Why and How Should Your Church Rebrand

Today we're going to talk about what it looks like to rebrand your church. Are you ready? Because it's time.

You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network.

Hello, heroes. My name is Tom Pounder, and this is the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. This is the podcast where I bring on ministry leaders, and we talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. Today I'm excited to bring back my friend Stan Rada. It's been way too long since I had Stan on the podcast and I brought him back because he just rebranded his church. He moved to Kansas City about a year and a half ago and they did some amazing things, but they just went through a rebrand. And we're gonna look at what it took for him to do that. What's the process? How did he get people on board? What does it look like? And how can we be encouraged if we're thinking about rebranding our church or our ministry? And we're going to just look at his steps that he took and how it can encourage us today. So I'm really excited to have him on the podcast. But before he gets on and we do the interview, I want to talk about thechurch.digital. At thechurch.digital, we have a great site full of podcasts, blogs, resources, coaching, and cohorts that are designed to help you in your online ministry, whether it's just online ministry or whether it's metaverse ministry or fidgetal, where you have a combination of in-person and digital ministry resources. What does it look like for you to do that successfully? At thechurch.digital, we can help and we'd love for you to check it out. So go to thechurch.digital today and be encouraged in what you're doing with online ministry. All right, so now without any further ado, let's get an interview with Stan Rada. All right, with me right now is my friend, Stan Rada, the friend who just abandoned me. I mean, he left me for Kansas City over a year ago, and now he doesn't like to talk to me anymore.

That's not true, Tom. That's not true. I still love talking to you.

You text me TikToks. That's all you do now. That's all you care about me.

Listen, if you want to talk about that, we can talk about the stuff you send me on Instagram. Yeah.

Okay, you can't say that kind of stuff. Oh, okay. This is my podcast, not your podcast. Stan, I'm pumped to have you back on the podcast. Yeah, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, things are going really well over here in Kansas City, man. I'm glad we could finally... just get back together on this thing. It's great.

Yes, it's awesome. And I threw you a curveball today to telling you that since the last time you were on my podcast, we do video and audio. Now this is no longer just an audio podcast.

It's legit. Now we're going big time here. We're going big time.

Just kidding. Yeah, I wish it was a big time. All right. So, Stan, for anybody who does not know who you are and have not listened to my podcast for a number of years, you are one of the most frequent guests until the past year and a half when you abandoned me. But you were one of my most frequent guests. Just tell people who you are and what you do.

Yeah, so I am a lead pastor at Lee's Summit Community Church in Lee's Summit, Missouri. The abandonment that Tom keeps referencing is a year and a half ago, I left my church in Virginia, my role in Virginia, where I was, where I was on staff with Tom for eight, nine, ten years, something like that.

Yeah, over ten years.

Over ten years. And so, yeah, we were on staff together a long time, and now I'm currently leading a church in Kansas City, Missouri.

Yeah, and I got to come out and visit you sometime.

Yeah, man, come on out. I'll treat you to the best barbecue in the country.

Oh, yeah, see, I do like barbecue.

The best is here.

I bet you some people would debate you on that, maybe even fight you on that.

Yeah, they could, but they'd be wrong. That's okay.

okay so you you came in and now you're the lead pastor uh and so that how has that been going from when you went when you were a campus pastor so you were the lead pastor this of this uh campus but now you're the lead pastor here have were there a lot of changes or a lot of different things that you had to get used to now that again you're the lead um

Yeah, I mean, for sure. You know, probably the most obvious one and simple answer is, you know, when you're the lead guy and you're the one trying to cast all the vision, you know, everybody's kind of relying on you for information and details and schedules and just a lot of things like that to start making their own plans. So the staff's kind of waiting on you to chart a course so that they can build their teams and build their budgets and get things set. And so there was definitely an increase in not necessarily workload, but I would say kind of the pressure of that workload just because so many people are relying on me for some information and whatnot. So it's been an interesting year and a half kind of settling into a new pace of life. Kansas City also is very different from Northern Virginia. So one of the biggest transitions was trying to slow down a little bit in terms of just pace of life. So that's been an interesting transition as well. Yeah, so there's been some things like that for sure that are definitely different here than they were back in Virginia.

