So today’s comic might be a bit of a mixed message, so forgive me…

On one hand, I am a graphic designer-type, and I think marketing does good important work.  The way churches present themselves visually really is a form of marketing.  Everything from your building structure and furniture choices to your website communicates something about your community to anyone who bothers to notice.  There is a big push in evangelism conversations to give your church a “brand,” a graphically designed coherence to everything you publish on paper or on the web.  The brand needs to be simple, consistent, representative, and instantly recognizable in your community.  You’ll notice the churches that do this well because you see their bumper stickers everywhere you go, you get their postcards in your mail at Christmas and Easter.  I think branding is important, perhaps primarily, to reduce confusion and increase consistency in your church’s communication.

Your brand is bigger than a graphic design though.  When people walk into your building, it’s architecture and furniture can convey that they are entering anything from a warehouse to a funeral parlor.  Your parking and signage can lend to smooth direction of confusion about where to go.  As with graphic design, caring for the atmospherics of your building and church property can also help reduce confusion and increase familiarity for the people who frequent your space.

Here’s where the big but comes.  But I think that it is easy for churches to focus on the exterior because it is something we can control and get excited about.  It is something that is known, something that has immediate results.

Jesus once dropped this sick burn: “I know you Pharisees burnish the surface of your cups and plates so they sparkle in the sun, but I also know your insides are maggoty with greed and secret evil.  Stupid Pharisees!  Didn’t the One who made the outside also make the inside?  Turn both your pockets and your hearts inside out and give generously to the poor; then your lives will be clean, not just your dishes and your hands” (Luke 11:39-41, The Message).

My beef with branding is that it has become the typical way churches burnish the surface while their insides offer nothing of God’s love to the world.  Our cool logos and catchphrases might make us recognizable out in the world as just another business vying for their attention, another place to give money, another good option among a thousand options.  I was moved by this quote from church father, Tertullian:

“See,” they say, “how they love one another.’…We who have become so mingled in mind and soul have no hesitation about sharing what we have.  Everything is in common among us–except our wives.  -Tertullian, Robert Dick Snider, ed. “Apology,” Christian & Pagan in the Roman Empire: The Witness of Tertullian.

The way we live our lives as a church should be our brand.  I believe that the church can truly love one another, and love the community, in such an extraordinary and selfless way that people won’t need the logo to know that you go to that church.  I once worked for this type of church.  We had become heavily involved with the homeless population of our small town, such that the homeless started coming to worship.  It never failed, when someone in the community found out I was a part of that church, they always mentioned, “Yeah, that’s the church that takes care of the homeless.”  I work for a church that is trying to do that now, where members are getting heavily involved in the affordable housing crisis in our community, not only helping those with emergency needs, but advocating to the city government and with local housing developers to create affordable housing in our community.

John Wesley challenged early small groups to be countercultural by wearing clothes below their class, so that the poorest would feel comfortable in their presence.  Martin Luther challenged the church to always understand God’s power through the crucifixion. As our churches have conversations about branding, about appealing to the masses, about  growth and evangelism, I hope that we do not quickly settle on conversations about the improving the outside of the cup.  Those conversations aren’t bad, but if they are not being had through the lens of the cross, if they are not being had in conjunction with a discerning eye for the needs of the poorest in our communities, how is the church any different from the millions of other great options out there?