First a rant about the clutter of word images online, and why I created the training videos and images that follow for you to share:
Word pictures, inspirational sayings, wise and funny quotes are all over the internet. I imagine your Facebook feed and every other social media site you visit is full of them. A few from my Facebook feed today.......
I have lost my mind and am making no effort to look for it.
Hey you, yes you. Stop being unhappy with yourself. You are perfect.
Making a hundred friends is not a miracle. The miracle is to make a single friend who will stand by your side even when hundreds are against you.
Though these sentiments may have a tiny modicum of humor or inspiration in them, at best they are dryer dust to the mind--useless fluff that clogs coherent thinking processes. Some are flat-out biblically wrong and dangerous thinking for a Christian who wants to grow in Christ.
For example, the many variations of "We are perfect," constantly come up to assure us it's OK to eat too much, be mean if we feel like it, and continue in whatever other habit we know we ought to change. We aren't perfect. Never will be in this life. Can't hope for it ever without our perfect Savior. And our Savior expects us to work on our sanctification. Even if many of the quotes are not as blatantly false from a biblical perspective, they certainly do not fit into the command to think about "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Phil.4:8, NIV) To compound the challenges, not only do people read this junk, but they comment on it, praise it, and pass it on to others.
Are there no alternatives?
That's the question I asked myself and of course there are, but there needs to be more and I wanted to come up with a way for people to create Word Pictures like these easily and to post worthwhile and true thoughts (many great quotes from Christian writers) and Bible passages. After trying various ways to create these, and there are many, the one I liked the best, is to create them using PicMonkey. I like this program because it has the ability to create good-looking backgrounds and put great-looking type on them easily and cheaply (for free if you don't mind some advertising on the system). Here are some Word Pictures I created using this method. The following slide show will advance itself or you can click-through it more quickly.
After learning this, I want to pass on the process and the images to you
Three things follow: 1. An intro video about Word Pictures and a challenge for church communications to create ones that are worthwhile 2. A video that shows how to create the Word Pictures using http://www.picmonkey.com, an odd little program with lots of power. 3. A zip file that has all the Word Pictures in the slide show above that can be used in print and online in social media.
Finally to the videos and the downloadable images:
Intro video to How to Create Word Pictures The following video that shows how to create Word Pictures with Pic Monkey and a downloadable file of the Word Pictures from the slide show above is for Effective Church Communication Members:
Video of How to Create Word Pictures
Word Picture images for you to download
The following images, plus all the others in the gallery above are available in the ZIP file at the end of the article. They are large, hi-res jpg images (they don't look hi-res in the gallery below, but they are) and you can use them in all your print and online creations.
To download the ZIP FILE, CLICK HERE. Save the file to your computer, and click to open. You can use these images in print or digital communications.
