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 a Biblical Perspective to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. Our tools constantly change; our task doesn’t; Effective Church Communications can help.

Free Islamic Images and Clipart, a video tour

By Leave a Comment

 

Free Islamic Images and Clipart Video overview
Free Islamic Images and Clipart Video overview with links to download sites.

It is not easy to find good Islamic images and clip art that are free. I found lots of sites that charge a lot for images. Though the images were beautiful and very nicely done, the prices were not realistic for church communicators who want to create materials either in print, PowerPoint or on the web  for the upcoming Muslim festival of Ramadan or any time that your church wants to teach about the Muslim religion.

On the other hand, many of the sites that say they are "free" really aren't or have so many rules, regulations and usage guidelines they are unrealistic.

The video below will give you a tour and preview of some sites that have good quality, respectful and correct images. In addition all of them are FREE and they don't have restrictive usage guidelines. Below the video are three links. There is a fourth site illustrated, but the link I had no longer works and I do apologize for that in the video. [Read more...]

Q & A: Where can you find Free PowerPoint resources, artwork and templates?

By 2 Comments

Question:

"Our church has recently added a video screen to our sanctuary. We are in the beginning stages on learning how to use it for announcements and other parts of our church service. We have found some resources for slide backgrounds, videos and countdowns. Most of the video and countdown sites have a fee to use these. We are a small church and just wondering where the best sites are for these things, and possibly free usage sites also. Any suggestions?"

Answer:

Though there are many excellent companies that create PowerPoint presentations for churches, many do charge a hefty fee for their materials. As someone who creates resources for churches, I know everyone needs to make a living, but at the same time, I as someone who is married to a bi-vocational pastor and whose work at the church is done for no compensation, I do know that church resources can be very tight, while ministry demands can be challenging.

I did a good bit of research on this and found the following websites have some excellent FREE resources! Rather than simply telling you about them, I did 3 video reviews, so you can actually see the sites. Following are video reviews of the sites I found most useful with preliminary comments and direct links to them.

PLEASE respond in the comments section if you have other sites that you use either free or paid for. Any extra comments would be very helpful. Thanks so much!

Free PowerPoint Templates from Christian sources

Heartlight.org
http://www.heartlight.org/powerpoint/2262.html
This site is just WONDERFUL! Lots of free materials, really good quality, and I found the overall attitude of the site encouraging and uplifting. Not only PowerPoint, but lots of other materials you'll find very useful for church communications.

Ebibleteacher.com
http://www.ebibleteacher.com/
I didn't find this as useful for worship-type PowerPoint as some, but I really like their teaching materials. Good graphics and maps section and OK background images. I use a lot of maps and historical images in my Bible teaching to remind people that the Christian faith is rooted in real history that took place in real places.

Hyperpixels Media
http://www.hyperpixelsmedia.com/motion-background-loops/fire-flow
I really liked the materials here. This site has mostly materials that cost, but they also have some free materials, that change and that are wonderful. Their quality is excellent and their prices are very reasonable. This does cost, but their video: A Man's Thesaurus had me laughing out-loud. Check it out when you need a bit of humor.

Free PowerPoint Templates for Churches Video Review

Free PowerPoint templates from Secular Sources

PowerPoint Styles.com
http://www.powerpointstyles.com
This is a weird site—but useful weird. Be sure to look at the video before you go to it. It has some GREAT material and it's all FREE, but what is weird about it is all the junk ads, software download boxes and other stuff that clutter up the site. But if you take a few minutes with it, you'll be rewarded with some really great PowerPoint Templates.

Microsoft.com
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=presentations
The link above goes directly to the free PowerPoint templates from Microsoft. As you'll see the best ones they offer don't come from Microsoft themselves, but from companies that give free resources to them. It is a little tricky to find and access these resources, but the video that follows shows you how.

Free Templates and Clipart for Churches from Secular Sources

Free Power Point Training Resource

Indezine.com
http://www.indezine.com/
This is a very interesting site—it does have lots of free templates for PowerPoint and the video below shows you how to access them, but it also has lots of educational information on all sorts of topics related to PowerPoint, such as an extensive tutorial about presenting on the iPad. There are lots of links to books and other resources related to PowerPoint and links to downloads of software trials. Their religious templates feature ones for non-Christian religions, which could be very useful for world religion classes. Bookmark this site as the offering and education materials change often.

Free PowerPoint Templates and Training, a video review of Indezine

Father’s Day Post cards, a great set, ready-to-use

By Leave a Comment

Here is a set of postcards for Father's Day, that can also be used as stand-alone images in PowerPoint, websites, newsletters or however else you want to use them. These publications and images come in a ZIP file you can download in these formats:

  • A PDF of postcard size publications that is ready-to-print as is, but that you can also personalize on the back side with your church information.
  • An editable MS Publisher file of the images that you can modify however you choose.
  • A graphic image in either png or jpg format that you can use any way you want, in newsletters, on the web, however, you'd like.
Word Cloud image 3
These images for Fathers Day can be used for postcards, inserts into bulletins and invitations to celebrate Father's Day.

The images above illustrate only some of what is available for Father's day. All of the files on this page are FREE for ECC MEMBERS, some of the other files will be available for everyone. Members can download the ZIP FILE, at the end of this. If you are not a Members of Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE for membership information --it is only $9.99 a month for many free resources and training available 24/7.

The images and postcards were created with Word Clouds, created with http://www.tagxedo.com.

These are illustrations only, the zip file containing all the files, PDFs, etc., is available at a link below the images.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD the ZIP file containing the PDFs, graphic images, and editable MS Publisher files.

 

What ONE THING do you need to do? a challenge for church communicators as you start the New Year

By 2 Comments

Do the most important thing
We all juggle many things, but we need to listen to the Lord to decide what is most important and do it.

This past year the father of one of my friends died. My friend shared with me that in the time they spent together as death approached, he asked his father, “Is there anything you need to do?”

What a kind and wise question to ask a loved parent in the twilight of life—to be there to help him do whatever needs to be done to rest in peace. We all want to know our lives mattered and that we finished up the tasks, the calling, and, if possible, all we were created to do before we leave this earth. We may not be able to finish those things alone and the offer to help seemed incredibly insightful and caring.

As I thought about it in the days that followed, I realized that it’s an important question for all of us to ask ourselves and those we love. As the New Year is about to start, it’s an especially good time to do that. As many of us make resolutions at this time, we ought to take time to make worthwhile ones. [Read more...]