Updating the Top Church Logos list is long overdue.

In 2007, there were 20.
In 2008, there were 33.
Now 2011’s update has grown to 77 top church logos.

It is a testament to how churches globally are increasingly embracing and understanding good design. The bar has been raised and some previous “top church logos” have been dropped. In 2008, having a clean logo with a good professional font was good enough to make the list. Now 3 years later, a church logo must be clean, well-balanced, scalable, appealing, professionally executed even in its subtleties, and downright subjectively better than most other church logos (some exceptions apply).

Here’s a peek at some new additions this year:

To see all 77 top church logos, visit: http://churchrelevance.com/resources/top-church-logos

Two weeks ago I had the privilege to spend the morning with the team at the Techology Show discussing the story behind Open Church. You can watch the video here.

And here are some highlights:

Open Church helps Christians globally equip each other with ministry ideas and free downloadable resources.

HOW OPEN CHURCH BEGAN

• Prior to Open Church, whenever I’d work with different groups on global Church collaboration projects, a question that we would wrestle with is how can we go further than what has been done before? How can we get past dogmatic differences. How can we get past politics and red tape?
• I also saw the importance to have an unaffiliated, independent entity that doesn’t have an agenda other than to collaborate and resource the global Church. This way people do not have the excuse of not participating because they do not like the megaorganization or church celebrity behind it.
• How can we take this even further? Let’s put barriers and parameters on leadership to limit egos and greed and strings attached. Let’s keep things impartial among contributors.
• I wanted to help other ministries do this, but I couldn’t find a group that had the right corporate culture, bandwidth, and desire to pursue it.
• So in fall 2010, I was working with tech startups, and I felt clear direction from the Holy Spirit that I needed to start Open Church because: (1) it is the right timing and (2) by doing it now before any tech startups were profitable, people would say, “Look what God did!” rather than “Look what Kent did with his money.”
• I spent the next 6 months phasing out of the tech startups getting LifeChurch.tv’s blessing since I spent the previous couple of years helping them with various initiatives.

THE DNA OF OPEN CHURCH

• We have a big core value of impartiality which has changed everything. Most best practices in marketing, fundraising, and website user interfaces are highly based on partiality. We want to be sure that we are not being partial and unintentionally pushing away some subculture of the global Church.
• However, in some ways we are partial. We do have high benchmarks of quality acceptance. We evaluate content for quality, theology (gospel, Great Commission, & 2 love commandments), no bipartisan politics, no slander, and no self promotion.
• The impartiality comes among contributors. Open Church is a place where the village pastor in Malawi is treated the same as Billy Graham.
• On a base level, we want to reduce inefficiency. If we provide a $300 resource to 10,000 users, the global Church just saved $3 million which can be used for orphans, widows, or creating more resources to give away.
• We also want to increase access to quality resources. This will raise the quality benchmark for future resource creators.
• Ultimately, the vision for Open Church is much bigger than just distributing free resources and articles. Long term, we want to come alongside and not strip cultural strengths from a people group but help them create resources for their culture by their culture in whatever medium works best.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

• It is no longer just the big megaorganizations that can give away stuff for free. Some of the best church graphic design is coming from church plants. So you can have a 1 month old church plant that can impact the global Church. Churches no longer have to wait 20 years to be influential. They can start resourcing and influencing the global Church in their first week.
• My prayer for the 3rd generation of megachurches is that they are focused on collaboration without credit. It takes letting ego go, but it also takes letting control go and trusting in God to take care of things.
• Sometimes our systems are holding us back from being the best that we could be because we are too focused on avoiding embarrassments or avoiding mistakes or doing things to a certain level of excellence. But the Bible is pretty messy and sloppy. You need to find the tension between stability and scalability. You can’t be so rigid that you hold yourself back.

For more discussions that intersect technology and theology, be sure to check out the Techology Show.
For more on Open Church, visit OpenChurch.com.

At Catalyst Dallas, John M. Perkins of John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation & Development was interviewed and discussed the reconciliation of the gospel.

The purpose of the gospel is to burn through racial and economic barriers and bring people together for God. Segregated churches minimize the gospel.

God reconciles people to himself and to each other, and we do that as one body. We need to be the incarnated bride of Christ.

Success is connecting with people in your communities who have pain and staying with them.

