Branding 101 for Churches: How are we perceived?

This begins a series of posts on the concept of branding in the Church.

We will cover:

  • The branding of Christianity
  • The branding of denominations
  • The branding of individual congregations
  • The branding of each Christian

The branding of Christianity

“Branding” is a marketing/business term. In short, your “brand” explains how you are perceived. This can happen on at least two levels.

There is our own ego. How do we perceive ourselves?

Second: How are perceived by people we interact with?

Both are big questions.

For now, we will totally side-step the biggest question: How are we perceived by the God we worship?

Christians have done a great deal of good in history. This has often been clouded by stupid — usually selfish — ideas that became embedded into our leadership structures and became one with our culture.

Much of the world (incorrectly) views America as a Christian nation. Christians, were in fact, front and center in the rise of democracy. Some modern historians try to minimize this by stressing a Deist emphasis, but if George and Thomas, James and John and maybe even Ben were here today, they would likely argue that they are Christians.

The history of Christianity predates the rise of democracy by many centuries. During these centuries, Christianity rose from obscurity on the fringes of the known world to a dominating cultural and political force. It began to implode in the years of the Renaissance and Reformation.

Much of Christianity is still trying to hang on to our medieval roots. The final blow to this thinking may be social media.  (Click to tweet). Time will tell. These early years of social media may be pivotal years in the history of Christianity!

Meanwhile, religious social media experts would do well to study the topic of branding.

Let’s look at our branding legacy. Many a city was plundered in the name of Christianity. Many a life was taken. Many a voice wa silenced. Talents were restrained by the leaders of Christianity. America is still coping with the damage done by our Christian foreparents who condoned slavery and the abuse of indigenous Americans and the marginalizing of women. The Bible was quoted to support many a wrong.

We might say, “That’s history.” But it is also our “brand.” We can improve it, but we cannot ignore it. We should never want to ignore it. Our memory protects our future.

Branding is something businesses take very, very seriously. Businesses want people to understand their products and services and to tell good stories about their interactions with them. They want people to think good things when they see their logo.

Religious groups want this too. We want people to think good things at the sign of the cross (or any other symbol of our faith). This is made more difficult by a growing secular bias.

America’s Separation of Church and State, designed to help religion flourish, has actually assisted in creating a chasm between the church and society. It’s difficult for churches to get serious attention in the press — unless major laws have been broken. It is equally difficult to team with government on projects of common interest. Both sides of the equation want cooperation . . . .but!

The way to bypass this cultural bias is to concentrate on branding from the bottom up. Each individual Christian is free to tell the story. Individual Christians have the best chance of being heard today — even over the clamor of centuries of abuses.

We’ll study this more in upcoming posts.