A brand is far more than just your logo. Dan Pallotta helpfully reviews the elements that come together to create a brand. As a church plant that is still in the dreaming phase, our brand is in many ways in-process, and in other ways non-existent. We realize that our community, our people, our city, and our beliefs and the way we communicate them will play a major influence in our overall identity development. However as we began dreaming about what we would like this to look like we started forming an important element of our brand: the vision and story.

First, we came up with the name St. Peter’s Fireside because it evokes a story that is important to us. It is a story that captures the essence of the gospel (read more here). We hope that people will recognize themselves in Peter, and read themselves into his narrative as people who are broken, who can receive Jesus’ grace, love and forgiveness; and who can also go out into the world as vessels of God’s reconciling message just as Peter went on to do after Pentecost.

We crafted a mark that represents this story. There are two primary concepts, and two secondary that we built using the golden ratio (… yes, I am that nerdy).

Our primary concepts are:

1. The flame represents the two fireside scenes in John’s gospel (John 18:15-27; John 21). The first Peter denies Jesus, the second Jesus reconciles Peter to himself. As a community we come to Jesus broken and we find grace, acceptance, love, forgiveness and the beauty of God.

 2. The dove represents the Holy Spirit. After Peter is reconciled to Jesus, he goes on to Pentecost where the early church is birthed and receives the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). The same Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove. As a community we want to be people who yield to, and rely upon, the empowering presence of God the Holy Spirit.

Our secondary concepts are:

3. The letter f . Clearly, ‘f’ is the first letter of the word fireside. In a way, emphasizing this letter focuses one on the word ‘fireside’, on the event itself instead of Peter. As a community we will recognize that we all have our own stories, our own firesides, and that our stories place a vital role in understanding our place in God’s story.

4. Finally, and this is a bit of a stretch, our mark makes an abstract cross. Peter denies Jesus as he heads towards his crucifixion. It is because Jesus went to the cross and resurrected that Peter can encounter him at a second fireside. As a community we want to recognize that the cross is central to this narrative, and our own lives.