Art makes us feel all the emotions: happy, sad, angry, awe, and wonder. Applied to sermon graphics, they can reaffirm the message of the Bible.
Your sermon series graphics should reflect the big idea of your message or series. Knowing your audience and what you want them to feel and remember from your message can help when choosing colors and objects for your graphic. Because the content of your message is timeless, make sure your graphic is clear, don’t worry about being clever. Getting feedback from other communicators is helpful; don’t forget to have a couple of people proof the final product for spelling and punctuation.
In this episode of Hello Church!, we talk about the importance of sermon series graphics as they apply to your church branding while piquing the interest of your people.
Chapter Markers
0:00 Welcome to Hello Church! Podcast
2:02 Why You Should Listen to This Podcast
6:00 Ministry Pass Announcement – Canva Integration
7:27 The First 5 Commandments
15:34 The Second 5 Commandments
21:49 Support Our Podcast
Resources Mentioned
Instagram
Ministry Pass
Sermonary
YouTube
Pastor’s Circle
Full Transcript
Wade:
Welcome to Hello Church. We’re in the middle of season two. This is episode eight of season two, and I’m excited because we’re talking about the sermon, what it takes to write a sermon. We’re breaking down each individual part. We talked about illustrations last week, Justin, and today we’re discussing a subject that’s near and dear to our hearts.
Justin:
Yeah, so question. Are you following the Ten Commandments?
Wade:
Okay.
Justin:
Not the Biblical Ten Commandments, but-
Wade:
But we want you to follow those as well.
Justin:
We sure do. That’s appropriate. The Ten Commandments of Sermon Graphics and we have a list. And pastors, you might be surprised at how many of these Ten Commandments you are breaking. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today, the Ten Commandments of Sermon Graphics, and this is important, so listen, if you’re a pastor, you’re saying, “Hey, they’re talking… This is the graphics episode. This is not for me.” Believe me. I think there’s going to be a few nuggets here that you can take away, that you can apply, that will make a difference for your sermon series and your messages.
Wade:
Yeah, so we’re going to be talking about artwork, sermon series, sermon artwork today. And I have a question. I’ve got a discussion starter. I want you to respond to us. Who creates your sermon series artwork? So if you’re watching this on YouTube, post in the comment section, say, “Hey, I actually use Ministry Pass, or we have the graphic designer on the team, or I just pass it to our youth pastor.”
Justin:
“I do it myself.”
Wade:
“He knows how to use a computer, she knows how to use computers.” So make sure to post that comment. You can also email us, hello@ministrypass.com. So send those in. We’d love to hear your responses and love to share those in our next episode. We want to know who creates your artwork. Are they on staff, are they volunteers, or are they us? I kind of hope they’re us. Kind of hope they’re Ministry Pass.
Justin:
Yeah. I do too. And let me just say this. Here’s a few thoughts on sermon series graphics, and this might be the why behind you should listen to this episode. Graphics for your series, create some consistency in your church branding, they reaffirm and solidify your message. And when you were talking about this before we started about stained-glass,
Wade:
Even just artwork in general from probably the second century on, we found in catacombs artwork from the early Christians. At the beginning it was mostly Old Testament artwork, but this artwork would help people to remember and understand these stories. You have to remember, too, a lot of people were illiterate, and so they could look at this artwork and they could remember, “Now, that’s the story of Abraham. That’s the story of this individual.”
It reinforced what they were teaching. And art just in general makes us feel a certain way. When we approach art, it makes us feel emotions. We could feel angry, we could feel sad, we could feel charged in a way. And so I love it when a great piece of artwork used to promote a sermon helps us to really understand our approach. Sometimes it can be really simple, and when people look at that, they say, “Okay, this isn’t fluff. We’re really getting back to the basics.” It could be something very, very artistic and very edgy where it’s like, “Hey, this is very relevant for us today. We could approach it and we just kind of feel something.” So I really love how artwork has an opportunity to, like you said, solidify or reaffirm the message of the Bible.
