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 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.

Clipart for World Religions, tools to help you be a modern-day Paul

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There are many reasons why you might want to find clip art for religions other than Christianity, including to study and understand them or to do outreach. The Apostle Paul in Acts 17 carefully studied the pagan idols so that when he preached to the people he used what had learned about their religions as a bridge to share the good news of the true God and Savior Jesus. Below is how Paul did this and following are some websites of high quality clip art that you can use to reach the Athens in your world:

Acts 17:22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Taking your cue from Paul, if you want to study the representations of  other faiths today, below are some sites that will help. Please enter any that you know about that I may have missed in the comment section below this article.

Good overall site to purchase high quality software

http://www.fotosearch.com

This site is listed in the categories below, but it is by far the highest quality site. The site has samples from many other sites, some of which are not widely advertised. You can buy the images individually and the site links to the collections the images come from. There are many beautiful, innovative and interesting images for the Christian faith in addition to a large variety of world religion images.

There are no free images listed and some are quite expensive, but the quality of many is quite high. Do take the opportunity to browse through it for ideas even if you don't purchase something.

JEWISH CLIPART COLLECTIONS

http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/jewish.html
Wonderful collections and images, links to complete collections.

http://www.jewish-clip-art.com/

Contemporary, informal style, some cost

http://www.jewishsoftware.com/products/jewish_clipart_84.asp

Very nice CD, a comment on it: "Jewish observance permeates the content of this disk, which will be welcomed by Jewish schools here and in the Diaspora that need artwork to decorate classes or newsletters, religious children who want to illustrate school reports, and synagogues that produce bulletins to their members."

ISLAMIC CLIPART COLLECTIONS

http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/islamic.html

Professional, quality images, priced per image, beautiful images. Also has links to more complete collections.

http://www.sakkal.com/IslamiClip1.html

Traditional calligraphic images

BUDDISM

http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/buddha.html

Beautiful collection, contemporary, professional, links to complete collections.

http://karenswhimsy.com/buddhist-statues.shtm

Really nice black and white drawings. Don't let website title mislead you, this site has many vintage images that are excellent in a number of categories, check it out.

World Religion Collections

The quality, type, and religions represented below varies tremendously, but many religions represented.

http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/world-religions.html
Clip art sets, high quality, that have images for a group of religions.

http://www.aperfectworld.org/religion.htm

http://vector-images.com/cd_contents/mythology.php

http://graphics.elysiumgates.com/cultural.html

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Please do add additional sites that you use for images for Christian or other religions in the comments below—thanks so much for sharing!