Former LifeChurch.tv campus pastor Scott Williams just released his first book, Church Diversity. It is a passionate discussion about the need for cultural and racial diversity in churches. Early on, Scott cuts to the heart of the issue:

The burden for this generation is to look in the mirror, recognize that there is a problem, and understand that by doing nothing about it, WE ARE the problem.

So what do we do about church diversity? Scott explains 7 steps he took to nurture church diversity.

1. Check your heart.
   What prejudices or preconceptions may be getting in the way of my heart embracing a culture of diversity? Where is the heart of my leadership on the diversity issue? Have we led our volunteers and attendees to have hearts that embrace diversity? Is diversity a value that we genuinely want to embrace or is this simply lip service?
2. Check your head.
   We had to plan events differently, we had to look at our hiring practices differently, and we had to be intentional about issues of race and ethnicity. We celebrated diversity wins, and although diversity may not have been at the forefront of the value system of the overall church, it was definitely at the forefront of our team’s value system.
3. Be prayerful.
   Ask God to give you a burden for diversity in the church. Don’t confuse a burden for diversity with a change in the specific vision that
   God has given your church. Pray for diversity in people who will come through the doors of your church. Pray for diversity in both volunteer and paid staff.
4. Be intentional.
   The bottom line is if you are not intentional, it’s not going to happen. The reason you have to be intentional is that, left on our own, human beings often have difficulty making the right decisions. Being intentional about diversity is not about convenience, it’s about being deliberate.
5. Be confrontational.
   If we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to be willing to have the tough conversations with each other. Just like Jim Collins discusses in Good to Great, you have to confront the brutal facts. You have to confront the elephant in the pew, in our communities, in our ministries, and in our hearts. You have to fight for what’s right. Pick and choose your battles.
6. Be authentic.
   Authenticity is so important. Too often we go through life and try to imitate other people. On an issue as sensitive as diversity, it would be easy to try to imitate a ministry that does a great job with the church diversity issue. Find your own voice/identity instead of being an imitation.
7. Be patient.
   This is going to take some time. It’s taken thousands of years for the Church to be one of the most segregated institutions on the planet and change is not going to happen overnight. Get your heart right, exercise your mental muscle, be prayerful, be intentional, be confrontational, be authentic, and be patient. God’s timing is perfect.

I am excited that Church Diversity is giving momentum to this issue. It is not just about achieving ethnic diversity. Churches need to strive for better cultural diversity.

This post features a complimentary review copy and Amazon affiliate links.

At Seeds Conference, Whitney George of Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK), Pace Hartfield of Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX), and Marty Taylor of Northland, A Church Distributed (Orlando, FL) gave a behind the scenes discussion of how they lead their creative arts teams.

WG: It is not so much about what you do as who you are. What are the personalities like that make up your creative team? Those personalities will shape your art.

MT: Each week, we focus on some specific attribute of God and we connect that attribute to some type of call & response for the church to act on that week.

MT: We don’t ever buy anything just because it’s cool. We buy something because it will help the message.

WG: You don’t do all the lights for the sake of lights. You do it to create environments for worship. God did the same for us when He created a beautiful environment for us to worship in.

PH: And sometimes creating the environment means turning the technology off. Sometimes that is most powerful.

WG: It is about using it in the right way. You always want to keep at the heart of what you are doing, “What am I trying to say?”

WG: When we opened our new auditorium, we asked, “What is the appropriate response?” We thought up a lot of crazy ideas but decided that the appropriate response to launching a new auditorium is worship.

MT: We find out 6 weeks out what a weekend will be and start planning.

PH: We plan 10 weeks to a week out, and sometimes start planning 6 months in advance. We start with whomever will be teaching. Ed Young Jr. will do a mind dump and journaling, and the create planning team will read it all. Then we meet as a group to talk it out. We leave more on the cutting room floor then in the final sermon.

PH: To as best you can, match the leadership style of your pastor. When your pastor feels that support, he will trust you more.

WG: I have to remember that God didn’t call me to run Church on the Move. He called me to serve Church on the Move. You have to make sure that mindset is aligned if you want to be creative.

WG: One of the main things about collaboration is that when start going up, you will see the fruits of that, the disjointedness, showing up on stage. The tech guys and the media guys and the worship guys need to be able to speak into the lives and process of everyone around them.