Justin:
And let me say this. Great artwork won’t make a sermon series memorable, but a memorable sermon series will benefit from great artwork, from great sermon graphics and series graphics. So a question I have, Wade, and this goes back to my bi-vocational days when I was a bi-vocational pastor and I’m preparing a message every week, I’m going to meetings, coordinating with volunteers and oh, by the way, I’m also creating my entire slide deck and the sermon series graphics for that week.
Wade:
And then you also have this thing called the full-time job.
Justin:
And we got that, right? We got to pay the bills.
Wade:
Yeah.
Justin:
And one of the questions someone asked me and they said, “Listen, you’re great at the design, you’re great at the creative stuff, but should you be doing this?” And that was a question I had to wrestle with. And I was really particular because I started working in Photoshop from, I was like 15 years old. So I’ve been working in Photoshop now for almost 25 years. I do it a lot less today than I did in those days. But they said, “Hey, should you be doing this?”
Wade:
I think your math’s a little off because that would make you over 40 if-
Justin:
Hang on. Hang on.
Wade:
You’re not doing yourself justice.
Justin:
Let’s see, 15 to 20 is five and 15. No, no, I’m 39. So it’s almost 25 years. 24 years at age 15.
Wade:
Okay.
Justin:
I mean, it’s homeschool math, right?
Wade:
Okay.
Justin:
It’s close. So I just need it to be close for homeschool math.
Wade:
Okay. Okay.
Justin:
But should you be doing it? And pastor, if you’re doing all the graphics, if you’re doing all the work, there’s several resources, there’s several platforms, there’s several services that you can leverage so that you have the freedom to be a pastor, not a graphic designer. Ministry Pass, we created really a large part out of those pains I was feeling as a bi-vocational pastor. We came along and we say, “Hey, let’s create a resource for busy pastors at smaller churches that have limited resources at their disposal and don’t have a lot of time, and let’s partner with them.”
Wade:
Yeah, and here’s something too. So maybe you’re even saying this is kind of a new deal. I don’t know if we’ve announced this yet on the podcast, but you might even say, “Well, I like to use other people’s graphics, but at the same time, I like to have an opportunity to brand them or tweak them for us.” We were thinking a lot about that at Ministry Pass, and we actually, we’re putting our designs.
Justin:
You’re breaking this right now, right here.
Wade:
Yeah, breaking it right now.
Justin:
Okay.
Wade:
So we’re putting our designs on Canva. So if you’re a member of Ministry Pass, you can actually download the PSD of our files. You can download the JPEGs and just use them as is, or you can open them up in Canva and you can edit them quickly and easily. So if there’s a sermon series that’s called Identity, you could pull it up and really within about 20 seconds, it’s so fast, you could change it to Ephesians. You could say, “Oh, this is a series on Ephesians.”
Justin:
And a lot of people don’t have Photoshop, and so-
Wade:
It’s very expensive.
Justin:
… this is why we wanted to make Canva and a Canva integration available for everyone.
Wade:
And we’ve got pretty much all of our new series from the last couple years, they’re already on there and we’re kind of working our way backwards, but that’s there too. So depending on where you’re at. You might be listening to this, you might have a graphic designer and that’s cool, or you might be listening to this and you say, “Hey, I’ve got Ministry Pass.” Or you say, “I’ve got Ministry Pass, but I’m looking for something just kind of a little more custom.” We want to help you there too. But let’s go ahead and jump into the Ten Commandments of Branding Sermon Series Graphics. And I feel like Jess, I’ll probably lean on you a little bit more because you’re more of the graphic designer than me. I’ve designed a little bit, but not that much.
Justin:
Yeah, so let’s dive right. Should I add “thou shalt” on the front of these?
Wade:
It would be funny for the first two and then will get probably old.
Justin:
Yeah, we get really annoyed. I’m with you.