yeah that's awesome that's cool um well you i i no doubt again you walked into a really good environment in a good situation um with uh at your current church um but changes obviously whenever you enter a new role changes happen and so you had to deal with a variety of different working through different changes at your church. But one thing I want to focus on in this podcast is to focus on the fact that you just changed your logo at your church, but also updated some banners and did some different things like that. What brought about that change? Why did you all decide to do that?

Yeah, I mean, that's probably about a nine month long answer. When I got on board, my goal was to make no changes for the first year. I think that's one of those kind of standard ministry things. You're like, yeah, go in and learn for a year and get settled before you do anything. And we started to do a lot with our vision. One of the things I looked for was a church that was already roughly on track with what I thought I was supposed to be doing. And once I found that place, I just wanted to be with people no matter where it was. I wanted to be with people who were trying to go the same way I was. So what ended up happening as we, myself and what we call our lead team, um the three or four of us kind of senior level staff if you will we've been really developing the vision frame uh developing core value language uh working hard at mission and vision and funnels and assimilation and all the organizational stuff and really trying to get us to a place where we have some clarity surrounding our vision and what we believe God's having would have us to do. And I really didn't have in mind to do anything with the logo or branding or any of the stuff. I didn't like the logo that we had when I got here. I thought it was kind of cheesy looking, but I didn't really want to do anything with it, primarily because there were a lot more important things to focus on. But then as we developed the vision, we started to ask some of our creative folks to help us with telling some of the stories about the vision that was developing. We started to ask them to help us put some things together visually to try to tell the story of kind of what was happening and what was going on. And really what happened was one conversation led to another and a very creative group of people that I'm working with, very talented, Here at our church. They basically came to a meeting and said, it really feels like it's time to rebrand like we need to tell the story of what's going on and it needs to look different. And I said, Okay, all right, and that led to should we change the church name should we do this I'm like okay. Like, I don't want to be fired just yet. Let's not change the church name. But let's talk branding and let's just talk about what that means. And so really, it was not something I necessarily set out to do. I really set out to chart the course for the vision and the mission and to get us chasing that. And then just kind of out from that flowed this story of like. Hey, we need to find a way visually to tell people what God's doing here. And that led to this whole conversation of let's change the logo. Let's update the colors. Let's paint the lobby. Let's get new signs. And all of a sudden we were kind of off and rolling on this six to nine month journey of just updating things to tell the story.

that's awesome what i hear you saying again is that it wasn't your idea you didn't come in saying we got to change all this stuff i didn't like the the way it looked but we got to change you focused on more higher level stuff and what again i loved is that you let your creative people come to you with this idea And that just shows a great leadership right there where you're not closed fisted, but you're open handed and saying, you know what, we're going to just go with this as we go. I'm going to focus on this stuff. And then people brought things to you. They felt empowered, enabled. They felt that they could come to you and say, we think about this. And I like how you were just open to it. Obviously, you didn't like the old logos anyway, so it was probably an easy sell.

It was an easy win. Yeah.

they didn't have to sell me hard but i'm i imagine as you went to your church okay so so once they came kind of brought you this process how how did you present this to the church did your chair church have to approve this in some way no yeah we we don't really have that kind of a set up here so we didn't have to do that um some churches probably would have but that's not that's not our current environment

