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Beware churches in the greater Chicagoland area.  Church Juice may be busting through your doors soon.  Well…kind of.  We’re actually more of a mosey-on-in, laid-back operation.  Anyway, after a fairly rough start to the new year, my wife and I find ourselves in the ever-popular Christian ritual of church shopping.  In some ways, it’s sort of exciting.  For the first time in awhile, we’ll be able to get a feel for what other churches are doing.  And as we visit each new church, I want to share with you what that church is doing in the area of communications.  The idea of Juice in the Loose isn’t to critique.  Instead, we want to show you some inspiration by examples of what’s working at a church.  Our first stop -- Harvest Bible Chapel in Naperville, IL. 

The most impressive thing to me about Harvest is how well all the communication materials I saw accurately represented the church I visited.  The website, signage, worship folder and in-service graphics all had a similar look and feel.  And all of it graphically represented the actual feeling I got being in the church.  Talk about great branding.

For example, when I pulled up their website to check them out, my first impression was that this was a modern, young, contemporary church.  I got that vibe from the simple, clean website design along with a modern logo.  As I looked around the site a little more, the other graphics and pictures (real people, not stock) supported that feel.

When we walked into the church, which appears to be a converted office building, the contemporary vibe was there as well.  As we walked down the stairs to the worship center, we found a whole area of couches and chairs where people were hanging out.  There was a café and welcome desk.  People were friendly with lots of smiles. 

And then, we headed in the worship center, with coffee in hand, which is something major I look for in a church.  That and solid theological teaching.  Anyway, the worship center, too, carried the same casual, contemporary feel: a small stage with three screens and a simple set.  The pre-service announcement slides were well designed and matched the style of everything else I saw. 

The welcome was casual.  The worship style was contemporary.  And the announcements were simple and engaging.  It was a pre-recorded video with an energetic young man and simple graphics.  The topics were limited to four things, I think, which is very manageable.

Hopefully, this gives you a little glimpse of how good an experience can be for a visitor when there’s consistent messaging and branding in all aspects.  The church was pretty much what I expected based on the website, which is good.  All of the graphics I saw had a cohesive feel and nothing stood out and being out of place. 

Thanks Harvest Bible Chapel in Naperville for a great experience!