Here’s a word that makes a lot of pastors uncomfortable: Remarkable.
It sounds like pressure. It sounds like you need a budget you don’t have, a staff you can’t afford, and a building that doesn’t leak. None of that is true. A remarkable church doesn’t mean the church is perfect. It doesn’t mean biggest. It means people are actually making remarks about the church. Positive ones. The kind that travel from a neighbor’s backyard conversation into a first-time visitor’s seat on Sunday morning.
That’s it. That’s the whole definition.
And here’s the hard truth: most churches aren’t remarkable. They’re fine. Decent. Unoffensive. And completely forgettable. I’ve watched it happen for over forty years. Good churches, led by good pastors, doing good things … and nobody outside their walls has the faintest idea they exist.
The move from unknown to unforgettable is real. I’ve made it more than once. One of the churches I led went from living in the shadow of two megachurches to becoming the most talked-about church in the community. It took three and a half years of focused, intentional work. The process that got us there is the same one I’m about to hand you.
Step One: Find Out What Your Reputation Actually Is
Before you can build your reputation, you need to know what you’re working with. And I promise you, what you think people say about your church and what they actually say are two very different things.
Here’s what you do. Put away the clergy collar. Leave the name badge in the drawer. Take off the hat with your church’s logo on it. Go incognito.
Then walk into a coffee shop, a diner, a hardware store, preferably somewhere within eyesight of your building. Strike up a conversation and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about checking out that church over there on Sunday. You know anything about it?” Then stop talking and listen.
If you’re outside of line-of-sight, use the name. “I’m thinking about visiting First Church this Sunday. What do you know about them?”
One more tip: turn on your phone’s voice recorder before you walk in. You’re going to want receipts. Because some of your church members will not believe what people say. Or don’t say. I’ve heard responses like, “That’s a church? I thought it was a daycare.” And the classic, “I didn’t know they were still open.” Not the words of a remarkable church.
Ouch. But better to know.
If you do have a reputation, good. Now you know whether you’re building on it or repairing it. For most of you, though, prepare to be humbled. The food pantry you’re so proud of? The bell choir that won a regional award? The community probably has no idea. And that’s the starting line, not the finish line.
Step Two: Find Your One Thing
Most stuck churches suffer from the same disease. They’re trying to do everything. Children’s ministry, small groups, recovery programs, community outreach, senior fellowships, Wednesday night suppers … all of it running at half-speed, half-staffed, and half-funded.
Mediocrity is not a reputation. It’s an absence of one.
You need to find your Signature Ministry. The One Thing. The thing your church is either genuinely good at or so passionate about that you’re willing to go all in. Not two things. One.
Before you decide, do a little reconnaissance on the competition. Find out what the big churches in your area are known for. Ask the same question you asked about yourself: “What’s that church over on Fifth Street known for?” Go to the coffee shop. Ask the barista. Find out what makes them a remarkable church.
Here’s why it matters. If the megachurch across town owns the youth program category, you don’t want to fight that battle. They’ve got resources you’ll never match. But what they can’t replicate is intimacy. A kid can get completely lost in a youth group of 400. Your group of 25 knows every name, every story, every struggle. That’s not a weakness. That’s a niche.
The goal is to find the category where you can be the best option available. Then go all in.
Churches that hedge their bets never build a reputation. Generalities don’t attract crowds. They don’t even attract first-time visitors.
Step Three: Build It, Perfect It, Align Everything to It
Once you’ve found your signature ministry, the work breaks into four moves.
Build it. Get it off the ground and make it real. Not a pilot program. Not a “we’re thinking about” announcement. An actual, functioning, visible ministry.
Perfect it. Excellence is relative. A church of 50 doesn’t need to match a church of 500. But within your size and your context, it has to be excellent enough to be remarkable. If people walk away saying “That was pretty good, I guess,” you’re not there yet. You’re looking for “You have got to try this!”
Align everything to it. Every ministry, every program, every event in your church has to become a step stool that leads toward your signature ministry. If small groups are your signature, then your women’s retreat, your men’s breakfast, and your VBS all have some thread that points people toward a small group. Your signature ministry gets mentioned from the platform every single week. It’s in your bulletin, your social media, your lobby conversations. It’s not the tail wagging the dog. It becomes the body of the church.
