How to Find Your Church's Creative Voice
The Church Obituary Exercise
You stayed late again last week. There was a last-minute announcement that needed a graphic, the social posts still weren't scheduled, and somewhere between the staff meeting and Sunday prep, the website update got pushed to next week. Again.
Nobody on your team is coasting. Everyone is showing up, giving what they have, doing the work. And yet something about the creative work still feels generic and fragmented, like it could have come from anywhere.
We've seen this across hundreds of churches, and we want to say something clearly before we go any further: this isn't a talent problem or an effort problem. It's a foundation problem.
When a team doesn't have a clear, shared understanding of your church’s identity, even the most gifted creatives end up guessing. The work still gets done. It just doesn't quite feel like you.
Skyler Stigmon, Director of Creative Direction at Church Media Squad, has worked with hundreds of churches to help them find their voice, and he'll tell you the problem is almost never what teams expect.
"The brand isn't a color palette or a font," Skyler says. "It's what you're known for."
We sat down with Skyler to talk about one of his favorite exercises for helping churches discover their creative identity. It starts with writing an obituary. The prompt is simple, but the result is surprisingly revealing. The Church Obituary Exercise is probably the most honest conversation a church communications team can have.
It Starts With This Question:
If your church ceased to exist 100 years from now, what would it be remembered for?
Write it out. Describe who your church impacted and how. Name why your church mattered to the people around it. Say what would be missing if it had never been there.
Skyler describes the exercise as more encouraging than uncomfortable. The goal is to help every person on the team get on the same page about the church's identity and calling. When that happens, he says, a unified team becomes an unstoppable force for good.
Why Your Media Depends on This
Before you talk about graphics, social strategy, or which platform deserves more of your time, you need a foundation. Without it, your creative output feels random. With it, everything feels cohesive. And that cohesion is what people actually experience when they find you online.
Think about the journey someone takes before they ever walk through your doors. They find you on Instagram, click over to your website, and maybe watch a sermon clip. By the time they show up Sunday morning, they've already formed an impression of your church. For someone looking for a church home, that first impression carries more weight than most teams realize.
Without that foundation, the creative work shows it. Design ends up generic because nobody agreed on what the church represents. Social posts feel scattered because the team is guessing at the voice instead of working from a defined one. Communication channels get chosen based on what's trending rather than where the church's people actually spend their time.
"If you're creating design and content that doesn't reflect your congregation, you're probably making things that aren't interesting to them," Skyler says. “It’s about building a place where people feel at home, invested, and represented.”
Who Needs to Be in the Room
This isn't a solo exercise, and it shouldn't be handed off entirely to leadership either.
The people who need to be in the room are your play-callers: your Lead Pastor, Creative Director, Communications Director, or whoever holds those responsibilities at your church. These are the people driving creative decisions and carrying the weight of how your church shows up publicly.
It's worth having your whole staff take a crack at this individually before you gather as a group. Skyler has seen it change the direction of the exercise entirely. When you gather individual responses and look for the threads that keep surfacing, you stop seeing just leadership's aspiration. You start to see how your church is perceived on the inside, and this is the culture already being built by the people who show up every day.
"The collective voice of your team can push a church further than any one singular person's vision ever could," he says.
How to Run the Church Obituary Exercise
This is the process Skyler walks churches through. Give each step ample time during the exercise.
Write the obituary. Give each person the prompt separately before you gather as a group. Ask them to write a paragraph or two: who the church impacted, why it mattered, what changed, what the community would have lost. Tell them to write about the church they actually experience, not the one they hope it becomes.
Look for the common threads. Gather the responses. What words keep showing up? What values surface without anyone coordinating? What feels non-negotiable across every version?
Ask the hard follow-up questions. Depending on what surfaced, push deeper:
What made this church a place where people felt genuinely loved?
What did your church have to believe about people to build what it built?
What did you say no to in order to protect your mission?
What would someone who encountered Christ here do differently in the rest of their life?
Write the translation. Take everything you've gathered and write it again. This time in the present tense, as a clear description of who your church is right now. What you believe about people. Who you serve. What drives everything you do.
This is your real creative identity. A true north to check everything else against.
Skyler is direct about what this step requires. "If what you're creating doesn't reflect those things, it might be time to revisit the mission itself. That's a bold move, and not everyone will be on board with it, but brands and organizations evolve over time to meet the moment. Churches can too."
What Shifts When Your Team Is Aligned
Once a church does this work, a few things change quickly.
Skyler describes the first shift as alignment. The team finally understands the creative vision and how their individual contributions fit into it. “People do their best work when they understand the core purpose behind it,” he says. From there, clarity about communication channels follows. You can look at your socials, your website, and your Sunday content and ask honestly whether they reflect your church’s identity. You might find that it doesn't, not yet. That's okay. That gap becomes your starting point.
Part of that clarity is knowing who your church exists to serve. Skyler puts it plainly: "Is your church primarily 50-65 year olds? Honor that legacy and lean into it. Primarily 20-30 year olds? Let their world drive your creative choices. All over the place? Figure out your primary demographic, pick a lane, and commit to it."
There's one more thing worth naming. When your people truly understand your church’s identity and mission, they can explain it to others. They don't fumble when a coworker asks about their church. That kind of clarity turns your people into your most natural invitation team, not because you trained them, but because they now have language for it.
Your church exists because the Gospel is true. Everything your creative team produces is either pointing people toward that or standing in the way. Knowing who you are makes the difference.
Use It as a Creative Filter
Skyler calls it a filter, not a formula, and that distinction matters.
When a new series graphic comes across your desk: does this feel like us? When you're writing copy for an event: does this sound like us? When a volunteer asks how to describe your church to a friend: does the answer come quickly, or does it take fifteen seconds of hedging?
One of the most clarifying questions Skyler brings up: "How much of our content is announcements versus actually pointing people to Jesus? People need the Gospel, not just a feed full of information."
Your creative identity should make decisions like that easier. It gives your team something to target and your people something to own.
And when it's working, something shifts in the work itself. It starts to feel less like content and more like an invitation. One that points people toward something far more important than a well-designed graphic.
It points them toward Jesus.
If you've done this work and you're ready to build creative that reflects it, that's exactly where we start. Our creative process begins with a deep discovery: your rhythms, your voice, your community. Then everything we build reflects the heart and mission of your church. Schedule a call with us to bring this vision to life!