So the way it worked for me was really thinking about it from the perspective of early adopters, core people, leadership principles like run with your runners. And so what we did was we started to just kind of trickle out the idea to a few key people. Another guy in our church has done some rebranding and marketing things for some pretty big companies in the country. And we brought him in and did this whole project with him to kind of work through a bunch of the language. We took it to our elders and we said, hey, here's kind of what's happening with the vision frame. Here's where we're going as a mission, as a church. And here's kind of what we're thinking about in terms of just what kind of visual do we want to share with the community that says who we are and what we're about. And our current look to the community does not convey the image of what God is doing with us now. So what we ended up doing was we we kind of we just basically shared it with some small groups that way. We had our staff on board, elders and a few core people. And then I, I had kind of strategically designed an on mission series where we walked through basically our strategic plan and core values. We just finished here recently over the last week or so. And as a part of that series, on our third out of fourth Sunday, we did a series on mission where we just talked very specifically about how we believe God was inviting us to be a part of the mission. And we had been telling our church for a couple of months now, hey, don't miss September 25th. It's going to be a big day. We have a surprise. It's going to be fun. We're going to do one service. We have this whole big thing. and um so basically they knew something was coming um they saw us updating the paint in the lobby uh changing a few of the furniture kind of items just to update the whole look um and we did a whole bunch of things with it but basically on september 25th as we unveiled it we had a huge celebration. We called it Community Day. We had one service. We had nine baptisms. We unveiled the logo. We went through our history and we found seven or eight people who had been at our church and just had been impacted and were doing ministry as a result. One of those, as Andrew Burke told from We the Kingdom, he was here as one of our worship guys for a while. So we have him on video just talking about what LSCC meant to him. So we did this kind of history of this is what God has done. And now here's what God is about to do. God is not done with our church. God is moving us forward. But here's these stories along the way. And then our founding pastor from 1988 is actually still around. He's a full-time missionary to Nepal. But he's still in the area. So we actually had him do about a three minute video where he talked about the core of the church from 1988. And and then basically we allowed his video to be the one that kind of unveiled this new logo. We did the logo. We did nine baptisms and then we dropped fifteen hundred balloons out of the ceiling. and it was just a lot of fun but that's how the congregation actually found out about it was a part of a huge day where we you know dropped balloons had baptisms and watched the chiefs in the pavilion so it was it was a lot of fun you had to watch the chiefs well of course we did

we're in kansas city that's what we do on sunday afternoon what a build-up what a strategic way to unveil all this stuff to in a celebration you celebrated the whole thing but you were building up to it thanks stan you're a better leader than i thought you were

We put out like storyboard paper two or three weeks in advance. We let people write down favorite memories from the last 34 years. They got to put pictures on it. We pulled out old church directories, told old stories. One of our missionaries we support was here one of the weeks. She was on stage sharing about her work. So it was a really neat... It was work for about six to nine months. And then the buildup to September 25th was about... seven weeks long worth of announcements and videos and just really built up to this kind of big day and um and our whole point in it was just to say we're not doing a logo for a logo sake we're doing a logo because when people in the community ask you hey what is that what's that about you can tell them the story of our church what god is doing here and so it was meant to be much deeper than just well we're bored with a logo so we're redoing it you know it was more than that

this is awesome this is so encouraging so if anybody's listening right now i hope you're taking notes because this is a great way to kind of rebrand uh and relaunch some stuff yeah and you did um let me ask you this have did you get any pushback any pushback from people

No, we changed all of our external signage. We put tarps and stuff over them so nobody would see it leading up to the day. Pulled those day of, revealed them, and people loved it. They thought it was special and fun. um it made sense to them i i think for changes like that where people give pushback is if they don't see the need for like the why and so like i mean this i don't know how many people are watching video wise but that's the new logo and inside of it is an l and an s for lee summit community church And we strategically designed the repeating lines on purpose for our disciple making passion to see multiplication to multiple generations. We purposely designed it to look kind of like Art Deco. So when you come to Kansas City, Art Deco is a really big thing here. You see it in the Kansas City Royals logo, the City of Fountains logo. It really reflects who we are and where God has us planted. So the logo may not mean a whole bunch to people in New York or wherever, but to us it means something because it's telling our story of what God's doing with us now. And so I don't think the church really had a negative reaction to it because they understood why. It made sense to them. But if you just go around changing things just because... you run the risk of people going, I don't know, what's this all about? I don't know why you had to do this, but it made sense in this case because we were able to connect it to vision.

