Create logo, & eventually brand guide, that’s fresh yet traditional! Avoid using cross as main graphic. Good luck

First Baptist Church Alexandria

TBD - working on a new slogan

We are a Baptist church with a rich and long history just outside of Washington, DC in the historic city of Alexandria, VA. Our congregation & style is more traditional and we have a lot of young families in our church but it’s a multigenerational church overall. Our church steeple is well known around our city, and could be a great way to brand ourselves in an easily recognizable way to the people in the city. But, we don't want to go too boring/traditional and would like a fresh take on the steeple if that is used. Another idea would be some kind of crest that speaks to the historic nature of our area. Think J. Crew, Polo, etc.

Working on vision statement based on:
First Baptist Church of Alexandria is an authentic worshipping and discipleship community equipping followers of Jesus to make disciples through service to one another as the Body of Christ, love of our local neighbors, and global outreach to the mission field beyond our borders. We seek to be doers of the Word, sharing faith through both words and actions and modeling Jesus in how we serve all people.

3 driving strategies:
1) Hospitality—setting the table and inviting the local community into our corporate life and worship
2) Diversity—proactively seeking and investing in ways to reflect the community we live in, and the Kingdom of God on whole
3) Service—being Doers of the Word by serving those outside of the church walls

I am the new communications director and we are about 6 months out from finishing a big renovation project. Our new interior is a lot of light grey, white, with accents of navy. It would be good to have a brighter accent color as well.
Our current branding is terrible, was chosen to get use through our renovation but now we are ready to do a big reveal of our new branding.
I've put together a pinterest page to give you some more direction. https://www.pinterest.com/erexroth1…ogo-ideas/
I like the idea of being able to use the graphic from our logo sometimes, and not always having to have our name with it. Also, we are widely known as FBCA, so I would love to have that in one of the logo modification options. I am giving you a some pictures of our building so you have an idea of what it looks like. We also have these circle windows all around that could be somehow incorporated if it works. One dept. used it as their logo and that's attached. It's a bit busy for me, but they wanted to share it. Just some ideas for you! Our current website is: http://www.fbcalexandria.org
Above are some screenshots of our new website redesign which I've only begun, but you can see the feel/look we are going for.

Updated:
(We may reply to you individually as well based on your current design submission, but below is for everyone).
After the revision process we have gone through with each of you we have a better feel for what we are looking for, which in some ways has evolved from our vision when we first began the process.
We’re interested in exploring a simpler, cleaner, more symbolic option alongside some of the more objective ideas (mostly steeples) we’ve received. We recognize that there will then be two potential directions for us – but we want to explore both looks in the final versions of these drafts. I've added 2 examples to the "Design Inspiration" section.
Having something that is recognizable as our church, and yet, has enough simplicity to be easily overlayed across pictures and videos is tough, we realize. I’ve also added an idea one person on our team had for a ‘crest’ style design that has some of these qualities. Crests can sometimes look old & medieval, but they also imply a timelessness that would be appealing given the age of our church and the history of our area. If you’d like to propose something along those lines – even basing something on the crests we’ve submitted – please do so and use them as a jumping off point.

So, going forward:
- Looking for simplified/but not too corporate or cold.
- Please include a varied option that shows the logo with just FBCA, so we can see what that would look like.
- Using Navy, Gray,/white and an accent (possibly a golden tan or yellow, possibly an alternate lighter/pale blue.