WG: During rehearsals, we have someone always watching it who is not doing it. That kind of feedback in the time you are putting it together is critical to a great worship environment.

PH: We always have to keep one hand free to adjust for what God wants. You have to be careful to never spiritualize your laziness. Don’t do things on the fly. God is in the details.

MT: I think the approach is greatly affected by how you view the video and the lighting and everything. If you look at the lighting as just another tool, as another worship leader, then it helps to evaluate if it is working together.

WG: Stop thinking of worship as one thing and lighting as one thing and production guys as one thing. They are all one thing together. They are all communication.

WG: Honor and serve. Start honoring the sound man. He is as much of the process as the person on stage. Serving them means respecting their process and putting yourself in their shoes. That relationship is essential.

At Seeds Conference, Mark Rutland of Oral Roberts University (Tulsa, OK) discussed the language of God.

Communication is the right message to the right party in the right way at the right time. If you get any part of that wrong, and you get all of it wrong. Communication is a wonderland.

Did you know God has a communications problem? The problem is us.

There is nothing wrong with the transmitter just the receiver. We do not speak God’s native language. What is the native language of God? It is not Hebrew or Spanish or even tongues. God speaks God.

The communication problem of God is He is communicating His essential truth to a world of broken receivers.

What God sent into this world was His Word. His Word became flesh. The miracle was the incarnation. God in flesh. God with flesh. And the flesh was the problem because when God became a human, He looked human. In fact, the Bible says He was unattractive.

The divinity of Christ is very comforting to us, but the humanity of Christ sets us on edge. Unless Christ was a baby that cries and is human then how could He ever relate to mankind?

When Christ was born, He didn’t think cognitively as an infant. He did not think about being the preexisting coexistant second part of the trinity. Christ had to grow into that. The Bible says that Christ grew in favor with man and with God. And as Christ grew, He began to remember He is God. He began to think in the language of God.

When Christ uses human language to explain the complex concepts from the language of God, people have trouble understanding. “Let the dead bury the dead.”

What confuses people isn’t that Christ can do miracles but that He can sweat. Everybody knows that God can raise the dead, but can God sweat? That is what some struggle to believe.

After Jesus was resurrected, He frequently talked about the Kingdom (of God), but they thought He is talking about the Davidic kingdom. The communication problem was Christ was talking about Kingdom while they were thinking kingdom. Not kingdom but Kingdom. Human words are imperfect for communication ideas from the language of God.

We struggle for these words. We struggle to communicate.

Christ asked the disciples if they wanted power. They said, “Yes.” But Christ says, “No, you will not receive power. You will not receive power but power. You will receive power from the Holy Spirit.”

The church has struggled for 2,000 years to understand the difference between power and power. The church needs to operate in the right power. The church needs to understand the language of God.

Do not confuse your own ego with the mind of God.

God will give you power, but it will not be power to build your kingdom. God will give you power to yield, power to submit, and power to die to oneself.

At Seeds Conference, Whitney George of Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) discussed building a culture of creativity.

When most people think of creativity, they think of artists. But really that is an incomplete definition because you can be creative at anything - mathematics, engineering, parenting.

Creativity at its core is really nothing than solving a problem of some sort. We all have the capacity to be a creative person.

But creativity for artists comes with unique challenges.

As artists, our challenge, our problem, is one of communication. If you think about it, all art is communication. Often, it communicates feeling.

The power of the arts is it can take you places that you didn’t know you can go. It can communicate things that you otherwise cannot.

When you think about the Great Commission, our responsibility is to communicate the gospel. And as artists, we communicate the gospel through the arts.

So how do you build a culture of creativity? Ask yourself these four questions:

QUESTION #1 - Have you given the right people a voice?

If you want young people to buy into your church, give them a voice.

That doesn’t mean ask anyone. Find a young person who has a relationship with your church and genuinely cares. You don’t have to take every single suggestion. But it matters to listen. When you show that you care about what they think, then they will go to town to work for you.

If you want to build a culture of creativity, you must continually find new people, give them a voice, and give them an opportunity to serve. Like attracts like, so get great people.

QUESTION #2 - Have you got the right people on the team?

The idea of the lone genius is actually a myth (research proven). Creativity always works best in groups. Where people often have pitfalls is not willingness to do something but rather choosing the right people for their team.

