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manna?

A vintage faith community in downtown Holland, Michigan

manna? is a vintage faith community that meets in downtown Holland, Michigan at the corner of 9th and Central.
The Saturday service is at 6:00 PM and the Sunday service is at 10:00 AM.
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Church Marketing Sucks: The Brand of Christianity

Posted by Mike Boyink

We’ve got to frustrate people and say the brand identity of Christianity that you are presenting is a terrible portrayal of who Jesus is and what Jesus is about. So that will cause some frustration. That will then require education and some motivation. Those are three good words from your web site—frustration, education and motivation.  Full Post >>

Does the Gospel need branding?  Do churches need branding?  On the one hand, if you’re looking for a church home, being able to quickly tell from a given church’s “brand” if you’d be comfortable there would be nice.  Especially in a place like Holland, where the “church-search” could take years if you were thorough.

On the other hand, I fear that getting caught up in branding a specific church begins to create a seperation between it and the big “C” church—since branding always involves calling out a differentiation from others providing roughly the same good or service.  How many times have we heard church members rallied or encouraged using the church name rather than as “Christians”?

When I put together this site, my inclination was to do a very generic site, because I wanted the words, the thoughts, the message to be the focus—not the pretty graphics, font faces, or color schemes. Maybe we need to “unbrand” ourselves, so that others see the Jesus in us instead.

Posted on 11/01 at 03:22 PM

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