If you haven’t rebranded your church in the last five years, your ministry is dated.
Rebranding is one of the most worthwhile investments you can make in 2018 to increase your effectiveness in reaching people far from God.
Rebranding is much more than creating a new logo – it involves identifying who you’re trying to reach, positioning them as the hero in your church’s story, and aligning everything (logo, font selection, color pallet, signage, etc.) to speak to them.
Right now, there’s no church out there more in need of rebranding than ours.
Our website is clunky and dated. We have this mishmash of colors, verbiage, and fonts all over the spectrum. When you get to 400+, it’s common to have a “federation of sub-ministries” as Bill Hybels calls it, where everyone is off doing their own thing regarding external facing marketing collateral.
For us that day is over. Between now and Easter we’re conducting a top-to-bottom rebranding effort here at CCV to bring consistency and uniformity across our entire church.
10 Steps To Rebrand Your Church
My guess is you’re probably due for a fine-tuning yourself. If so, here are ten steps I always encourage Senior Pastors I coach to take. They may help you.
1. Order a Ministry Area report for a 10-mile radius of your church.
2. Have staff and elders complete 200 community-wide door to door surveys which ask the following 3 questions:
Community Survey Questions
• Do you attend a church more than 2 times a month? (If yes, tell them thank you and move on. DO NOT FINISH SURVEY)
• If you were to consider going to a church, what kinds of things would they have to offer to get you to attend and come back a second time?
• On any given week what things do you and your family members participate in? Besides work? Like activities, groups, social functions?
(Do not hand them anything at this point. Or invite them to church. Nothing. Trust me on this. Just say “thank you” and be on your way.)
3. Create an avatar which will serve as the prototypical couple in your community. Based on your Percept Study and your community surveys, determine the age of this prototypical couple. Number and age of kids. Greatest needs, wants, weaknesses, desires, etc.
4. Once this information is in hand, buy copies for all staff and elders of Donald Miller’s Building A StoryBrand. It is hands-down the single best book for ministry I have ever read. Period. No exaggeration.
5. Create an overall BrandScript (Donald Miller language) for the church, then one for kids, students, adults, and worship departments.
6. Adjust the profiles you initially created of your prototypical couple based on your BrandScript.
7. Interview 3 different graphic designers. Give them your Avatar and BrandScript and tell them to check out the rebranding examples done by the amazing people at PlainJoe Studios. This will be everything they’ll need to inspire them to create initial concepts of an icon, font options, and a color palette for the entire church. I suggest getting 3 initial concepts from 3 designers because they can be hit or miss. Then once you select a designer and a direction you can finish separate identities for each department of your church that tie into the main identity.
8. Starting with all “outward facing” tools (website, social media, etc.) and working toward inward tools (programs, emails, wall colors, etc.) – bring everything into alignment with new brand.
9. Select ONE person on staff who will be responsible for brand alignment and compliance. Make it their goal to bring everything into compliance within 6-12 months.
10. Do NOT announce what you’re doing to the church at large. Software engineers use a term called “slipstream” where they introduce a change without calling attention to it (ex. the way Apple will update iPhones with IOS version 10,000.6.5 and just send it out. Let the excitement build as they see the transformation. If you announce it, people will expect “Disney” and be disappointed when much of the branding alignment is subtle.
Remember, rebranding is not about creating a “new” identity.
You already have an identity, and so do the people you’re trying to reach.
Rebranding is about bringing clarity to your identity and making it simple for the people you’re trying to reach to be a part of your story.
