The Story of our Logo
“How are you growing?”
Have you ever asked anyone that question? Has anyone ever asked you? More often than not, we ask things like, “How are you?” and “How’s it going?” Even in the church, we make small talk with questions like, “How was your week?” And if we’re looking to join a new congregation, we might ask a question like, “What do you believe?”
These are important questions, good for starters, but what about when we want to go deeper in our relationships with Christ and each other? (And we do want to go deeper!)
Growth. That’s the key word. Our journey with Christ is living and active, changing. A process. At Faith Church, we talk a lot about loving God and loving people, and how following Jesus’s ways teaches us how to live that out. When we look at the way Jesus lived his life and read what his first followers wrote, we see a four-part growth process emerge to guide us in our spiritual lives.
It’s so important to us that we designed our church’s logo around this four-part process. Each square represents a step in the growth process. From left to right, those steps are Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship and Outreach, with each flowing into the next. Most people start as worshipers of God (love God), often making their first connection to the church by attending a worship service. But Jesus wants us to be more than worshipers, he wants us to make deep relational connections with others in the church. We call that fellowship, loving one another (love people).
We can’t stop there, though, as Jesus called his disciples to make more disciples. In fact, becoming his disciples is the focus of his teaching. That’s why the discipleship square is a darker green. We want it to stand out.
What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? In the Gospels, Jesus makes it clear that believers and disciples are not the same thing. In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus mentioned that some people will think they are his disciples, even calling him their Lord, but they are mistaken. He said that they will even do many religious things, but that doesn’t mean they are his true disciples.
That’s what the vertical line in our logo is all about. Between steps two and three is the Matthew 7 line, where we do not simply call him, “Lord,” but live out our faith in self-denying, sacrificial ways. Jesus said “if anyone would be my disciples, they must deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow me.” If you look closely at the logo, you’ll notice that the Matthew 7 line, when combined with the cutouts in squares two and three, forms a cross.
Crossing the Matthew 7 line into genuine discipleship means we allow Jesus to transform our lives inside and out. And when that happens, we won’t be able to keep it to ourselves. This leads to outreach. A disciple of Jesus is so full of the good life of Jesus that it flows out of him. Through that outflow, more people become disciples of Jesus, and the unjust structures in society become more just, according to the heart of God.
So, when you look at our logo, we hope you see more than just four squares. We hope you see our desire to grow as disciples of Christ. And maybe you’ll consider your place in the process: How are you growing?
Have you ever asked anyone that question? Has anyone ever asked you? More often than not, we ask things like, “How are you?” and “How’s it going?” Even in the church, we make small talk with questions like, “How was your week?” And if we’re looking to join a new congregation, we might ask a question like, “What do you believe?”
These are important questions, good for starters, but what about when we want to go deeper in our relationships with Christ and each other? (And we do want to go deeper!)
Growth. That’s the key word. Our journey with Christ is living and active, changing. A process. At Faith Church, we talk a lot about loving God and loving people, and how following Jesus’s ways teaches us how to live that out. When we look at the way Jesus lived his life and read what his first followers wrote, we see a four-part growth process emerge to guide us in our spiritual lives.
It’s so important to us that we designed our church’s logo around this four-part process. Each square represents a step in the growth process. From left to right, those steps are Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship and Outreach, with each flowing into the next. Most people start as worshipers of God (love God), often making their first connection to the church by attending a worship service. But Jesus wants us to be more than worshipers, he wants us to make deep relational connections with others in the church. We call that fellowship, loving one another (love people).
We can’t stop there, though, as Jesus called his disciples to make more disciples. In fact, becoming his disciples is the focus of his teaching. That’s why the discipleship square is a darker green. We want it to stand out.
What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? In the Gospels, Jesus makes it clear that believers and disciples are not the same thing. In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus mentioned that some people will think they are his disciples, even calling him their Lord, but they are mistaken. He said that they will even do many religious things, but that doesn’t mean they are his true disciples.
That’s what the vertical line in our logo is all about. Between steps two and three is the Matthew 7 line, where we do not simply call him, “Lord,” but live out our faith in self-denying, sacrificial ways. Jesus said “if anyone would be my disciples, they must deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow me.” If you look closely at the logo, you’ll notice that the Matthew 7 line, when combined with the cutouts in squares two and three, forms a cross.
Crossing the Matthew 7 line into genuine discipleship means we allow Jesus to transform our lives inside and out. And when that happens, we won’t be able to keep it to ourselves. This leads to outreach. A disciple of Jesus is so full of the good life of Jesus that it flows out of him. Through that outflow, more people become disciples of Jesus, and the unjust structures in society become more just, according to the heart of God.
So, when you look at our logo, we hope you see more than just four squares. We hope you see our desire to grow as disciples of Christ. And maybe you’ll consider your place in the process: How are you growing?