Here is a response I gave to the following blog entry on 22 Words:

Sermon series branding: If your church does it, does it help? If they don’t, why not?

August 2, 2008 at 8:30 am ·

It seems like there’s an increasing trend of churches creating complete designs—logos, websites, previews, commercials, hype—around each new sermon series.

Here was my response:

Good question. Perhaps it is a question of why, how, and who. Why are you doing it? How does this fit with the vision/mission that God has given your community? Who are you hoping to appeal to?

As we can see above, many have indicated that they are beyond the flash and the advertisement. Others find it helpful to use multimedia as a means to connect with their people. If your community is in the middle of a highly affluent, tech savvy culture, then that might be an influencing factor.

Where do I stand? Well, on the one-hand I don’t really care. A good friend of mine pastors a church and they have banners, signs, theme videos, etc. However, he spends way more time preparing the message than worrying about the aesthetics. However, there are many folks who buy the whole package from a larger, more ‘influential’ church and then hopes that will be what is necessary to honor God and make disciples. That seems a bit lazy and I would argue that there are deeper issues at hand than whether or not they are ‘branding’ their sermon series.

Lastly, it would be prudent to understand the answers to the questions listed above before passing judgment on whether that practice is appropriate or not. It’s easy for me to forget what it was like being lost, what it was like being a young Christian, and be a lot more critical than I have the right to be. As a young preacher, I have to point myself back to John 13 and ask myself the question, “Does this honor God, teach the people, and convey humility?” I believe that in some contexts we must humble ourselves, even if that means a brochure/theme/web design in order to best serve our people. Even if we’re too mature in our faith to worry about silly things like that…

Thoughts?