The Role of Design in Modern Church Marketing

Designing the Church Experience

Obviously, hopping on design bandwagons to capture the authentic spirituality of a church will ultimately be in vain. Sussing out the right design feel for a church might also require more nuanced reasoning. Nathan Smith has done design for “congregations who believe in predestination, as well as those who believe that people inherently can either choose or reject God. It has been my experience that the former tend to focus on shepherding the home flock, first and foremost, through Bible studies, seminars, retreats, and so on. So, a design for a church like that would want to feel cozy, giving established members a place to keep up on the latest happenings. The latter tend to be more evangelistic in nature, so their designs are often seen as more edgy, attempting to reach those who might have a non-Christian background.”

So, if church web sites expect to convey the spirit of the physical church itself, what happens when remote design teams 1,000 miles away must design for a church unseen? Most designers interviewed answered simply, “lots and lots of phone consultation.” James Dalman says it’s taken 15 years for him to hone his own branding approach: asking the right questions to encourage the right answers. Dustin Stearman asks his clients “for a list of adjectives” and combines that with what he knows about their colors and typography. Improvisation is often required, as well as collaborating with in-house media teams that some churches deploy.

Establishing the perfect feel for a church web site depends on the story you’re trying to tell, graphically speaking. The primary design elements (typography, color, photography, text) go beyond trying to sell, as a corporate site would. Conveying spirituality with design should be about balance, a “perfect blend of form and function,” says Dustin Stearman, and “an emotional, artistic process.”

The Church as a Business

But realistically, churches do “sell a lifestyle,” as several designers put it, and using design and media to convey that lifestyle has become vital to the success of a church, whether that be financial or otherwise. Forbes online features a news category called Christian Capitalism, with stories like “Megachurches, Megabusinesses” and “Spiritually Profitable Gaming.” Business Week has also reported on the growth of multi-million dollar church consulting efforts. As Church Marketing Sucks points out, marketing is simply the “process of promoting, selling, and distributing goods or services. As much as we bristle at comparing evangelism to a sales pitch, there are certain similarities.”

The designers interviewed disagreed on there being any conflict with the comparison of churches to businesses because they all felt the end goal was still authenticity. Marketing doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Chris Merritt says, “businesses want to communicate a message and an identity, just like churches do. The message is vastly different, but both utilize the same best practices in communicating that message.” Dustin Stearman acknowledged the “fine line between coming across as just another organization trying to sell something and trying to reach people with the Gospel message using traditional marketing techniques.”

Designing for secular businesses inevitably means discussing how to look better than one’s competitors. The designers interviewed regarded design as more than a tool to make the experience of Church X better than Church Y, despite the occasional pressure to do just that. As with businesses, designing for churches requires restraint. Matt Adams says, “I become concerned when I see churches really push hard ministries and campus amenities. We try to be careful in the imagery we select. Great photography can go a long way, with … a solid balance between happy people, and normal relaxed faces.”

Big-time Designs, Small-time Values

Church designers seem to face a massive challenge: make beautiful, polished interactive experiences that retain humility and communicate spirituality, all without appearing contrived. Reducing the role of the ego is standard practice in nearly all religions, yet ironically many of today’s churches need to promote themselves more than ever as they seek greater numbers and visibility. Do church designers feel conflicted, trying to convey core values while wrapping them in slick, expensive designs?

Matt Adams urges for a moderate approach in which designers can “balance the technological advances with good content and a more middle-of-the-road design. A church site with an over-the-top approach to displaying technology advancements can quickly come across as egotistical to some.”

How often do clients reject the more eye-grabbing, commercial look? Adams cites examples like marshill.org and savannahcanvas.com, in which quiet minimalism is specifically “part of their marketing strategy and appeal.” Dustin Stearman says about 25% of his clients ask for a minimal design style. “A lot of people are turned off by the slick, smiling faces that they’ve seen in the past. They want a site that speaks to people where they are, rather than looking like it was manufactured by perfect people.”

Nathan Smith acknowledges he’s seen “less and less attempts at modesty in church web design of late. Rather than vain self-flattery, I think churches are realizing it’s okay to spread their wings a bit.” The designers claimed being stylistically “slick” was without advantage. The authentic imperfections of humanity actually give design its power, Smith implies, as reflected in the current grunge trend. After all, he says, “we’re all flawed people, trying to seek the will of God to be made whole. Seeing a bit of that in a design is refreshing from time to time.”

Conclusions

The consensus is that business strategies can peacefully exist within church culture without compromising core values or tainting the role of the designer. As all the designers expressed, priority #1 is authenticity—an honest reflection of the church values that skew trendy for more than just trendy’s sake.

As their designs reflect, many Christian churches of the last few decades are emerging as diverse, evolving organizations who see great value in staying current. It’s undetermined how much cutting-edge design is affecting the size of congregations, but existing congregants have a whole new breed of gorgeous, feature-rich web sites to connect them with their community.