Dear Friends,
I have been doing some work lately around our “branding.” It feels weird, maybe even a little crass, to talk about branding our church. It feels as if it is a commodity we sell or a faith product that is in competition with other faith products in the marketplace. Our faith, our church, our community are too important and complex to boil down to a few simple sound bites and a nice new logo. Branding is a way to create a cohesive message to send out into the world about who we are, what we do, and what makes Royal Oak First unique.
The first question this branding work asked was, “Who are your people?” or “What makes a Royal Oak First person a Royal Oak First person?” It was fun to think about what makes us unique.
I have had the pleasure of sitting with dozens of people over the last year who are finding a new spiritual home here at Royal Oak First. They tell me what they experience here is a place where faith is fun, real, and significant.
Fun: There is a lot of joy in this place. We love to laugh. We wear fun Christmas sweaters. We have Star Wars Sunday. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Real: We don’t pretend to have it all together and don’t expect others to have all together either. We are honest about hurts, hang ups, and habits. We have doubts and questions and places where we disagree.
Significant: We are a place that really tries to be a blessing to others. We believe what we do here matters and can literally change the world for the better. We believe that belonging to a community literally saves and changes lives so we strive to draw the circle wide to include everybody we can in this movement of love!
I guess if we need to brand ourselves, I’ll start there–Royal Oak First is a place where faith is fun, real, and significant.
I think I’d like to belong to a place like that.
Grace and Peace,