Avoid These People

• Avoid people who cause tension.
  Tension is the biggest enemy to the creative process because tension makes our guard go up. Sometimes the senior pastor creates tension because of his position of authority.
• Avoid people who dominate the conversation.
• Avoid people who don’t participate.
  If you aren’t going to engage the conversation, there is no point in you being in the room.
• Avoid people who always agree.
  You need people who will ask the tough questions.

Get These People

• Get people who have a selfless heart for the church.
  They may not have the best ideas at first, but they give themselves. You want people who use their talents and gifts to build the church and not people who use the church to build their talents and gifts.
• Get people who have familiarity with each other.
  Familiarity breeds comfort with each other.
• Get people who move the conversation forward.

QUESTION #3 - Have you put in the time?

There is nothing sexy about creativity and the creative process. There are hundreds of decisions to come up with a result that looks like a genius idea. Creativity works in really small sparks.

Creativity is horribly inefficient. That’s okay. It is like that for everyone. When people do anything very well, they make it look easy.

QUESTION #4 - Are you ready to just do it?

Don’t get hung up wondering “How?” Just do something. Take the first step.

What God has called you to do, He has also given you the grace to do.

At Seeds Conference, Ed Young Jr. of Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX) discussed 11 statements for creative change.

Anytime there is change, there is creativity. Creativity and change are inseparably linked. When you change, often it is an innovation or something different.

I believe that God is cheering to us, “You’ve got it! Now use it!”

Some of us deny having the ability to be creative, but that is not true. God made us unique. And He wants us to be who He planned for us to be individually and collectively.

Here are some creative statements that God has brought forward in Ed Young Jr’s life and in the leadership culture at Fellowship Church.

#1 - You be you.

In every area, be yourself. Do not try to be like any other minister. Do not try to be like any other church.

#2 - Work for the weekend.

The weekend is the most important thing we do in the church. So goes the week, so goes the weekend. So goes the weekend, so goes the week. If you make the weekend the thing, most people show up on the weekend, and you can connect with them there. Creativity is stopping something and starting something else. Why should the church be boring? It shouldn’t. So the weekend is where you can be creative. So often the small tweaks will take you to the giant peaks.

#3 - Have a seat at the table.

At the head of the table is the pastor with the food. The first chair is for people who do not know Christ. If your church is doing what it is supposed to do, then 1/3 of the church should be lost. Chair 2 is baby Christians (another 1/3). The third chair should be mature followers of Christ who share and serve (the last 1/3).

#4 - Sign up for group therapy.

Creativity is best done in a group. Everyone is a creative genius, so in a group, there is no telling what creative thing will come up. Critique while you are planning. Critique while you create. Play idea ping pong. You will not believe the ideas that go back and forth.

#5 - Get your “ask” in gear.

Always seek knowledge. Some are afraid to ask questions because of insecurity. Don’t be afraid. When you talk, there is a rhythm. You need to talk then ask then listen. We ask two questions in our creative process: (1) What if? and (2) What is? Delegation without investigation is an abomination. What if? plans the thing. But What is? investigates the thing. Also ask, “Who am I reaching?”

#6 - Hire “yes” men and “yes” women.

“Y” stands for yielded to God. “E” stands for encouraging. “S” stands for strong. The with you’s help you. The for you’s cheer for you. And the use you’s make you think they are with you, but they really use you and abuse you. When you let God take care of haters, He will take you to a whole ‘nutha level.

#7 - Get on the stairmaster.

Everytime you ask the right people the right questions to get the right answers, you will ask a lot of the wrong people, too. So you are always climbing. You are always moving.

#8 - Become a creative criminal.

Steal ideas unashamedly. Rip them off. Of course, make them your own. God gave you eyes… plagiarize.

#9 - Surf the wave.

Fade awaves are the waves that hit the coastline of our conscious and then fade away. Try to harness your creative ideas. Build in rest periods during the day.

#10 - Go through labor and delivery.

You’ve got conception (getting the idea). You’ve got pregnancy (incubate the idea). You’ve got to give birth. The reason many churches die and lose their creativity is they forget about the lost person.

#11 - Join the comedy club.

The majority of our creative ideas come out of laughter. You have to build in blocks of time to laugh and create. And if laughter doesn’t work, argue! Debate it out if necessary.

You’ve got creativity. Now use it!