Yeah. And and again, you had a lot of people involved in the process. Yes. Like that, you know, the more people involved in the process, it's not just a stands doing this. Right. Hey, we are doing this and we're working on it. And as I'm like visualizing this of what you're doing, it makes me think of bar the bar show on one of the channels with Tapper and how he redoes Bar Rescue, how he redoes the bars and changes it from one to another. And he does this big reveal and everyone's excited. So let me ask you this. Has this encouraged your staff at all? Has this inspired them in some way?

Yeah, I think it's been super encouraging for the staff. I think like most churches, the staff here, when I came on board in June of 21, they had been through a lot since March of 20. And I think they were tired and looking for clarity of vision and where they were going as a staff team and as a church. And so as we established the vision and the mission itself, I think the logo sort of kind of came around at a decent time to simply give like some life to it. It almost was this like... tangible visual thing that people could see and you know like in sticker form get their hands on and go okay almost felt like okay we're gonna be okay like we have a vision we have a mission god is still using us he's not done with us we're moving forward and i think in some regards that's been life-giving for people uh just because it it it gives them the sense that again god's not done with us and so i think that was really helpful and um has brought a lot of energy to staff and i think even the people of our church did everyone on staff get a free t-shirt uh yes yeah staff got free t-shirts yeah that's that's the one thing i like being a part of ministry groups and churches is i get a free t-shirt a lot you know but now all my shirts are like free t-shirts i got to get different t-shirts i i told them i said listen you know these are going to be walking advertisements we need you know four or five hundred of them on the street and they need to be good quality because you want people to wear them so we went nice they're comfortable they're high quality they look good they have our web address on the back like they're

they're sharp man they're top-notch stuff that's the one thing i like about stan is that he's all about quality and more high quality so oh man amen stan two two questions to wrap us up on first is what would you uh how would you encourage someone right now if they're thinking about rebranding what is a lesson learned that you had during this time or just a thought that you had that you could encourage some other church or minister right now

um i i think my encouragement would be um don't necessarily start just from the brand or the logo just because i think i would start with your vision and mission make sure that stuff is right if you're headed the right direction and you're looking for a visual way to tell that story i think that's where you kind of could start stepping into this the other thing i would do is i would definitely have some sort of core group of people who are helping you with that. I know a lot of senior leaders want to kind of fancy themselves graphic designers and they're gonna run out and kind of browse around or hop on Fiverr or something and download Photoshop. I don't recommend that. partly because if you allow other people who are part of your church to do that and use their gifts in that way, it helps them build ownership of the ministry, helps them feel a sense of belonging, like this is their place. And so let them do that. Let them help build it, you know. But yeah, kind of start there and just develop the story, develop the vision, develop the mission. really make sure that's solid and if your elders are on board and you got some staff on board or a creative team on board you know just allow that that whole conversation to kind of just naturally develop if you have to bring it up that's fine but you know bring it up and see where it goes and Just kind of let it naturally develop. If you push it too hard, it ends up becoming like a you thing. And then it might not go quite as well. So I would encourage vision and mission first, and then definitely have a core group of people that are running with you to develop it.

That's great advice. Okay, so now here's the most important question. At the time of this recording, And this is going to go out in a few weeks. At the time of this recording, both of our teams, NFL teams, are three and one. Your Kansas City Chiefs just annihilated the Buccaneers.

Oh, man, they did.

Although the score ended up being a little bit closer. The game really wasn't close.

Thankful for the refs to keep Brady in a game.

Yeah, of course. And then my team, the Dallas Cowboys, are three and one. Three wins with the backup quarterback. yeah yeah there's there's nothing it's going to be dax team but okay so i don't know man so i just want your opinion are we going to see a cowboys chief super bowl game

You know, I don't know. That could be good. I could get on board with that.

