by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
“So are we not having a bulletin anymore?”
This is the kindest version of this anxious question I’ve gotten. The most hostile was from my seven-year old: “Ever since we unveiled this logo you won’t snuggle with me anymore!” I reassured him the logo and the snuggle schedule are unrelated. And proceeded to snuggle.
The hardest part of my job is knowing what to tell to whom when. Our longtime leaders on the now-dissolved visioning committee have known for years that our new mission statement would result in visible changes. Last fall they kept asking, “When are these graphics appearing?” But most of y’all didn’t know any of this was coming. So when we unveiled the new logo and graphic identity and bulletin in late January, the vision leaders and all the staff said, “Finally!” Many of the rest of you were surprised or even shocked. What’s with all these changes? Why so fast and without warning?
Here’s what the graphics task force, the communications committee, and the communications staff have been up to with the bulletin. The one we have long handed out is phonebook thick, with most of its contents only of interest to few. How many of us need to know who wrote the tune to the next hymn in what year? What night the committee meeting is? We have screens and hymnals and email and a website for such details. The bulletin is focused now more on helping orient folks who are new to worship. What is church for anyway? What do we do and why? Tracy Smith helped me see the value in such explanations. “This liturgy stuff isn’t bad,” she said one day. “Do you mind stopping to explain it occasionally?”
Our next sermon series will have a brief order of service in it, so prepare to be less discombobulated! We’ll also stuff the announcements back in the bulletin. The bulletin–like all of us on Sundays–is turned now toward welcoming those least familiar with the church. New and unfamiliar? Sure. But it’s the right thing for us to do.
As for the new graphics, the reaction has varied. Folks more accustomed to business settings have seemed to me downright ecstatic. We have to be identifiable visually and business leaders know this. Others have been more nervous. Is the cross being displaced? Are we less Methodist now? Is red disallowed? (Answers: no, no, and no). Like my son, we see change that comes without warning and worry something we really fear is about to happen too.
The church is often resistant to change for good reason. The most important things about ourselves we will never change: Jesus, the witness to him in the scriptures, the truth about him in our traditions. The color of the logo? Not so much. The colors the graphics task force chose suggest the liveliness and vitality of a region like ours that cherishes the outdoors, and a mission that calls all people to discover “life in Christ.” We still love our denomination’s insignia. Our congregation’s logo tells a more local story about Boone with a cross-shaped path of discipleship through the mountains. Both are good. Only one is new.
Here’s where we are: the visioning group, led by Kelly Broman-Fulks and joined by Charles Stanley, Jim Deal, John Thomas, Bobby Sharp and a host of others, completed its work in the fall 2014 and handed the vision off to a number of temporary task forces. The graphics task force, led by Michaele Haas, is behind the new logo and graphics and banners. A First Face task force under Johnny Carson is revamping our practices of greeting guests. An interior design and chapel task force under Margaret Handley and Scott St. Clair is looking at how our interior space can signal “welcome!” instead of “we store stuff here.” A longer term project is a task force examining a future adult care facility and is co-chaired by Claire Cline and our new volunteer director of adult ministries, Patti Connelly. The overall work of the four task forces is overseen by Susan Jones.
There are obviously more changes afoot. But these changes are not designed to undo what is good about us. They are designed to sustain what is good and strengthen us for a future of doing what we have always done: being the body of Christ for the sake of this community’s flourishing. Nothing stays the same in this world. A house not maintained will deteriorate. So will any other human endeavor or created thing. But working hard to sustain what is good and to improve areas that need strengthening can make an institution last quite a long time–millennia even, as the church of Jesus Christ has shown.
And yes, snuggling is still allowed.