Blog | Effective Church Communications

Changes in image usage—the “free” sites may not be what they seem and what you need to do about it

30 May, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

What to do when disappointed with image usage rules — What it feels like when you are excited about images you think you can use and then you find out the rules changed and you can't. What do about it is what this article is about.

Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing, but as disciples of Jesus, we must try.

As I’ve been working on getting lots of material ready for launching a new Effective Church Communications Membership that includes online Courses, Ebooks, Templates, and an Idea Bank of materials, some new guidelines have come to my attention about the “free images” on sites such as Canva, PicMonkey, and Snappa, where you can use the images they have, plus the free images sites themselves such as Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, and that many of us (me included) use to create social media and templates. What follows does not apply to sites in which you pay for a membership. But since many churches and organizations make use of free sites, it's important you understand the changing rules.

This has put a delay in releasing the ECC Membership of Courses, Ebooks, & Templates, and more importantly, what I learned has some significant applications for how you and your church can use images and I wanted to explain them to you.

The take-away conclusions from my research and limitations to the use of "free" images

I won’t bore you with listing the number of articles I’ve read recently, but following is the distilled research and application takeaways both for how it applies to you as a church and how you use things and for the Effective Church Communications ministry.

Overall, as a church creating communications that you freely give to church members and that are primarily shared within your church, you have much more latitude than I do in Effective Church Communications. Particularly with the new ECC Membership that has a monthly charge, what I create falls in to the “commercial” area and the usage guidelines for that are much more limiting than your non-commercial uses in the church.

I'll summarize my bottom-line recommendations shortly and then give you details from various sites.

However, and this is a big, However—if your church does something as seemingly innocent as selling a t-shirt for camp, or a cookbook as a fundraiser or selling anything else, you are now in the commercial category also. Sadly, there are some professional groups (Getty Images has a reputation in this area) that love to go after churches if they feel their image rights are violated. For these reasons, in addition to keeping you informed as to why I do what I do for you, you need to be as careful as possible in your communication creations and in the media you use for them.Continue Reading

FREE Spiritual Endurance Encouragement verses in every imaginable format for you to share: Instagram, Facebook, Postcards and more!

19 May, 2020 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

It seems like we are all getting tired. For some tired of being inside; for others tired of the added work in job demands that now include digital demands on how to get work done. For others tired of not working and worrying about where food and rent money will come from.

For many, soul-tired of trying to remain upbeat no matter what the circumstances.

I'm tired also, but I've faced times of tired discouragement enough in my pilgrimage on this earth to know that the best way to lift myself up out of this downward spiral is to do someone for others. It especially helps if that involves giving them God's Word and His encouragement. The images below are available in every imaginable format and social media size for you to share in whatever way you want. You can download files of the individual sizes in the zip files below the sample images.

After you do that, please take a minute to read the material after the downloads for a little more about why I will be doing more materials like this in the same variety of formats.