What was the last text-only Facebook or Twitter post you remember reading? If the answer is that you can't remember, it's understandable.
The easiest way to make sure that your message gets lost in the noise is to just use a boring block of text.
Luckily, there are hundreds of thousands of church graphics available online, free for the taking.
I asked my amazing church communications friends for their advice on where to find the best free church graphics online, and the response was overwhelming.
Free church graphics
I've included church-specific resources, but also general resources that have a searchable database with a good amount of photos in categories like nature and people and church and stuff. You get it, you're creative!
There is a mix of both photo databases—which are libraries of high-quality digital photographs that anyone can edit and use—and collections of preassembled graphics and other visual assets from large churches with generous graphic design teams.
There are polished graphics with text included that you can plug right into your bulletins, slideshows, and social media campaigns, and raw elements such as images, fonts, and backgrounds that allow experienced designers to color outside the lines a little.
Just browse through and try out any that strike your fancy. Remember, they're all free!
Church-specific resources
1. Church Media Drop
Church Media Drop offers a huge array of multimedia, including logos, audio and video files, and even creative games with instructions and printouts. They also offer free, downloadable sermon series for youth groups or adult education.
2. CMG Create
CMG (Church Motion Graphics) Create offers colorful still photos and title slides, and—for professional graphic designers—individual layers so you can put together your own creative church graphics to use in videos, social media campaigns, or whatever you can dream up. You can search by color or keyword, and browse trending or random images. They also offer premium content, including their motion packs, for $10/month.
3. CreationSwap
CreationSwap features a clean, pretty interface that provides access to an expansive library of church-inspired videos, images, graphics, and presentations.
4. Freely Photos
Freely Photos is a church-specific database of Christian stock photos. They also offer holiday-specific media, and you can search by category or keyword. There is a mix of Creative Commons photos—meaning that they are free to use by the public in the interest of the greater artistic good—pulled from the web, along with original creations.
5. Life.Church Open
After signing up with a free account (which Life.Church says is to ensure that their resources are used non-commercially) you get access to a library of more than 35,000 resources, including graphics, videos, and even apps. The Life.Church Open Network also includes training and discussion groups.
6. NLC Creative
New Life Church, based out of Arkansas, has a substantial, talented creative team, and they decided to share much of their work online for free. You can scroll through their themed graphics packages and download them in zipped files.
7. Pixel Preacher Freebies
Pixel Preacher is a paid graphic design service for churches, but their Freebies section includes a bunch of cool looping motion graphics, video countdowns, and overlays. You can also search their growing collection by category.
8. RiseUp Resources
RiseUp was created by an Alabama church planter and graphic designer for small, growing churches without their own graphic designer. They offer sermon graphic packs, design templates for bulletins and flyers, video countdowns, and announcement slides.
9. Saltful
Not to be confused with an online purveyor of artisan salts, of both the sea and rock varieties, Saltful is a large image database curated just for churches and ministries, created by Christian communications agency Word Revolution. Saltful doesn't have a search function, but because all of their images are church related, they're great for browsing.
10. Seeds
Seeds is Church on the Move's depository of free graphics. Like other large churches, Church on the Move decided to share their resources with everyone. They offer themed series of images, music files, and even motion graphics.
General resources
11. Canva
Canva is a multipurpose graphic design website. They have easy-to-use templates that allow you to create brochures, cards, posters, and flyers as well as newsletters, announcements, infographics, and presentations. Pull in photos from the other resources in this collection, and you can design your own original creations.
12. FindA.Photo
Finda.Photo is a streamlined database full of more than 10,000 stock photos, videos, and templates. It also has a search by color feature. It pulls from different free resources around the web, and you can search by keyword or browse different collections, like aerials or wild animals.
13. Freepik
Freepik has a database of more than 280,000 Creative Commons licensed photos, but what sets it apart is the selection of vector illustrations, icons, and Photoshop designs. Freepik assets do require attribution, unless you pay $9.99/month for a premium account.
14. Free Nature Stock
All of the photos on Free Nature Stock are of natural wonders, making them ideal for church graphics. Free Nature Stock is—as the name suggests—a depository of nature images taken by photographer Adrian Pelletier. He adds one new photo everyday, and you can use them any way you want.
15. Gratisography
If you want to ensure that your images won't be mistaken for boring stock photography, check out Gratisography, where you can find everything from dogs wearing glasses to someone riding a skateboard in bowling shoes. New pictures are added every week by photographer Ryan McGuire, and you can search them by keyword or browse through categories like “Urban" and “Whimsical."
16. Pexels
Go to the Pexels home page and then scroll down, and down, and down. You'll see the most popular photos from the last month, and you can keep going and going. I tried to get to the bottom but was unsuccessful. Of course they're all free and all yours to use however you want. You can search by keyword, category, and color, and even upload your own photos. Try searching Nature or Prayer for some good church-related images.
17. PixaBay
If you've ever done anything with images online, you've probably heard of PixaBay. The streamlined database includes more than a million photographs, illustrations, and even short videos. All of them are absolutely free of copyright and cost, and can be searched by category or keyword. They even have a Religion category.
18. StockSnap.io
StockSnap, a free service from online graphic design tool Snappa, adds hundreds of new high-res, copyright-free images to its already enormous photo database every week. You can browse trending photos, popular searches, and pull your favorites directly into Snappa to create your own branded graphics.
19. Unsplash
Unsplash is one of the most well-known and expansive photo resources on the net. You can search by keyword, click the "new" tab to make sure you're using something fresh, and—for the shutterbug at your church—even submit your own photos!
20. VisualHunt
VisualHunt has more than 350 million Creative Commons photos that can be searched by category, keyword, and even color tone. Check out categories like Beach, Sky, or Tree for some church-friendly backgrounds.
Do you have more resources for free church graphics?
Do you have any favorite resources for free church graphics that didn't make this list? Well, you can help everyone out by sharing them in the comments below!
And now that you have all of these visual resources, it's time to take them and let your creativity flow. Used in conjunction with church management software, you can use these resources to boost your website design and other communications. Check out our guides on church bulletin design, awesome church videos, and church social media for inspiration.
Nicolette Paglioni contributed to this article.