Thanks to everyone who came to our workshop about being a welcoming church at the Edmonton Day of Encouragement. I appreciate your interaction and great questions. A few of you asked for a copy of the presentation, so here it is.
Certain events can become a catalyst for change for churches. At Life Baptist Church in Las Vegas, it was a move to a new building. It was a chance for the church of nearly 300 people to start with a clean branding slate to better present their message. It was time to clean up the inconsistent messaging and branding they had in the past.
“I can't overhype the importance of branding. Don't be afraid of it,” says Creative Arts Guy Matt Phillips “The truth is that you are already sending a...
Graphic designer Paul Nielsen wrote a really interesting piece about church graphic design. Nielsen says churches often find themselves in one of two camps. They either aren’t thinking about design at all or they’re way overthinking it.
I always say everything a church does communicates something, so why not intentionally think about it. And that’s really the philosophy Nielsen follows when looking at churches who don’t put much thought into their signs, brochures, worship folders, etc. ...
If you’re a podcast kind of guy or gal, check out our conversation with David Tonen on the Ministry Story podcast. Once you get past some of our short juicy self promotion, we just couldn’t help ourselves, David and I dive into talking about some easy things your church can do now to improve your communications plan. It’s based on our free white paper called “Low Hanging Fruit: Six Things You Can Easily Accomplish in the Next Three Months.” More specifically, we expand on three of those...
Willow Creek is one of those churches that can be divisive for people. One side loves the worship experience. Others think this massive church has been a bad influence on smaller congregations around the country. So I wasn’t completely sure what my reaction would be as my wife and I visited the main campus this past weekend.
I think the most successful communications achievement at Willow Creek is making a big place feel personable and non-intimidating. Finding a place to park was easy. ...
On a recent trip to Costa Rica, there were signs along the roadway that always caught my eye and made me laugh. They were signs wanting you to pull off the road to eat what they said was “typical food” (or sometimes “tipical food”). It was funny because my American marketing brain couldn’t imagine advertising any product as simply typical. But as I saw more and more of these signs, I realized it wasn’t some sort of broken English attempt to advertise to travelers, but instead a common way to...
There were several things that stood out, in a good way, on a recent Sunday trip to Community Christian Church in Naperville, IL. My wife and I were at the Yellow Box main campus (aptly named since the building is a big, yellow square). One of the things I noticed right away was the awesome signage. There were lots of the brightly colored, easy to read signs that made it easy to find our way around.
Throughout my adult life when I visit a church, the lack of signage has been one of my...
The lack of signs is something I noticed the most when my wife and I were trying to find a church several years ago when we moved to Chicago. We would get lost in a building just looking for the sanctuary. Sometimes we would go in some back entrance, not knowing where the main, popular entry was, and there were just no signs telling us where to go. Other times we’d go in the right way, but still couldn’t easily find things like a welcome center or a café all because there were no signs.
So...
Our latest free resource has been posted in the training section. We're taking a look at six things you can do to improve your church communications that won't take a huge time commitment.
This white paper looks at these topics: website auditing, spring cleaning, signage, volunteer training (refresher of church's vision and why it matters), creating a Facebook page and limiting service announcements.
You can download it now by clicking here.
As I’ve cruised around the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, I’ve been on the lookout for examples of good marketing or good communications. I have to say, I think the work the NRB has done this year on the graphics and signs for the convention are nice and fit the image of the organization. It’s sort of a multi-depth display where the graphics flow from one poster to the next.
But a conversation one of the nights reminded me that no matter how nice a design is if it doesn’t...
