Kids almost always want to stand in front of the TV.  My kids do it and I did, too.  As I was growing up, dad would simply say, “Mark, you’ve been drinking muddy water, again” to signal that no one could see the TV through me.  It’s a lesson I learned in the living room, but not in church planting.

Last weekend, we unveiled a change that is happening at Journey.  For the first 2 1/2 years of our existence, we have been known by the name, Journey Chattanooga. We chose that name because…

• We wanted to reach out to people who were skeptical of churches.  By taking “church” out of the name, we hoped it would communicate that we were different from the typical perspective of church.
• There are Journey Churches everywhere! We wanted to communicate that we weren’t a campus of another Journey Church. Truth is, people who don’t go to church aren’t familiar with the other ones, either.
• Aaaannnnddddd, we just thought it sounded cool.  Though, the first reason was really our primary purpose.

Along the way we’ve discovered a few things about our community.  They couldn’t tell what we were from our logo or signage (many thought we were a travel agency) and they had certain expectations of what churches did…even if they didn’t attend one.  In other words, we looked like we were drinking muddy water because they couldn’t see past our cool graphics.  So, we are changing our logo and name.  Here’s why…

• Our purpose is to lead people to be passionate followers of Jesus.  Everything should point to that.
• We love Jesus, not travel.
• We belong to the largest family on the planet, the “C”hurch.  We want people to know that.
• Most of all, we want to be clear.  Clear that we are a church.  Clear that we are a place and a people where you can learn about Jesus.  Clear that we exist to lead people to know Jesus Christ.  So, here’s the new logo.  Like it?