Media Tip: Design Blogs

Tip of the Week #4

The best way to find freebies and cool ideas for your church is to read design blogs. You're taking the first step by reading this one right now! Since my blog is relatively new in it's conception, you probably got here from a link I posted on Facebook or through Blogger's most recently updated blog link. That being said, if you are new to design or working with your church's media there are plenty of good websites and blogs out there. It was because of these very blogs that I started mine in the first place. While these blogs may not be geared specifically toward helping church's or church media, they still have a lot of valuable services to provide.

My personal favorite is Blog.SpoonGraphics. It is very well designed, clean, and easy to use. The author, Chris Spooner (hence the name), offers great tutorials for those who have programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as Freebies for everyone. Both of these can be valuable if you use them properly. Tutorials that you will find include backgrounds, textures, logos, cute vector creatures, and even a t-shirt design stencil. Freebies can include all of the same things, except they're free and already designed for you! This is one of the blogs that inspired me to start my own.

The next blog that I've found helpful is Media Ministry Blog (website no longer exists). This blog is great for churches. It also is clean and very well designed offering helpful insights toward church media. This, too, is a site that inspired my creation of Media Missions. However, I felt that Media Ministry Blog did not go far enough. The author posts about once every three months. When he does, the posts he makes are extremely helpful and very well thought out. It is my goal to take this approach toward assisting churches and make it more current, posting new design tips and ideas as often as I encounter them in ministry.

 

Additionally, I subscribe to PSD Tuts+. Every time a new tutorial is posted, I am informed through my email. If a tutorial is posted that I like or that I think I can use, I give it a try. The purpose of tutorials is not to show you how to reproduce something that someone else has created, or else they would just offer it as a Freebie. The purpose of tutorials is to teach you the basic principles that went into creating that graphic. Then you can use those principles to create your own graphics.

Since I mentioned subscribing, the next thing you need to do is subscribe to that blog. Do you like the blog? Subscribe to it. I subscribe to all three of the above blogs. Subscribing is giving your email to the blog's system so every time a post is made you are informed. If you are kind of hesitant about giving out your email: Don't worry! You will only receive an email when a new post is made. Feedburner, the program most blog subscriptions run from, even says something along these lines "New post, new email. No post, no email for you." Subscribing saves you time from checking the blog every day only to see no new post, at the same time it helps us just in case you forgot about us and we've made 10 new posts since you've checked us out last. To subscribe to this blog hover over the black boxes to the right of the screen and one of them says subscribe. Click it, and then enter your email. Hit enter, and it will prompt you to enter a randomized set of letters to prove you are a real person and that's it, it's that simple.

The web is filled with resources for the church media designer. But with so many websites, it's hard to keep track of all of them. When you find one you like, write it down, bookmark it, or subscribe to it and return to it often. The best websites will have the best material. Use the resources at your disposal and the do the best you can for God.

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Sermon Visuals

Recently, one of my desires has been to take the next step in our church services through sermon visuals. If you recall, this was the tip of the week two weeks ago. I've looked around at various websites observing the "Basic, but Free" on CreationSwap, the "Average, but Cheap" on ShareFaith, and the "Awesome, but Expensive" on Graceway Media. I have to say, Graceway Media highly impresses me. Most of their stuff looks amazing. It's everything the church media guy would hope to be able to do. Well I told myself that I could probably do some of the more basic things that they can and I gave it a whirl. My beginning tests worked out so well that I asked my good friend, missionary Steven Maldoff of Murray River Baptist Church, if he'd like me to design something for him. So this week was our first week of doing that. If you check out Tip of the Week #2 you will see the initial test design that I sent him called The Greatest Thing About Heaven. Below I have included this week's design (Making the Most of Mealtime Conversations).

 

I'm not a magician, and I have no problem sharing my secrets. They aren't really secrets at all. I got the backgrounds for both from the free place I named earlier, CreationSwap. They've got a lot of really great free downloads in terms of backgrounds and stock images. Then all it takes is a little bit of Photoshop know-how to change or add text. For this weeks design, I took the stock image, changed the fonts to make them look more professional, use font sizes to emphasize word hierarchy (adding in a little word design), and added some flare to make the background less boring and plain. The second design is essentially the same thing, except it's entirely from scratch, no stock image except the background. I really like that design, so Murray River Baptist Church, if you see this design on your wall in the future with some different text, it's because I didn't want to let it go to waste as just being a sample.

