Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission.

Clip Art Money and Time Saving Tips for Church Communications

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Images add another layer of meaning to our communications and in other videos I've shown you how to find lots of free ones. This video gives you a strategy for how to make the most of the images that you get for free. It shows you how to modify them and gives you advice on planning ahead for using them.

Following are links for material related to the video, just click on the title to go to them:

Below is the video in standard resolution and following that the video in HD for ECC Members.

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ebook: Back to Basics, writing and design skills for church communicators

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Back to basics cover
This book will teach you the basics of many needed, but often not taught, communication skills in graphics, design, typography, writing, and managing. If you want your church communications to look more professional, you need this book. Available in print and ebook formats.

Most people who work on communication creation in churches have no training in design, layout, typography, and many related skills they need to do a good job. Training material is not easy to find because many of the materials available on communication design and related areas, require the use of expensive, advanced software and teach a secular, image-heavy approach that doesn't always fit the needs of the church audience.

This book provides basic training that can help every church communicator, even those with no previous graphic arts training create, write for, and manage a church communication ministry. This book is not a how-to on a particular software, but about the basic design and communication principles that form the foundation of effective communication creation.

This book is a scanned reprint of Yvon Prehn's earlier book, How to use your computer to create Better Bulletins, Newsletters, and More! All the examples in the book are from church communications and the advice is practical and Bible-inspired.

To be honest, the quality of the scans in the book isn't the greatest, but I felt the content was worth it to make this book available to you.

To buy a paperback version of the book on Amazon.com, CLICK HERE.

If you'd like the book in e-book, PDF format CLICK HERE

FREE videos, graphics and other resources and a new ministry model to create them

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Muddy River media
Muddy River Media is a site that offers free media resources for churches based on a missionary supported model. Do check it out and consider donating if you use the resources.

The challenge for both churches and for the people who create resources for them is always how to have enough money to do what we all feel called to do. Creators would love to give away everything they do –but somehow the bills have to be paid. Churches struggle with how to balance budgets while finding the resources they need to do their ministry.

I just discovered a site that provides lots of FREE images, full-video clips and has a different ministry model to fund them. The site is: http://www.muddyrivermedia.org.

They truly do provide FREE video clips, images and assorted media for free. Check out their ever-growing collection.

A different model for support

Rather than sell their materials or charge a subscription, they are doing their work as digital missionaries. This means they solicit donations to support what they do. So please do consider a donation if you use what they create. I've often thought this would be a great way to do this kind of ministry, though a challenging one.

I like their material and hope to be in contact with them and find out more about what they do--but for right now I wanted to pass on what I did know so you can take advantage of it.

Enter a comment below if you have an opinion on this way of funding resources.

Even better, send a donation and pray for the success of the ministry! http://www.muddyrivermedia.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

FREE Bible Images, a video review

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This is a different kind of free image site. They have both illustrations and photos. They are different than other sites of free images that are mostly individual, unrelated images, in that they are in sets of images intended to be used as sets for Bible teaching.

As a Bible teacher, I really this because in the past I've had to search through many sites and images to get ones to go together to teach a topic. With this site they are already collected and ready to use. If anything, I've found they have more than enough needed.

In addition, though the pictures and images are historically and geographically accurate, they do not have any text or scripts other than the Bible reference so that there  is no cultural or language bias.

Below is a video review of the site and after that a link to a short video I created using the images.

How to use the images to create Bible teaching videos CLICK HERE to go to the video and instructions on how to create them.

How to create a Bible-teaching and story video using Free Bible Images

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Free Bible Images is a very interesting company that provides quality photos and images for teaching Bible stories. One way to use them is through animoto, which gives you a way to create videos.

I really enjoy using animoto to create short teaching and thought-provoking videos. Below is the video I created about the topic of if God cares when we mess up, using one of their photo sets about the prodigal son. This video took me much less time than similar ones I created in the past because all the images were available instead of me having to find them, modify them and put them in order.

How I did this:

1. I downloaded the images as a PowerPoint Presentation.
2. I deleted some images--you don't want to many in a short video presentation.
3. I saved the images as jpgs. Note: I am new at using the site and when I did this video didn't realize I could have just downloaded the set as a jpg file and deleted what I didn't want from that. I'm really looking forward to creating more using the site as a source for video Bible lessons.
4. I opened up www.animoto.com
5. Put in the files, created the text
6. Selected music, edited text, and edited text and re-edited text and pictures--This takes me the longest time because I want the words, music, pacing to be just right. This is one of the most important parts--you want to say the right words, include thoughtful messages, biblical challenges without being too wordy or vague. You want to spend time praying about the message and impact of your video. The video is under two minutes in length, but to make it powerful, you also need to make it shorter.
7. When done, hit the produce button, download and share.

Again, please check out FreeBibleImages.com for an ever-growing collection of wonderful material to help you teach Bible Lessons.