Will Mancini

Kent Shaffer at Church Relevance shares some good stuff. I appreciate the fact that they do what they do to serve the Church. And he has learned the “big official list” gets lots of attention in the church leader space. When it comes to his blog ranking lists and conference lists I am usually one of the first to read and share.

With that as background, I have to say that I’m a little confused by Kent’s recent post that shows, in his opinion, the “Top 77 Church Logos of 2011” and I thought I’d respond with a few thoughts.

Let’s start with this—the statement I like most in Kent’s post is this one: “…a good logo communicates the unique qualities of its brand.” The way we say this at Auxano Design is that your logo should communicate vision visually. Of course, it can’t communicate everything about your church, but it can serve as a visual front door that matches what people will experience once they step through that door.

Now, I’ll move on to my questions.

1. 77 top logos? Really?
I’m not sure that a list of 77 anything is all that helpful, other than as a gallery that we can all peruse and say, “Those are nice.” Especially within the context of communicating vision visually, certainly there are some among that 77 (or beyond that 77) that are more effective at communicating vision and deserve to be examined more closely. I’ll single out a few from Kent’s list below for this reason.

2. Where are the stories?
When the list has this many entries and there is very little context of how these 77 were chosen, I want to hear the stories of these churches. Why did that church choose this specific logo? What about their vision or unique calling is communicated through this specific design? There are some great looking logos on this list that could possibly be communicating things that aren’t connected to vision and mission, but there’s no way to know that without the background story.

3. Why do unused concepts make the top 77?
If the true essence of a great logo is that it communicates vision visually or, in Kent’s words, that it “communicates the unique qualities” of a brand, how can we include unused logo concepts in the list? That serves as a signal to me that the list is more about what looks nice rather than what communicates the uniqueness of a specific congregation. Therefore we have reinforced the classic problem of church design: slapping together pretty pictures without meaning. (Read Picasso’s Missing Subject, my contribution to the Outspoken book on church communications.)

Those are probably my initial three questions about Kent’s list. From his list, however, I’ll pull out a few to examine more closely…because I think they are more effective.

Christ Church (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

From a brief look at their website, Christ Church seems to have done a good job of choosing a logo that connects with their unique way of communicating their vision. They talk about being a “gathering of people coming together to leave a personal and eternal ‘fingerprint’ on the world around us.” This type of language can form the foundation of a unique way of interacting with the world, inviting people into this kind of life. I love it. And their logo, which is a cross made of fingerprints, communicates the personal nature of this invitation and how each person can make a contribution to it. Great stuff.

Harvest Church (Mobile, AL)

Here’s a great example of communicating vision visually. While I don’t necessarily think that this is the most beautiful logo on the list, it communicates well. Their tagline, which is almost directly pulled from their mission statement, is “discover your destiny.” Their logo communicates that this is a journey (with the roadway image) and the sun-like shape at the top (illustrating the destiny piece). Not only that, but the roadway has a subtle “H” in it, in case you missed it. Again, not my favorite from a pure aesthetic point of view, but it connects directly to their mission and communicates it well without a ton of effort to explain it, which makes it stand out to me.

The Foundry (Houston, TX)

Of course I’m going to mention one of the logos we designed at Auxano, right? I won’t repeat it here, but I already shared a short case study on this church and their logo here.

New City Church (Phoenix, AZ)

I love the way this logo connects with the way New City talks about their mission. Listen to this, pulled from their website:

“Cities are the intersection of art, politics, and business. New City exists to engage culture where it’s created, weaving the story of God into the story of Phoenix. The desire of the church is not simply to gather on Sundays, but to meet you where you live, work, study and play. The green section in the New City logo represents an oasis among urban streets. Likewise, New City believes that following God breathes new life into our culture. We believe we can actively change our world by shifting the priority set from money, success, and fame to worship, community and mission.”

I couldn’t have articulated it that clearly, but their logo certainly communicates intersection and city, and the colored section makes you want to ask, “What’s different about that block?” The answer they offer: it’s an oasis among urban streets. That’s a great logo and a great mission.

What about you?

The real question that I want to raise is this: what does your logo communicate? Does it say something unique about your church, inviting people to find out more? Then, whether it made Kent’s list of 77 or not, it’s a top logo.

Thanks, Kent, for your time in searching out great logos and keeping the conversation going about how we can, as the Church, use design to effectively communicate vision visually to our congregations and to the world.

John Piper has a lot to say to church leaders. But he often doesn’t address vision casting directly. This video doesn’t necessarily present new ideas, but it is nice to hear the fundamentals of vision expressed from different Christian leaders. It’s also a great snapshot of a “church unique” mission statement.

