We’ve all encountered it: The need for just the right stock this or that, BUT, as is typically the case, we need it now, and we need it CHEAP!
If you’re like the majority of ministries today, you don’t have the man-power to produce this kind of material at the drop of a hat. Thankfully the internet exists and we have tremendous tools that are not only FREE, but are the quality that is worthy of The Mission.
Before I delve into the goodness of some of the free resources available, it’s important to remember that FREE doesn’t always mean GREAT. In fact, sometimes FREE works against us, or, it just isn’t valued. Ben Arment discussed this in part in his article in the March/April issue of Collide Magazine, “The Trouble With Free”. It’s an interesting viewpoint and Ben gives some great food for thought.
What I’m saying is, don’t just jump after these free resources and forget your staff or volunteers that are more than willing to do the work for you- our greatest resource will always be the people that God places around us.
Ok- on to the goodness!
“StuffICanUse.com is a collection of resources, links, and other materials produced mainly for the student and college/young adult ministries at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY. The idea came from us making sweet stuff for our programs and then it was sitting on someone‘s computer doing nothing, so we decided to setup vineresources.com in order to make our stuff available for you to use in your ministry. We adopted an open source philosophy and decided to give away free swag to you. We hope you can use these resources to help your ministry communicate the love of Jesus. For more information about our ministries visit …
www.postworship.org
www.betheblock.com“.
“LifeChurch.tv Open is a site where churches can access, download and use creative content for free. It includes much of the creative work that the staff at LifeChurch.tv has done over the past few years and will be updated with new content going forward.” In order to download the material, you must create a free account, which takes about 5 minutes.
3. Stock Images
There are a lot of sites out there that offer stock images. I’m going to highlight three here:
iStockPhoto.com has a free photo of the week every week. Don’t worry too much about missing a week- they keep the previous two weeks up as well. Sign up for a free account to start downloading today.
Shutterstock.com does a free weekly image as well. Create an account and you’re good to go.
Stock Exchange is the free, sister site for iStockPhoto.com. Search thousands of images by keyword and download to your hearts content, after creating your account!
I came across this site while creating a vintage-news-reel-themed video last year. Full of publicly licensed content, Internet Archive is one of the truly great treasure troves available today. No need to create an account, just search, click and go!
What other resources do you utilize for creating great content?
Gotta add NewSpring Church’s resources at http://www.newspring.cc/resources/
They have been invaluable to me - provide video bumpers, openers, graphics, chord charts, etc. I lean on their expertise often for those elements that many challenge many paid sermon element sites and even offer what some paid sites leave out.
We can produce a lot of our own but the video bumpers and graphics often escape us. I’m seriously indebted to these guys work. Check it out.
-clark
CreativeMYK.com
great resources Clark & Adam- thanks for adding to the list!