Almost ten years ago, a few of us got rallied around an idea we could not shake: we wanted to bring beauty and innovation back to how we communicated the Gospel. This idea eventually grew into Glass Canvas, a marketing and brand agency for churches, non-profits, and ministries.
For years, we worked closely with ministries to help them focus on their unique calling and anointing, and translating that into websites, digital experiences, capital campaigns, brands, content, and marketing efforts. Many of our clients kept running into the problem of finding a digital tool that fit their unique needs. All the solutions we could point them to were not quite right.
So we began building Tilma as a solution to their problem. We expanded it for parishes and Catholic news sites, and eventually launched in the Archdiocese of Vancouver as a suite of tools for the whole Diocese to use together.
Eventually, we felt God calling us to take a big step: Offer Tilma as a resource for the rest of the Church. We weren't sure if we heard Him right the first time. To leave our agency model felt like starting over. And yet, we knew we couldn't ignore where He was leading.
We are a group of ex-agency creatives, developers, marketers, and strategists with years of work and experience under our belt and a highly-developed tool to show for it. With our desire for excellence, knowledge of ministry, and reliance on God's plan, we became the team behind Tilma.
When we follow God’s leading, everything is more efficient. We fiercely believe in holding each other and our clients accountable to excel in their calling and anointing, no matter the cost, in order to build the Kingdom as best as we can.
There is freedom in leaving nothing in the dark. When we give each other permission to speak what we don’t always want to say out loud, it brings down walls and builds up healthy teams. And a healthy team outperforms a smart team, every time.
It’s more than just the best idea winning. It’s sifting through our combined knowledge, and working with how God is moving, to create lasting impact. It’s making our team part of your team, and coming together on the same side of the table. It is dreaming up what couldn’t be done separately.
We don’t earn our identity, we receive it. Believing this and leaning into how we are made cultivates unbarred creativity. This frees us to refine our work without getting in the way. When our work comes from that freedom, the results are rich, allowing our work to deeply connect with people.
Who we are can’t be compartmentalized. To relate well, you have to consider an individual’s past, present, and future. For our team, that means celebrating together in the good days and supporting one another in the bad days. This posture is how we build trust with our team, clients, and partners.