Re-Affirming the Parish Vision

Our little faith community here in Tennessee, Parish Pres, has undertaken a host of changes in the past several months. We have multiplied our Gospel outreach by planting Cornerstone Pres--in a kind of reverse church plant. In so doing, we moved the mother congregation from downtown to east Franklin, from the historic Church Street chapel to the bucolic Clovercroft property, and from a central location to an out-of-the way mission.

In concert with these changes we felt that it was important to re-affirm our vision and mission--we have wanted to make sure that we remain unchanging in our commitments and our calling. To that end, we have been working on crafting an image to represent those missional principles of grace we hold so dear.

You’ll notice that the image paradoxically conveys both tradition and contemporaneity simultaneously--we’ve updated some very traditional elements and treatments with very modern typefaces and layouts. As you might expect, there are a lot of things “going on” in the image: the word “Parish” itself conveys movement and the embrace of covenant community as the r and the s wrap around the i; then the i forms the trunk of a tree of life with the cross forming the branches and leaves; the cross is taken from an old Celtic form to indicate both our Reformed theological heritage and our great Gospel hope in the finished work of Jesus; the cross also has elements representing the four Gospels, the five books of the Pentateuch, and the Trinity; the cross even hints at the idea of a fountain in the center of a garden; the arboreal theme is reinforced by the organic color scheme; the parchment background reminds us of the plenary nature of God’s revelation to us in Scripture; the very modern typefaces are ink-stamped and distressed to convey a sense of both the past and the future; and finally, the distinctiveness of the word “Parish” lends itself to lots of creative uses for future church plants, conferences, and missional works.

May God be pleased to use this image to remind us that amidst all the changes, nothing has really changed at all.