All right, so here’s the first commandment of sermon series graphics. Ask questions. What is the big idea of the message? I mean, this is sort of paramount to what we’re talking about when you’re first developing your message. You sort of need to ask the same questions when you’re developing sermon series artwork or you’re working with a volunteer and they’re needing direction, so to speak. You need to define for them what is the big idea of the message? What is the felt need that this series is going over? What books or passages are you going to be using? And then what is the overall tone? What is the theme? What is the emotions that people are going to be feeling during this series? Because this could really impact the colors that they use, the visuals that they use. And so again, first commandment of sermon series graphics is really, you got to start with asking questions and defining those things.
Wade:
And here’s an illustration for that. If you’re preaching through the book of Job or you’re preaching on grief or suffering-
Justin:
Don’t use yellow.
Wade:
Yeah, you don’t use a yellow with a skateboarder doing a trick on the front because it doesn’t reflect your topic. And so if you do use someone who designs your work for you, you need to be able to give that to them and say, “Hey, this is the feel of it. This is what I want.” So that even if they don’t know what the book of Job is about, or they don’t know what your series Pieces is, they will understand, oh, Pieces. It’s talking about being broken. This is the color palette, this is the imagery you need to go to. And
Justin:
And since you brought up Job, if you want to get really ninja on this, you could start the series with a more desaturated, more somber tone and color palette and then as you work through the series, it becomes a little bit more vibrant.
Wade:
Or maybe it gets darker then at the very, very end, the last week…
Justin:
Yeah. I can really nerd out on this, by the way.
Wade:
Yeah. Yeah. I think the second commandment, the second piece of advice we would give you is to know your audience, to make sure the design fits your church. So what type of approach do you have? Who is your audience? Obviously, I mean, you can go on Ministry Pass and you can compare the adult designs to the youth designs. You’re going to notice consistently the youth has a lot more color. It’s a little edgier. Within ministry past we also have our very clean, polished design for a church like that, or maybe an edgier design for a church that’s maybe a little bit younger. So know your audience. We try to provide a lot of different styles to help you out, but know your audience and understand what works well for them. What works well in front of your building if you’re going to put this on a screen or on a banner? You need to know who you’re speaking to.
Justin:
Another commandment is prioritize clarity over cleverness.
Wade:
Oh man.
Justin:
I made this mistake. And this goes for really marketing in general. Right? A lot of times you’ll see mom and pop pole companies try to get real cute with their ads around a yard sign or out near their business, and it’s just like, “If this were clear, it would be so much more impactful and helpful than you just trying to be clever or just creative for the sake of being creative.” And I think churches, I’m in all kinds of church and ministry Facebook groups, and I see this at least once a month, maybe twice a month. And it’s like, “Hey, post your current sermon series.” And it is literally a dumpster fire of churches trying to be clever over clear. And I think a lot of times we create graphics and we create series titles that are just unnecessary. Our people would connect better if it was just a clear, solid title where they understand they know what to expect really.
Wade:
And if you use something that’s a little bit more clever, have a good subtitle.
Justin:
Yes.
Wade:
I was in some sort of talk years ago and they were talking about being clear with ministry names. They’re like, you go to a church and there’s like, “Come to our youth group, it’s called Sabotage. Or come, it’s called Rebellion.” And you’re like, whoa, why is this all… This sounds very dangerous to me.
So if you do use something edgier, you could say, like, Sabotage, and then do the subtitle could be, “The way that we hurt ourselves,” or something like that. But just be clear so when people look at it, they’re not like, “I have no idea what they’re talking about.” So, yeah, have clarity. And then this kind of goes along with that. Timelessness over trends. You’ll utilize the sermon better and it will still be relevant in three years if the design is timeless. So sometimes it’s okay to have a really edgy design or something that’s in fashion, but I really think that you should do something that’s… It can be edgy, but within a safe realm. And a lot of that has to do with fonts, I think.