I received the heads up on this video by Bill Mancini (my Dad) on the Auxano team and some of staff at Concord Baptist in Knoxville who are working through Church Unique.

It was great to be at the Right Now conference in Dallas today. Here are the resources I referenced during my speaking:

6 Elements of Compelling Vision

• Here is the Vision Casting Spider Diagram: Articulating Vision Proper
• Recommended Exercise: Listen to Dr. MLKs “I Have a Dream Speech” with this tool

The Future of Church Strategy

• If you have an iPhone or iPad download the free Leadia App from Leadership Network
• You can purchase FLUX: Four Paths to the Future. There is a chapter on 3 K
• Here is the  Vision Frame Overview and other related Vision Frame links.
• Check out the Vision Frame of RIGHT NOW

The FREE Church Unique Visual Summary

• Go here to download this 52-page graphical summary.
• It can be read in 10 minutes!

If you joined me at Right Now today:

• Consider subscribing via e-mail to my blog.
• Use the search box to hunt for relevant stuff.

Instead of counting Christians, we need to weigh them. – Dallas Willard

Clear vision requires clarity about the results you are after. Any result you might desire for your ministry will fit into three broad categories - input results, output results and impact results.

INPUT RESULTS

Input results in the church world focus on the number of people and dollars that “come into” the church. Input results are important. You don’t have a church without them. It’s also important to measure input results. You can’t lead well without knowing them.

Common ways we talk about input results include the “ABC’s” (attendance, buildings and cash) or “nickels and noses” or “butts and bucks”  Every week, thousands of churches across the land will print their input results on a worship bulletin or review them in the next elders meeting. Input results inform the functional dashboard of the American church.

OUTPUT RESULTS

Output results refer to actual life-change outcomes that God intends for followers of Christ individually and together. Examples of output results include the quality of a believer’s prayer life, the skillfulness in sharing the gospel, or the development of patience as one of the fruits of the Spirit.

There are hundreds of biblical phrases and concepts to capture the wonder of gospel-centered output results. From terms like “spiritual formation” and “transformed living,” to “Christlikeness,” and “full devotion to Christ.” I have never met a church without some banner, slogan or mission that points to output results. Output language shapes the primary intent of all the pastors I have ever met. Yet while output results shape intent, most pastors rely on input results to validate the mission’s success. Output results, not input, are the only true measure of the mission.

IMPACT RESULTS

Impact results capture the broader effect of the church in the surrounding city or community. Think of it as the positive difference that is made from the sum of believers influencing a region or pursuing a specific kind of social impact together. An example of an impact result would be lowering the number of homeless people or reducing the percent of teen-age pregnancy or increasing the high-school graduation rate in an area.

A tree is a useful analogy to relate input, output, and impact results. Let’s imagine a Florida orange tree soaking in the sun and drinking in gallons of rainwater. We could actually measure exposure to light and absorption of water as input results. After all you can’t have healthy citrus without them. Output results reflect the total number of good oranges produced. Impact results are the happy faces and healthy bodies of little Joey and Suzi as they guzzle down fresh OJ with their scrambled eggs.

What is the significance of these three kinds of results for vision casting? That answer is for another post.

Meanwhile you might enjoy my new book from which this post was taken. It’s my first published work since Church Unique on innovation and vision. The title is FLUX: Four Paths to the Future, which is available to iPad and iPhone users through Leadership Network’s new app called Leadia.

Steve Jobs, one of the world’s most influential inventors, died today.  If you have the slightest interest in pursuing a personal vision, this 15 minute video is a must watch. And if Steve Job’s innovation has impacted your life, you will like these three life lessons even more.

Life Lesson #1: FUTURE ORIENTATION- You have to trust in something.

• Trust that it will all work out in the end.
• Dropping out of college allowed me to “drop in” on what I wanted to learn.
• Most of what I stumbled in on turned out to be priceless down the road.
• Trust that the dots will connect down the road.
• You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only looking backwards.

Life Lesson #2: LOSS AND LOVE- You have got to find what you love.

• I was lucky I found what I love to do early in life
• After 10 years and building a 2 billion dollar company with 4000 employees I got fired.
• I had been rejected but I was still in love.
• It turned out that getting fired from apple was the best thing that ever happened to me.
• The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again; I was less sure about everything.
• It freed me to enter the most creative period of my life.
• And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
• If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, don’t settle.  As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

Life Lesson #3: DEATH – Your time is limited, so don’t waste it.

• When I was 17 I read a quote, “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you will most certainly be right.”
• I have looked myself in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
• Remembering that I will be dead soon is the most important tool I have ever encountered to help me make the big decisions in life.
• You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart.
• Death is the destination we all share.
• Death is the best invention of life. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
• Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition- everything else is secondary.
• Stay hungry, stay foolish.