Now, a little more about this week's Sermon Visual. Last week you may recall the church bulletin cover for Murray River Baptist Church about hosting a Matthew Meal. Pastor Maldoff encouraged his congregation to invite their unsaved friends, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers over to their house for dinner. In the process, they would look for opportunities to talk to them about Jesus Christ. This is, in a sense, bringing your friends to meet Jesus like Matthew did in Luke 5:27-32. Well this week's sermon is a follow-up to last weeks. Now Pastor Maldoff is encouraging the people to make the most of those mealtime conversations. Don't just have the people over to eat, and then not tell them about Jesus. If you would like to check out the sermon you can listen to it on Sermon Audio by going to: http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=42912040171.

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Wired Wednesday #3

Here is this week's media inspirational designs. Most of them are downloadable, only the two at the end are screenshots of current church website material. Everything else comes from free download websites. Click the image and it will take you to the place where you can download it. Some of them, like the Jesus one, have multiple files for different page orientations. FYI, I have the Jesus image as my Desktop background on my laptop. I think it's really neat. Anyway, I hope these give you ideas or are useful to you in some way. As a side note, some of these files may not work for you unless you have Photoshop, but most of them are JPGs accessible on any computer.

 

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Media Tip: Social Media Networks

One of the fastest growing forms of technology in today’s society is social media networks. Websites like Facebook. Twitter, and YouTube are widely used by millions of people. However, good Christian people are divided on the issue of Social Media, and I will discuss these reservations later. It is my opinion that these social networks can be very powerful media tools in a church’s ministry.

Social Media Networks can be used to make general announcements to your church members. Do you want to remind everyone that there is a Youth Activity going on tomorrow? Or have you ever forgot to make a particular announcement or part of announcement on Sunday morning? Make it on Facebook and Twitter and everyone who has profile and follows the church will receive the update. YouTube can be used to display church videos. Maybe you put together a Year-in-Review video, place it on the church’s YouTube channel. Did the Youth Group sing a special song in the Sunday Service? Place it on YouTube for friends and family of the teens to see (assuming they live somewhere else or were absent from the service that day).

Encourage your members who use social media to like the church on Facebook or follow it on Twitter so that they can stay informed on the latest updates and events of the church. Create an overhead visual, or download one, to place on your Powerpoint that plays before the service (if you have one, and I suggest you should, but that’s for another Tip). By doing this, a visitor may see that, decide to like the church on Facebook because they want to see what’s going on, and may eventually return to the church for one of the events you post about.

 

Social Media Networks are outlets for advertising. Tip of the Week #1 was to advertise for everything. Utilizing this tool is another facet of advertising. The truth of this is evident by the thousands and thousands of businesses that have Facebook and Twitter pages.

If there is anyone reading this who is opposed to social media, let me quickly say that it is not wrong, immoral, or compromising to own a social media profile. The Social Media Networks are merely a tool. It is how you use this tool that makes it wicked or not. The people that use these networks to post immoral and crude comments, vile pictures, and inappropriate links are being wicked, but the tool itself is not what is wicked, it’s the person using it. Social media can be a very powerful tool for a church when it is used to promote godliness and encourage people.

Additional ideas for uses of social networks is Daily or Weekly Bible verses, encouraging Scripture reading, posting links to the latest sermon audio files, asking for prayer on urgent and current prayer requests, and giving short devotional thoughts or proverbs for godly living.

Don’t have a social network page yourself? Someone in your church does. Ask for volunteers to create a church page and keep it up to date with current events.

You have a page, but your church doesn’t? Suggest it to your pastor. I’d ask you to even consider volunteering to moderate it. Use this as an opportunity to serve your local church and, in turn, serve God.

Biblical principles to guide your social media network uses:

• Ephesians 4:29-30 “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”

• Hebrews 3:13 “But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”

• Matthew 5:37 “But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”

• Galatians 6:2 “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

• Colossians 3:17 “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.”

I could list many, many more principles to guide your usage of social media, but you know them because they guide your daily life. Social media is just another aspect of your daily life and it is guided by the same principles. Live your life for the Lord and use the tools at your disposal to accomplish His work.

