People keep wanting to fix our logo. “It’s crooked, let me right it,” they say. Others helpfully point out what appears to be an obvious mistake, “Hey, someone in the design department made a mistake, your logo is messed up.” For you who have said nothing and wonder why the thing is not on a straight horizontal line, an editorial I wrote about 10 years ago explains why. Here is is:
Partners has a new logo. It may seem like a trivial change to you but to us at Partners it has been the stuff of warfare. Sides were formed and trenches dug. Positions were taken. It’s okay, there were no casualties and in the end we signed a peace treaty. Here are the terms of peace.
The new logo should be slightly off center, like us. Really. It should say that we are committed to the core to our normal-is-over ethos. When people say that we can’t help certain refugees because of politics or find a way to navigate to newly displaced people in a dangerous area, we want to give it a try. God belongs in scary places.
We also recognize that our greatest acts of faith are mingled with the tainted motives and sin that our humanity implies. Okay, so we aren’t perfect but we are in the arena fighting for God’s right to rule and reign. The logo had to be bent like us.
Prayer and action had to be visually represented. Hands are a symbol of people praying. More than that, two hands in an embrace suggest action and partnership. That’s us. While the hands may seem obscure in the logo, the red one joined with a white one (again, slightly tilted) represents our value of dynamic partnership with suffering people.
The logo is framed by four corners. The idea here is that it is a stamp. We want to make our mark on the world for God. We want to do it now, with a sense of urgency, not later when we can afford it or when it is safe.
I led the attack on our old logo. I was the General. I never liked the similarity it shared with the Nike swoosh and always stumbled around trying to explain to people why we chose it and what it meant.
So our team stormed the hill, tore the flag down, and raised this new standard. We hope that you like it as much as we do.
In this issue of Partners World you will find a lot to get your blood boiling. On a recent trip to visit displaced people in Burma my blood did just that. On my second day I met two 11 year olds who were raped by Burma Army soldiers and another who was brutally molested when she was just nine years old.
When you read this month’s articles, please try to keep in mind that the people on the other end of the text are people of value and substance, like your own loved ones. In the reports, updates, interviews, and accounts penned in this issue there are all the elements of our new logo: hands gripped in action and clasped in prayer, heart felt questions asked from our off center position, movement into new areas of Burma where we hope to make our mark for God, and yes, the rhythm of following a God who delights in keeping us on our toes in partnership.
Staying on our toes,
Steve Gumaer
Normal Is Over. 