Trinity's New Logo Fr. Nick Knisely - Written for Newsletter, April 2001
I expect that you noticed the wonderful new logo this edition of our newsletter is sporting. The logo was designed by Carol Vickrey, who is also responsible for the new look for the newsletter, as well as a number of improvements in the design of our communication instruments in the parish. Carol is the Chair of the Communications Committee, and has been doing a great deal of work behind the scenes over the last couple of months, and we are just now seeing the fruits of her labors.
The Logo is meaningful to me in many ways, and I'll mention a few of them, but the reason that I was immediately attracted to it when Carol first showed it to me was that it captures who we are and not what we are. So often I see a parish logo that tries to take some visual element of the parish's architecture as an inspiration and use it to create a recognizable graphic. But such logos fall into an old trap that I think catches a number of us. The building is not the church, the people are the Church.
Our new logo is a representation of who we are, not where we worship, or the name of our parish. The outward arrows represent the Outreach programs of our parish, both large and small, and the ways over the years that we have tried to find ways to reach out to neighbors in distress. The way they are arranged reminds me of the points on a compass, which in turn reminds me that we have outreach programs both near and far - spanning the neighborhood of Bethlehem and reaching out to all the Earth. I see in those arrows the Soup Kitchen, the Housing Ministry, Kid's Peace, North East Ministries, the Prison Ministry and the work in Swaziland, in Haiti, in Vietnam and other places of the globe where we have attempted to respond to our Lord's call.
The inward arrows remind me of our life of worship and prayer. The are especially compelling for me in the way they graphically demonstrate how the inward movement of our prayer life brings us to encounter the cross of Jesus, and in this case, its' arms as arrows pointing outward yet again. That inward flow of prayer and worship leading us out into the world is fundamental to my own understanding of the Church and seems to me to be the very this parish. That vision is reinforced in the way that the entire Logo reminds us of a ship wheel - and the ship is the earliest artistic symbol for the Church (reminding us that the Church, like Noah's ark will carry us safely through the dangers that surround us.)
Finally the Maltese Cross at the center of the Logo reminds me of the many Moravian stars I see hung around town at Christmas time, and in its shape, is a signature of just who we are - The People of God worshiping in Trinity Church in Bethlehem PA. Taken as whole, this Logo is practically a sermon about who we are and what we do.