Cowboys defense is tight, man.

Yeah, but that's what they said about the Bucs, and we just put up 41 on them. So I'm not worried about that right now.

I Mahomes is when you have, when you have your quarterback, just flipping touchdown passes.

Mahomes is a magician out there, man. I'm not, I'm more worried about our defense holding up all year. That's what I'm worried about. So, but Mahomes has got it on lockdown. He's good.

okay so you're at three and one the cowboys are three one this podcast will go out in a few weeks we'll see where we stand when this podcast goes out all right we'll see see how it goes um all right stan one last question is uh where can people contact you or reach you uh you want to refer them to a website or your twitter or what whatnot

Yeah, I mean, social media wise on Twitter, they can find me just at Stan Rada. I do have a website where they can kind of become members and download free resources and primarily resources in disciple making. It's 4gen.org, F-O-U-R-G-E-N.org. Since my transition to Kansas City, I haven't really updated that too much. So don't expect that to be bright and shining right now. But there are some free resources available on a blog and stuff like that. But that's probably a great place to start.

But don't you also have some sermon series that you're you're out putting out, too?

Oh, yeah, I did start doing that, Tom. That's pretty good.

That's at least I know you had at least two of them done.

I did. I started to take some of the sermon series we were writing and put those together with all of our basically building a sermon kit. And so I have sermon kits available on 4gen.org where you can download manuscripts, outlines. bumper videos, screen graphics, some of them even come with social media graphics. So yeah, if you're a, especially a teaching pastor, preaching guy, and you're, you know, looking for a little bit of a break on some sermon prep, and you just want kind of a strong series to plug in for four weeks or six weeks or whatever, you can go to 4gen.org slash sermon kits. And you can browse a few of the sermon series that I've put online so far. And I plan to do more of those in the future as well. But

yeah and i i don't say this lightly i i i know i joke around with stan a lot but uh stan is a very gifted preacher and so when i heard that he was doing sermon kids taking some of his old manuscripts and doing uh again we i i've been in student ministry for many many years and i love getting other people's curriculum and tailoring it to me And so if nothing else, this sermon kit can help you give you some really good ideas from a really gifted preacher. So I would strongly encourage you to go to 4Gen. I'll have all those links in the show notes. No problem on that at all.

Well, thanks for that, Tom. Yeah, the sermon kits are definitely designed. Take what you want. Use what you can. Get rid of what you don't want. You know, if it helps save a little bit of time so you can focus on something more important in a specific ministry season, go for it. That's what they're there for.

They're definitely very good. Well, Stan, as always, it's great having you on, and we will not wait another year and a half to get this done again.

Yeah, make it happen sooner than that.

I will. I had to track you down really hard for this one.

Okay, see you, Stan. All right, see you, Tom.

All right, here as well, what did you think of the interview? What encouraged you? What challenged you? What are you still thinking about in regards to rebranding your church or your ministry? Definitely hit us up. At TAPounder is my Twitter handle. At Stan Rada is his. Or you can put it in the comment section below. I would love for you to do that as well. But we would love to carry on this conversation with you. Stan's a great resource. He's been through a lot. he served in a variety of different positions but as lead pastor he's really brought them through this transition of rebranding and i think it's a real great way for him to do that there's a lot of wrong ways you can rebrand but he's not ruffling any feathers and he's got everyone on board and it became this huge celebration this is just a huge encouragement so If you would love to get a hold of him, definitely, again, check out his information. Go to 4Gen and get all those different resources he's got there, but also connect with him. He's a great resource to have. And we'd love to carry on this conversation about rebranding online as well. So hit us up on Twitter. We'd love for you to do that. All right, heroes, well, thanks so much for being with me today. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go to thechurch.digital. It's there, and I've got some other blogs, and there's lots of other blogs there from other people too, but you can subscribe to this on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes. I would love for you to do that today as well. All right, heroes, well, I hope you have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week, and until next time, have a great one.