This week started with what looked like a website project. We were working through the visual direction for Freedom Church’s website, cleaning up the site, tightening the branding, making the typography more consistent, and giving the whole thing a stronger visual identity. But the further we got into it, the more obvious something became: the website wasn’t really the problem.
The bigger issue was that the church had a lot of different digital and visual touchpoints, and they didn’t always feel like they belonged to the same organization. Someone could visit the website and see one design language, open Church Center and see something different, walk into the auditorium and see another style in ProPresenter, and then scan a QR code that took them somewhere else entirely. None of those things were necessarily bad on their own, but they weren’t connected.
So what started as a website refresh turned into something much bigger: building one visual system that could follow someone almost everywhere they interact with Freedom.
The website became the starting point
The website gave us the clearest place to establish the new direction. We settled into a visual system built around Big Shoulders Display for headlines, Hanken Grotesk for supporting text, Freedom’s dark and bright greens, the actual church logo, and bold, clean graphic shapes.
None of that is revolutionary, but once those decisions were made consistently, they started giving us rules. A headline should look a certain way. Supporting copy should feel a certain way. Green should be used intentionally. Buttons, sections, graphics, and calls to action should all feel related.
That was when the rebrand stopped being about making the website look better and started becoming useful. A good brand system should actually reduce decisions. Instead of starting from scratch every time we need a graphic, page, lower third, or announcement slide, we now have a clearer answer to the question, “What should this look like?”
Then we realized Church Center needed to follow it
Once the website started feeling cohesive, opening another church platform made the inconsistencies much more noticeable. That’s what happened with Freedom’s Church Center.
Church Center is already one of the places people interact with the church for events, groups, registrations, giving, and other next steps. If the visual experience suddenly changes when someone moves from the church website into the app, it creates a subtle disconnect.
So the same design thinking started moving there too. Not because every page needs to look identical, but because the person using it shouldn’t feel like they just left Freedom Church and entered an unrelated piece of software.
That distinction has become important to me. We can’t control every platform we use, but we can control how intentionally we present ourselves inside it.
We finally replaced Linktree too
One of my favorite parts of the whole project wasn’t actually visual.
For a while, like a lot of churches, we used Linktree as a simple way to give people one QR code that could lead to several different things. It worked, but it also meant intentionally sending someone away from our website to another company’s page just so we could give them a list of links.
That started making less and less sense, so we replaced it with our own branded Start Here Hub.
It does essentially the same job as Linktree, but now the entire experience belongs to the church. Someone can use it to connect for the first time, give, access message notes, request prayer, get Wi-Fi information, open Church Center, find Next Steps, explore ministries, watch messages, and see upcoming events.
The upcoming events are pulled in automatically, so the page doesn’t become another thing someone has to manually maintain every week. We also added one feature I particularly like: Invite a Friend by Text. Instead of just telling people to invite someone to church, we give them a button that helps them actually do it.
That hub has now become much more than a Linktree replacement. It’s becoming the digital front door we can point to almost everywhere.
One starting point is easier to teach
This is probably one of the most practical lessons from the project.
Church communication gets complicated quickly because every ministry has a different destination. One QR code for giving, another for groups, another for prayer, another for events, another for sermon notes, and another for the app. Before long, the congregation has no idea where they’re supposed to go.
The Start Here Hub gives us a much simpler answer: start here.
It also gives our screens a clearer job. They don’t have to explain everything anymore. The screen can communicate the idea, and the phone can handle the complexity.
That fits with something I’ve been thinking about for a while now with lobby screens and church communication in general. We don’t need every screen to contain every piece of information. We need every screen to give people the next useful step.
ProPresenter was the next obvious place
With the visual system established and a central destination to point people toward, we moved into the room.
This is where the project became much more interesting from a production perspective because our screens are one of the most visible expressions of the church’s brand every Sunday.
The pre-service loop, announcement slides, lower thirds, sermon graphics, lyrics, QR codes, and next-step prompts are all part of the same experience as the website. If those things look completely unrelated, the overall experience starts to feel fragmented even if people can’t explain exactly why.
We rebuilt our ProPresenter direction around the same visual system. Our intro loop now has 12 slides, and instead of every slide trying to contain every detail, the graphics are much simpler and point people toward the Start Here Hub.
Lower thirds follow the same design language with a deep-green bar, bright lime accent, Big Shoulders titles, and Hanken Grotesk supporting text. That doesn’t mean every sermon series has to use the exact same graphics. Sermon artwork can still have its own personality. The brand becomes the frame around the content rather than forcing every piece of content to look identical.
The livestream needed to feel connected too
We also changed how the online experience fits into the larger system. Until recently, our dedicated online-church destination outside of Facebook and YouTube was Church Online. It gave us a separate place for the livestream, chat, hosts, prayer, and engagement tools, but it also meant people were leaving our main website and entering another platform that looked and behaved differently from the rest of Freedom’s digital experience.
We decided to replace that dedicated Church Online experience with our own branded Online Campus page. The livestream now lives directly on our website with YouTube embedded into the page, so someone can watch the service without leaving the same environment they may already be using for connection, events, giving, or next steps. If someone prefers to watch directly on YouTube, live.freedomfamily.us still gives us a simple branded path to get them there.
That change fits much better with how I’m starting to think about online ministry. The goal isn’t necessarily to create the busiest chat room or maintain another platform just because it has more engagement tools. The goal is to help someone discover Freedom, watch the message, come back, take a next step, and eventually—when possible—walk through the doors.
Bringing the online service back onto our own website makes that journey feel much more connected. Instead of the livestream existing as a separate digital destination, it becomes another part of the same system.
None of these changes are huge by themselves
That may be the biggest takeaway from this week.
Changing a font is not a huge deal. Updating Church Center is not a huge deal. Redesigning a lower third is not a huge deal. Replacing Linktree is not a huge deal. Changing where the livestream lives is not a huge deal.
But when all of those things start working together, the experience changes. The person interacting with the church doesn’t need to understand the system behind it. They just experience fewer moments where something feels disconnected.
That’s really what branding is doing for us. It isn’t just making things prettier. It’s reducing friction.
Your brand is a system, not a logo
I think churches sometimes approach branding as a project. Design the logo, pick the colors, choose a font, make a brand guide, and call it done.
But the congregation doesn’t experience a brand guide. They experience Sunday. They experience the website, the app, the livestream, the screen in the lobby, the QR code they scan, and the page they land on after scanning it.
Every one of those moments either reinforces the same organization or makes the experience feel slightly fragmented. That’s why I’m starting to think about church branding much more like production system design.
The individual pieces matter, but the connections between them matter just as much.
The bigger lesson
This week we didn’t just redesign a website. We started building a more consistent path through Freedom Church.
The website connects to Church Center. Church Center connects to events. Screens point people toward our Start Here Hub. The hub leads to prayer, giving, notes, ministries, and Next Steps. The livestream points back into the website, and the website can ultimately point someone toward an in-person visit.
None of those paths are especially complicated on their own. The goal is actually the opposite: make the system complicated behind the scenes so the person using it experiences something simple.
That’s a principle I keep finding everywhere in church production. Good systems disappear. People shouldn’t have to think about which platform they’re on, which QR code they need, which design system they’re looking at, or which destination they’re supposed to remember.
They should just know they’re interacting with Freedom Church and understand where to go next.
That may be one of the most valuable things we built this week behind Sunday.
100%%% thanks for all your efforts making our church stronger and better !