Church Leadership Co-operative

Full Service

The Church Leadership Co-operative exists to identify, train, and mentor future leaders in the Church. When I joined the effort at its start in 2016, it was called something like "The Tobias Gibson Internship" — a mouthful honoring a figure most people couldn't place. I pitched the change: The Church Leadership Co-operative, "The Co-op" for short. A name that says what it is, shortens naturally, and gives a young leadership program the feel of something people belong to rather than apply for.

That belonging idea carried straight into the social identity: the handle and hashtag I developed — @wearetheco_op — put the "we" up front on purpose. It's not just the staff behind the curtain; every intern and every partner church gets to say we are The Co-op. It stuck well enough that it goes on the shirts we hand our interns.

From there I built the whole identity: the logo system and its colorways, the visual language, and the website — designed and built on Squarespace. And when we went looking for a home online, theco-op.com was somehow still available (a huge miss, REI, honestly). It was priced as a premium domain and worth every penny — try finding a nine-character .com that says exactly what you are.

The full-service relationship has run ever since: trade show displays, flyers, social media packages for partner churches and organizations, and ongoing social content creation and management.