Justin:
Well, yeah, fonts are a big part of this. One of the reasons why this is important is because once you post your message or your series on your website, which most churches do, it’s there. No one really curates their sermon series for the most part. They just keep adding to it every week. And so when a new guest comes to your website or they moved into the area and they start looking through, exploring your sermon series, you want that stuff to be sort of timeless regardless of if it was this year or five years from now. Because the content is timeless.
You don’t want someone not to listen to your series because the visual representation of that series is so out of date looking. And so that’s another thing that you want to take a look at. Another thing is think beyond your screen. You have projectors, you have your auditorium, what will it look like? We have a young designer intern that would send in designs a few summers ago, and they were just using a lot of stuff that didn’t have a lot of contrast and a lot of white on grays and I, we just had to say, “Hey, listen, not every church in America has a really expensive projector.
Wade:
4K projector.
Justin:
4K projector.
Wade:
And even if you do, depending on the lights in your sanctuary, it could drown out some of the contrast like you’re talking about if you’re not careful.
Justin:
And a lot of the subtleties that they were trying, they were spending just so much time on that last 10% and I just had to say, “Listen, a lot of this is going to get lost on an old projector at a church of 150 people that’s been there for 20 years and they haven’t upgraded their system in 10.”
Wade:
And too, if you’re going to print something or post it on social media, especially when you print it, usually with printing, simpler is best. So when you look at it, you might say, “Oh, that’s too simple,” but when you print it looks nice. So just keep all of that in mind. The next one is don’t steal graphics. So if there’s a graphics that you like from another church, just ask them if you can use it first or purchase them.
Justin:
Purchase them. That’s a novel idea.
Wade:
Right? Don’t have somebody download something from Ministry Pass and use it at your church. Right?
Justin:
Do the right click and save on the small preview image and then it blows up. And it’s like going back to the old projector metaphor.
Wade:
Because the people who do this, the designer down the street at the church that you like, this is their work of art. This is their work. And so if you’re going to use it, make sure you get permission. So don’t steal graphics.
Justin:
Follow a style guide. What do I mean by that? I think it’s important if your church hasn’t done it already, develop a style guide. So what is the style guide? A style guide consists of your logo, the fonts that you use, the colors that you use. And I know some of you’re thinking, “Why is that important?” Well, it creates a visual cohesion. It creates consistency for the communication pieces that your church puts out. If you can sort of follow that style guide for your series, that really, really helps to build consistency and so not everything is looking random all the time. I feel like a lot of the smaller churches that I’ve been in would benefit from having just an overall style guide because the men’s ministry uses this font and these colors and this logo and the kids’ ministry uses these fonts. And there are some nuances. Right?
You don’t want Times New Roman on the kids’ banners. I get it. But there does need to be some sort of letter of the law for your housekeeping things, housekeeping items so everything’s the same and consistent, and your series should do the same. In fact, if you’re able to develop a style guide for the series, that’s even better because you say, “Hey, for this series, we’re going to be in this series for eight weeks. Everything that we print, everything that we design for this particular sermon series needs to utilize these colors, these fonts, this image set.” And that’s going to create a consistent visual representation of the content for you.
Wade:
Yeah. And even if you put church logo on it, maybe you want a logo on every single one, just how is that used?
This next one is something that we’ve kind of talked about in a sense, but we want to make clear. Prioritize content over creativity. So you want to be creative, but really think through what is the content? So you might come up with, we’ve all done it before, you come up with this really cool sermon series name and you’re like, “That’s awesome,” but you don’t really know what part of the Bible you’re going to preach from.
Justin:
Have a series in mind. When we were on staff together and we did that series, you know what I’m talking about, Outer Space.
Wade:
Outer Space.
Justin:
It’s like we got these environmental projections for the first time. We’re like, what kind of series can we do with environmental projectors? We did this series called Outer Space, and it was like the worst series I’ve ever been a part of. And it was because we started there and not starting with the content of God’s word or, “Hey, what do we want to communicate in this series?” It was backwards, really.
