistent from their signage to their drink cups to their straw wrappers – golden arches. Target’s coupon mailers have the same clean feel and the same red dot and the same spotted dog as the front of their building and their website.

You can’t always control the story that is told about you. Public relations professionals know this all too well. But you can be intentional about framing the story well by keeping your branding strong, consistent and true to your real organizational identity.

Brandon Cox is lead pastor at Grace Hills Church in northwest Arkansas and also serves as editor and community facilitator for Pastors.com and Rick Warren’s Pastor’s Toolbox newsletter. He is writing his first book, Rewired, to help churches communicate the Gospel in a rapidly changing age.

A failure is in designing for the convenience of the organization and not for the person using it.

When my church first attempted to use Facebook to create a sense of community among our congregants, it failed! No one was using it except to post announcements. Our people were not interacting with one another, and the silence was awkward. As a church staff, we started to investigate how other churches were using Facebook to see what we could do differently.

“Your communication efforts should be designed around what is best for your audience. If they don’t read it, don’t find it easy, convenient and fits into how they want communication to them – you’ve failed,” advises Mark Simmons, business manager at Christ Community Church of Milpitas, CA.

“I see this as a common failure in communication. It is designed for the convenience and desires of the person or organization providing the information as opposed to being designed for the people you are trying to reach,” he adds.

Our staff realized that we were using Facebook like the church webpage with a one-way preaching form of communication of “we’ll tell you what we want you to know.” Whereas social media uses the Web and mobile-based technologies to facilitate dialog between organizations, communities and individuals.

Groups vs Pages
One difference we found was that some churches use Facebook’s Groups instead of Pages. “A Page is for organizations and businesses and is public and generally open to anyone on Facebook” whereas “a Group is a closed space for small groups of people to communicate about shared interests,” states Facebook’s Helps. A Group is personal with “friends” where a Page is a business one can “like.”

Muldoon Community Assembly in Anchorage, AK, uses both Facebook Pages and Groups effectively. On their Facebook Page, one can learn more about the church through announcements, events and general information. Lead pastor Kent Redfearn uses a personal Facebook Group to maintain relationships with his large congregation.

Redfearn honors members who serve, highlights guest speakers, celebrates events, shares prayer requests and includes members in his everyday life. He takes pictures with his cellphone during services, events or personal meetings to post on his Facebook Group. Whether one is a member, prospective member or friend, they will find his Facebook Group engaging.

Bethel Church, Redding, CA, demonstrates impressive ways of communicating with a congregation through Facebook Pages using invitational and celebratory methods with lots of inspirational pictures. Jana-Marie Kroeker, member of the Bethel Media Team explains, “We have a select few staff members of Bethel Media that help manage the page, monitor postings by others and respond to Facebook messages.”

Our church did not have a savvy media relations team. What were we to do? We realized that in order to use this tool to build community, we needed to change our approach.

Staff and members began regularly posting pictures, devotionals, Christian world news, missionary updates, church events, daily scriptures, prayer requests, personal needs or celebrations, and resources to get members interacting with each other. One staff member champions this resource, responds to requests and monitors the results with Hootsuite.

Reaching for the relational
Invitations and communications then became relational. We encouraged ministry teams to start conversations about upcoming events. In order to get congregants interested in an upcoming barn dance, we started discussions about what we were going to wear along with humorous pictures on appropriate outfits. After the event, pictures and stories showed how much fun attendees had.

On a recent medical mission trip to Haiti, the team posted daily videos, prayer requests and updates while members and family at home posted prayers, devotionals and words of encouragement. We invite speakers to post on Facebook and include links to books, websites or other information that may get members interested in attending and inviting others.

Communicating with congregations is always challenging but now with social media we can build community with a larger network of people. It can be more successful in communicating to your congregation and connecting them with other members than any other form of communication.

Deborah Hertle is director of Mobilization 4 Ministry at Grace Church of Fredericksburg, VA. [revdebjoy@aol.com, gcofonline.org]

Resources you can use:

• Hootsuite.com, a tool to manage multiple multimedia pages.
• Socialmedia.policytool.net, a tool for creating your social media policy.
• Churchm.ag/facebook-pages-vs-groups explains the benefits of Pages versus Groups.
• Facebook for Pastors by Chris Forbes, a PDF booklet.
• Internettoolboxforchurches.com. Insightful articles on managing your Facebook Page.
• HowChurchMediaWorks.com, tutorial on how to create your Facebook account.
• Newsle.com, follows Facebook friends or congregants in the news.
• UStream or LiveStream for streaming your services live. ustream.tv/new; livestream.com