And the whole thing has to connect directly to making disciples. Making disciples is the mission of the church … actually, it’s the mission of the Church capital C. And your Signature Ministry isn’t decoration. It becomes the primary engine of discipleship in your congregation.
Market it. I know. That word draws shivers of horror in some of your church members. But all marketing is just getting the word out about the good thing you’re doing.
Word of mouth marketing is still the most powerful force available to you. When someone drives home from your church and calls their sister and says, “You have got to come with me next week,” that’s marketing. That’s the goal.
Your church sign matters if you have a changeable one. Social media matters. According to Pew Research, over 73% of Americans are active on social media (YouTube and Facebook leading the charge). That’s not an endorsement of any platform. It’s just reality. A church that ignores social media is leaving an enormous door unopened. A remarkable church is one that people hear about.
The Part Nobody Wants to Hear: Pastor, You Have to Lead This
Here’s where I get pushback. A lot of pastors, especially those from mainline traditions, bristle at the idea of the pastor being the public face of the church in the community. Nobody wants to be the billboard pastor. Nobody wants a personality-driven church.
I get it. But here’s the thing. From the very beginning, personalities have driven movements. Abraham. Jacob. Elijah. Jesus. Peter. Paul. Every significant movement in Scripture has a leader’s name attached to it. There’s a lot of talk about grassroots movements, but there’s always a leader at the root of every one of them. God so loved the world that he didn’t send a committee and doesn’t deliver vision to an executive team.
The worry about personality-driven collapse is real. But the answer isn’t to make the pastor invisible. It’s to be the kind of leader worth following, out in the community where it counts, while building a team that shares the vision.
And here’s the practical reality. The church’s reputation inside the church is already set. The community is where the work needs to happen, and the pastor is the community-facing person in the church. When the mayor wants to talk to your church, they call the pastor. Not the board chair … the pastor.
If you’re not out in the community championing your church’s mission and your Signature Ministry, you’re asking your congregation to follow someone who isn’t leading. If you’re out there, visible, building relationships with the influencers and networkers in your community, two things happen. The church’s reputation starts forming faster. And your church members start following your lead.
How Long Does Building it Actually Take?
Church reputation builds slowly. That’s the honest answer. Most churches that follow this process will start seeing real momentum somewhere between two and three years in. I know that’s not what you want to hear. But it’s the truth, and you deserve the truth more than you deserve a puff of smoke blown your way.
Here’s the variable that changes everything, though. Passive effort produces slow results. Active leadership compresses the timeline dramatically. The pastor who gets out of the office and into the community, who networks with the people who know everybody, who becomes genuinely known as a community leader and not just a church leader, that pastor’s church builds its reputation faster. Add congregation members who catch the vision and do the same, layer in consistent social media presence, and the two-year runway can shrink considerably.
Most churches will read this article and do nothing. Some will skip step one and dabble in step two without doing the hard work of focus. A few will go all in on the process and then wait passively for the reputation to build.
The ones who actually get there are the ones with a pastor who takes the reins, gets out of the building, and becomes the visible, vocal champion of the church’s mission. Community first, congregation second. In that order.
I led a church that lived in the literal shadow of two megachurches. We had a minimal reputation when we started. We chose community engagement as our signature ministry and went all in. We built it. We perfected it. We aligned everything to it. I was intentional … I got out into the community and stayed there. Three and a half years later, we were the most talked-about church in town. Many residents had stopped calling us by our actual name, the Christian Church, and started calling us the Community Church. Not because we rebranded. Because we earned it.
That’s what remarkable looks like. Not a billboard. Not a television feature. Just a church that did one thing so well, for so long, that the community couldn’t stop talking about it.
The Bottom Line
Unknown churches don’t stay unknown by accident. They stay unknown because nobody’s giving the community a reason to notice them.
A remarkable church doesn’t get that way by accident either. They choose one thing. They do it exceptionally well. They align everything they’ve got behind it. They tell people about it. And they don’t stop.
Your church can do this. You can be a remarkable church … even if right now, someone in the neighborhood thinks you’re a daycare.
Start with the incognito walk. Find out where you actually stand. Then get to work.
The world doesn’t need more forgettable churches. It needs yours, at its best.