The U-shaped circle in imprint

A logo is typically made up of two things:

• the motif / mark / symbol
• the text / type

I haven't studied design theory (I just pretend that I have) but I figure the idea is to come up with a motif that is memorable and hopefully meaningful along with text that is clear and complementary. Sometimes the text and the motif are combined into just a single design where often the text is the logo.
This logo is for our weekly small groups at SAS (6pm church at St Matt's). The motif itself is loosely inspired by the logo of Mute Records (who published Veiculo, one of the daft soundtrack albums that I like). The motif is the U-shaped circle! The U-shaped circle is not a circle: it always forms a U so that newcomers can join in. If it gets too big, it will split into smaller Us. Often the U will take the initiative and move around rather than just waiting for newcomers. The motif was a four-step process:
1. Drawing using 6px pencil at 70% opacity. I used the original drawing rather than redrafting it.
2. Lens blur
3. Increase brightness 30, increase contrast 80.
4. Paintbucket fill of all white spaces, tolerance 150. The high tolerance takes some of the edges off the figures. After the lens blur and brightness/contrast, this gives the figures a bleeding-felt-pen look.

Here's a coloured draft before I went back over the process:
The font Mothership was used to create the text. Here are some earlier ideas: