Church Marketing Sucks

“It’s easy for large churches to do communications well, but what about small churches?”

I can’t even tell you the number of times I have heard that question, or one like it, and while I do understand the sentiment behind it (larger churches do tend to have more resources and a larger talent pool to pull from) I do not at all agree that large churches have the corner on the communications market.

That leads me to our latest Firestarter recipient, Trinity+Main Church in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Trinity+Main is a brand new church plant that is still in the early phases. Yet right from their beginning, I was impressed with their website, logo, social media, and video. They had a professional, clean and simple look that absolutely fits the culture they are in.

No large church budget, no established creative arts ministry—yet they were able to create something that many large churches would be envious of.

The look of Trinity+Main is clearly designed to connect with the demographic of Vancouver, and when I recently spoke with Trinity+Main Pastor Scott McTaggart he said “For us, planting in the city, it was an important piece because of the culture that we are on mission in. We are communicating to a culture that is very much inundated with social media and branding from all different sides, and while we aren’t trying to compete with that, we are trying to enter the conversation.”

One of the things I love most about Trinity+Main is their pieces aren’t just graphically pleasing, they are also incredibly intentional and designed to communicate the mission that Trinity+Main is called to. A great example of this is their church logo. At first glance, it looks like a bold font with what Scott called the Trinity+Main “plus sign.” However in conversation it came out that they have four primary values (Up, In, Out, Rest) and they will have four vehicles that will carry out their vision (gatherings, discipleship huddles, community groups, leadership teams) giving meaning to the four parts of their logo. And the “plus sign”? It’s actually a cross that illustrates the intersection of the kingdom of God and humanity which is huge for their church because that’s what their church name Trinity+Main represents.

Are you starting to see how intentional everything is? Great communication isn’t just great-looking design, it’s great-looking design that communicates an even deeper message, and that’s an area that Trinity+Main is excelling.

Even though Trinity+Main is still in the early phases, their hard work in this area is beginning to pay off as they have already had people join their community after finding them online or following them on Twitter before their church has even begun holding Sunday services.

Good communication matters and Trinity+Main is a great example that good communication doesn’t take a large church budget or a huge team of creatives.

Thank you to Scott and the entire team at Trinity+Main for all of your hard work in the area of church communication and design and congratulations on being our latest Firestarter recipient.