In this sermon the pastor explains the recent rebranding effort at Columbia Presbyterian Church, including new signage and a logo. He recounts the team’s initial skepticism about investing in branding, emphasizing that the goal was simply a new website and visual identity. Through a consulting process, the congregation was prompted to ask deeper questions about why the church exists, who it serves, and how its mission connects to the surrounding community. The consultant highlighted that external audiences care less about internal statements of vision and more about belonging, stability, and practical help navigating life’s challenges. The pastor shares insights about the local, often secular, Northwest community’s desire for a place of refuge, support with financial and familial pressures, and a sense of shared journey—what the church calls the “Life Together” thread. The branding project became a catalyst for reflecting on the gospel’s role in helping people live and wrestle with life together, rather than an individualistic faith. The sermon concludes with encouragement to notice the new signs, appreciate the effort, and return to the broader mission of serving the community.
Chapters
This is meant to be a place for those that are wrestling with life and with God, and sometimes with part of ourselves. You know, we— you may have noticed, if you're new with us, you wouldn't have noticed a thing, but if you're new with us, we got some new church signage up and a new logo. We're going to talk about that during the Life of Columbia. But when we started that project, it resulted in kind of a thread growing in life together. But when we started that project, we were actually pretty skeptical about it. We knew we had to redo our website, and we lacked some signs and things like that. We made sure we told our consultants upfront, "Hey, we don't want to be a really, really, really well-branded church. That's not what we're about." And you know, along the way though, we learned a lot. The real purpose was to spend some time just as a program staff with some of our teams and try to figure out why does this place matter. As a people, why do we matter? Why does this body of people matter? Why does our mission matter? And why does it matter who does this place What does this place exist for? And if we're going to tell a story about this place or our God or its mission or a story of discipleship or of care or of families and generations coming together, what would we say? That was the purpose of our project. And when our consultant came, he told us that we were gonna come up with a thread. And let me tell you something, I was sure in the back of my head, I never said it out loud, but I was like, we're not gonna use this thing. We already have a mission and a vision and values and all that stuff that we need. I just want us to do this work together and get a new website and a logo out of it, great. But when we sat down and did the work, one of the things he said to us was, "You know, lots of churches have all this stuff that you've talked about, but all those things are for insiders. You say you want to bless the community and you want to be a place of care and refuge and purpose. You want to serve. Well, all that stuff you've told me about mission and vision and values, they're not looking for that." Nobody outside in your community cares about those things. They're looking for a place of belonging and meaning. And in an era when everything feels unstable and unclear, when no one industry or moment or institution feels dependable, people are longing for a place where they can do life together. We discovered that many people in our county aren't opposed to church community, you know, in the so-called secular Northwest, whatever. They're often looking for a church or a place where they can belong, and often a church with some tradition. That surprised us. But mostly what we learned about people in our county, the people that we say we're called to serve, is that they're looking for some help navigating life. They're balancing a million things: college debt, overwhelming numbers of activities, kids, sometimes trying to figure out how to help their parents. Will I ever be able to buy a home? Is my rent going to go higher this year? Can I afford it? What's going to happen with my Social Security? Can I just find some friends? Because life is hard enough and I can't do this alone. And a lot of people apparently are asking, am I even doing life well? And how would I know? Is anyone else in the same boat as me? And so this idea that's here growing in Life Together, our thread, it started to make some sense to us. There are thousands of people around us who want to know God and who want to have a sense that they can journey on this with somebody else trying to figure out life. You've noticed the new signs and things like that I mentioned in the sermon. I hope you love the logo. It's just a logo, friends. Our mission is much bigger than any signage that we might put up or logo. Our church name is the same. The colors are a little bit different. We worked hard to do this work because we wanted to spend some time just understanding who's around us and what they're longing for in our community and how the gospel people might speak to that. I hope you get around and see some of the signs. The gym floor looks amazing. Folks were in there painting walls, and they put the logo in and put up new pads and things. There's some excitement amongst the staff and some of our team members for all of this. But ultimately, it was just a chance for us to say, hey, who do we exist for? And really, we exist for a lot of people that are around us who just are trying to navigate life. And we hope that they might come to have a sense that this gospel that we serve not just our church, but this gospel that we serve, might enable them to do that well, this life and this wrestling well. And they need to do it together with somebody, and we need to do it together. This is not an individual me and Jesus thing. We do this work that we do as a community together as the body of Christ. And so we hope you love it, but come tomorrow morning, we're going to get back to the mission that we're called to.