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Big Leaps: Matthew Meals

Media Missions has a ministry locally in Pensacola, Florida but also Internationally in Australia. Through my connections with missionary Steven Maldoff, I design various flyers and bulletins for Murray River Baptist Church of Buronga, NSW, Australia. I called this post a Big Leap because of how far away Australia is spatially, yet we are still able to use our talents to reach people for Jesus. This next month, MRBC will be running a series of events called Matthew Meals. The concept is based upon Luke 5:27-32. Matthew, the tax collector (also called Levi), was called of Jesus to follow Him. Matthew then holds a big feast where he invites all his friends, family, and co-workers to meet Jesus.

A Matthew Meal is an evangelistic opportunity for the members of MRBC to do just that. Throughout the month of May this will be ongoing. I share this with you for three reasons. Firstly, to promote the events at Murray River Baptist Church. Though, most of my Australia friends either live too far away from Buronga, or are already in the church. The second reason is to give you the idea of hosting a Matthew Meal at your church. If you are interested in unique ways to have evangelist outreaches, then give this a try and suggest it to your pastor.

Thirdly, I ask you to pray. Will you join with me in prayer for these events? Pray that souls would be saved and that others would gain an interest in the church. At the very least, pray that God plants seeds in the hearts of the lost that eventually it may be watered and God would give the increase.

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Wired Wednesday #2

I was going to make a Freebie Friday last week, but I decided against it because of how similar it would go with Wired Wednesday. So, instead, I decided to blend freebies into this. Essentially, I will post inspirational media images. Some from church websites and some from media download websites. Those featured images that are free downloads from my sources will be linked to the image so that you can download the high resolution version for yourself. Hence the Freebie aspect. You may also want to bookmark those websites and visit them frequently checking for new free stuff.

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This file also contains 3 other slide images for Powerpoint presentations

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The rest are just screen shots from various places. This first one is from Graceway Media. They have great stuff, but it's very expensive. This picture contains their watermark so you can't use it, and you can find this and a lot more on their website.

Hopefully these will get your creative juices flowing for what you can do in your church.

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Media Tip: Sermon Visuals

Today is the age of technology. Churches need to embrace that technology. It is not a bad thing, and you do not need to compromise your beliefs to do it. Just because you use projector or Powerpoint does not mean that you've become a "contemporary" church in the more charismatic sense of the word. Have you ever been sitting in a service and the preacher said the passage too fast, you missed it, and now you are looking over everybody's shoulder trying to figure out where they are turning to? Sermon visuals a great way to keep the Bible reference visible for anyone who might have missed it. Have you ever listened to a sermon in the morning service and then completely forgot what it was about by the evening service? Don't lie. We've all been there. With sermon visuals, the preacher's main point of the message can be displayed right behind him the whole morning service. By personal experience, I've found myself remembering those main points weeks after the service. Why? Because our minds retain visual images better.

Step #1 - Buy a Projector. If you do not have an digital projector, invest in one. Not only will this be useful for yourself and your church, but it will be helpful to any missionary that you have come through. You can buy projectors almost anywhere: www.bestbuy.com, www.digitalprojection.com, www.optoma.com, and www.viewsonic.com. Projectors come in all shapes and sizes. Not sure how much you'll use it? Buy a $300 projector.

Step #2 - Getting the Visuals. The best a most unique way to get sermon visuals is to have a member of your church who is talented with Graphic Design or Media Production to make them for you. This will guarantee originality and will put the talents of your people to work for the Lord. You'll have great visuals and you'll get someone more involved in God's Word. It's a win/win situation.

Don't have a Graphic Designer in your church? How about someone who knows how to work with computers? This shouldn't be difficult in today's culture. Find someone under the age of 30 and they are almost guaranteed to know how to use and operate a program like Microsoft Powerpoint. Then setup an account at either www.gracewaymedia.com or www.sharefaith.com. Graceway has amazing graphic design, but they have a hefty yearly membership. Share Faith is a little better priced, but a little lower on the design scale. Want something free? www.creationswap.com has a lot of free graphics for download that you can use.

Step #3 - Personalizing those Visuals. Add your Sermon Title and Bible Reference to a slide to keep up during the opening of your sermon. Then get a matching slide for your main points. At the very least include your proposition or main point; The "God wants you to serve Him" type of statement. You can also use the slides to list anything else that you want.

Step#4 - Take the Next Step. So you've got sermon visuals. Now what? Do you use the projector for anything else? Try listing your announcements on it and have it run on a cycle at the beginning of the service when everyone is walking in. Most people talk, but there is bound to be someone just sitting around. Give them something to read and look at. Maybe by the end of the month they'll have your announcements memorized!