Wade:
Yeah. And actually in just a few minutes, we’re going to sit down with our planning team for Ministry Pass and talk through our new sermon series. And what we try to do is when we talk about topics or this, we say, “Okay, this is a cool name, but what would it be about?” We try to start with the content as best as we can.
Get feedback from the right people. People, and not just designers, but the right people in your church, your audience. But get feedback from those individuals because here’s what happens. We’ve seen this before. We’ve seen people… As a designer, you’re really proud of something and it might not be very good, but because you made it, you like it. So get feedback from the right people and be open to them providing that insight. And as a pastor, too, don’t get too hung up on everything. If you have professionals that do work for you, you might have something in your mind, but be able to trust the professionals too.
Justin:
Why do we say the right people? I think that’s an important part of that statement. The right people. The reason why the right people are important is because if you send your series artwork to Sister Papoovmic and say, “Hey, what do you think about this?” Well, Sister Papoovmic doesn’t have any background in communication, church marketing, graphics. So her feedback to you could be confusing, especially if you’re asking the wrong type of… So maybe the advice or feedback you’re soliciting isn’t even at your church. It’s other church communicators, other people. There’s Facebook groups, church communicators, Kenny Jahng and Katie Allred, they run that group. And you could get great feedback on some series designs. You could ask it in the Pastor’s circle as well, our Facebook group. But there’s a lot of qualified and experienced individuals where you could get that feedback that’s not going to be as confusing as it would be some Deacon at your church, so to speak.
Wade:
Yeah. So be able to find that. And I also think too, getting the audience, their feedback, and saying, “Is this confusing?” That can be helpful. You just got to find the right way to do that.
The last one, spell check. Just check your spelling.
Justin:
Just got to do it.
Wade:
Yeah. And even just making sure you’re saying the things the right way. If you say add on, I think you’re supposed to do A-D-D dash O-N instead of A-D-D space O-N. Things like that are just really important.
Justin:
This wasn’t a series, but we were doing this community outreach thing, and I was at a town called Mount Bellevue. And in that school district, or really the main school there is Barbers Hill. Barbers Hill Eagles is the mascot. And our church was wanting to this thing, we’re like, “Hey, we support the Eagles.” So they had me design some T-shirts that said, “We support the Eagles.” Well, I guess I did it quickly.
Wade:
You thought it was the band, the Eagles? And so…
Justin:
There it is.
Wade:
… it had Hotel California on there.
Justin:
There it is. When the T-shirts arrived, all 400 of them in the boxes, it said, “We supports the Eagles.”
Wade:
Oh man.
Justin:
And, man, I’d been at the church for like a month, and I thought my pastor was going to be so mad at me. We just wasted all this money. And to his credit, he said, “Well, we can’t use those. Order some new ones.” And that’s all he said about it. And I was sweating bullets, right? He’s going to fire me over this. But he didn’t. I was young. I was young. And I learned from that day on, send your work to people. Hey, you can send it to Sister Papoovmic. “I’m not looking for advice on the design, just is everything spelled correctly on this?”
Wade:
Is it spelled correctly? So make sure you do that. Hey, we appreciate you listening. Subscribe on Apple iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify. And something that’s really, really helpful is to leave us a review on Apple iTunes. That’s one of the most important things that you could do to support the podcast.
Justin:
The podcast is free.
Wade:
Yeah. And once again, comment, if you have any questions, comment who does your designs, and you can do that on YouTube or as we mentioned below or earlier, you can email us at hello@ministrypass.com. So hello@ministrypass.com
Justin:
Yep. So thank you. Thanks for tuning in for this episode of Hello Church. We’ll see you next time.
Wade:
See you.
7 Sermon Outline Templates
Besides helping you speak your messages more clearly, outlines can also save you a TON of time when it comes to researching Bible passages and collecting illustrations.