Telling the Story of LaSalle Street Church

What comes to mind for you when you hear the words “LaSalle Street Church?”

Is it the faces of people you’ve met at LaSalle? Is it the sanctuary where we worship? Do you remember certain moments of service or praise that were especially meaningful for you? 

When you hear the words “LaSalle Street Church,” you might also picture our church logo or website. For the last many months, we’ve been working to update our church’s visual identity, covering all the ways we communicate who we are to the world. (I’ve been thankful to be part of the team, with Rev Liz and Lucas, working diligently to develop these updates. It’s been about 15 years since LaSalle’s last significant visual update!) Maybe you spotted updated designs for things like our Connect Cards or our social media posts in the last few weeks. Today’s newsletter features enhancements to make our communication more effective and fun. Soon, you’ll discover a renovated website, carefully crafted to serve the needs of people exploring LaSalle for the first time, in addition to the ways we all rely on our website for church info and livestream access.

At the heart of our updated visual identity is a refreshed logo for LaSalle Street Church. Our staff worked with an external designer who listened carefully through many conversations to help us express who we are today.

Take a few minutes to reflect on the logo with me. (Bear with me—whether you care deeply about graphic design or couldn’t care less, let’s take advantage of this opportunity to reflect on our visual identity to the world!)

Start with the words: “LaSalle Street Church,” has been our church’s name since 1973. Below it is the statement of identity we’ve used to describe ourselves for the last year: Expansive faith. Generous community. Invested in God’s justice. (You might consider clicking those links to revisit last year’s sermon series about these identity statements). Notice how the fonts convey a sense of vintage authenticity, modern innovation, and a joyful, playful ease.

Reflect on the round logo icon: At first glance, you might recognize it as a modernized evolution of our previous round logo. The shape is inspired by the top of our “Good Shepherd” window on the sanctuary’s east wall, and the black lines allude to that stained glass inspiration.

Consider it a little longer. We call this our “lotus” logo, and the lotus is a flower with symbolic significance across many major religions, including Christianity. The colorful brilliance of lotus blossoms against the murky waters in which they thrive makes them a meaningful image of life and resurrection. Their seeds are remarkably hardy, capable of lasting many centuries and then taking root when planted in the right conditions. LaSalle’s round lotus logo captures that sense of new life and rootedness.

Let your imagination wander. Notice the spectrum of vivid colors, reflecting our church’s commitment to multi-denominational, multi-generational, multi-ethnic life together. Notice how the black lines weave in and out, intersecting with each other, like the intersecting roads on a map of Chicago, or all the different identities and experiences and perspectives we hold in beautiful tension. Notice how the colors here are also represented in our Sunday rhythms, a subtle symbol of our church’s monthly worship life together. Notice the round exterior, how we are surrounded and hemmed in by the love of God into an integrated wholeness.

It’s my strong conviction that who we are matters much more than the visual identity we share with the world. Plenty of churches hide bad teaching and toxic theology behind the glow of a flashy website. (Scripture has a lot to say about what matters most to God.) Nevertheless, the way we communicate, both explicitly and implicitly, is an opportunity to tell others and to remind ourselves about the good news of what God is doing at LaSalle Street Church.

My hope is that anyone who opens our newsletter, or fills out a Connect Card, or glances through our website will encounter a beautiful and honest representation of who we are as a real community of real Christians: That our love for Jesus and our pursuit of justice are inextricably linked. That we steward a powerful legacy of the ones who came before us and open ourselves to the new thing God is doing here. That we take on trouble, that we’re a bridge, that (of course!) we welcome refugees, and all the other language we’ve used through the years to try and say: God is good, and there is more than enough, and we are making room.

Let’s tell our good story together.