I do have one caution. NEVER put your scripture passage on the overhead. The last thing you want to do is get your people into the habit of watching the screen as you read instead of their Bibles. The focus of the service is to worship God and learn from His Word. The Bible is where we learn from God and about God and we should never remove the Bible from the picture. If you do this, before long, people will stop bringing their Bibles to church because they know you'll have it on the overhead. That is the worst possible scenario. Don't let it happen. Technology is a great tool, but it can be abused. Make sure we use it, but use it right.

Below are some examples of sermon visuals I've created personally. I'm just starting to work with this so I'm not that great yet, but I'm learning and, in time, I'll get better.

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Wired Wednesday #1

Wired Wednesday will feature 5 images of what churches are using in their media ministries. These are meant to be inspirational, sparking ideas in pastors and church media designers. The inspirational thought may be the design, or it may be the theme featured in the photo. It doesn't really matter how you use it, but the purpose is to give you the idea in the first place.

 I saw this one while browsing the web and could only screen shot it so it's hard to read. It says "Christian Atheist: Believing in God, but Living Like He Doesn't Exist"

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Media Tip: Event Advertising

Advertise for everything (if you can afford it). Make a flyer, postcard, or bulletin insert for every major event. Events include: revival services, evangelistic events, dramatic productions, youth events, and special services (ie. Easter and Christmas). Bulletin inserts would be the cheapest route. All you need to do is make a half-sheet of paper, list the information for the event, print it two on a page, cut it in half, and put it in the church bulletin.

A postcard-size color advertisement would be ideal. It doesn't need to look pretty to accomplish its purpose (informing people of the event), but the nicer it looks the more attractive the event will be. Find someone in your church who is talented with Graphic Design to help out. You can print 4 on a page and make 200 for about $25 depending on where you get the printing done. OfficeMax, Staples, and Kinko's all do color printing. You can also get some great deals online if you are printing more than 500 from places like UPrinting

Then encourage your people to hand them to friends, neighbors, and relatives. Give them to the cashier at Wal-Mart or the waitress at the restaurant you are going to for lunch. You'll rarely get new people walking through your doors if you aren't inviting them, and special events are the best way to get them in. The folks that wouldn't normally come to a regular service just might come for that free Steak Dinner you're putting on as part of an evangelistic event. Psalm 126:6 "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."

Below are some examples from my church, Pine Forest Estates Baptist Church. I didn't make these. They were created by a great professional Graphic Designer in our church.

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Beginning Steps

Taking the next step begins with taking the first. You cannot achieve your goal if you do not begin somewhere. Getting where you want to go means taking one step at a time. God leads us in much the same way. He does not reveal His whole plan for our lives at the very beginning, but guides us as we take each day one step at a time. The only way to get where God wants you to be is to take the first step.

Our first step has been with one locally run ministry outreach to the children and teens of Truman Ave., Pensacola. A few months ago I designed a business card for Souled Out Ministries, a group of guys who organized the Bible Club. Their card is shown below.

Just this past Saturday, Souled Out Ministries hosted a Basketball Tournament and Evangelistic Outreach that saw about 100 children and teens accept Christ as Savior. We ask that you join with us and pray for this ministry.

Another facet of Souled Out Ministries is Connection. Connection is in its beginning phase and its goal is to connect the children of Truman Ave. to Churches through the Bus Ministry. Through following up with many of the salvations this past week, and in the weeks and months prior, Connection desires to get these children and teens into solid Christian churches where they can grow spiritually in the Lord. Truman Ave. is not the best neighborhood in Pensacola. Many of these children and teens would not be able to make it to church if it were not for the church coming to pick them up. Connection understands this, and that is what it was created. The business card for this ministry is also shown below.

Will you consider how you can get involved? Maybe God would lead you to begin a Bible Club in your area. These guys started off with just a few kids and barely any workers to now having easily over 200 children and teens along with 30-40 workers. Give your all to God and He will use you.

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Taking the Next Step

Media Missions: Taking the Next Step. It is our goal to take the next step in world evangelism through media ministries. It is our desire to use the talents that God has given us for His glory. Media Missions is one of those ways that we can accomplish our goal and desire.

This blog seeks to highlight the efforts and work of Media Missions. We will assist the ministries that we come into contact with in the area of media starting with those that are already familiar to us. It is our long-term vision to assist as many ministries as possible through this blog.

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