The role of the church creative is important. You help communicate the Gospel to your church and community.
You Only Have Job
As a church creative, you only have one job! You are responsible for creating sermon artwork, designing worship guides, creating social media graphics. Many of you are tasked with video and podcast production.
As church creatives, we have many tasks and responsibilities. You likely wear many hats in your church and feel overwhelmed at times.
Remove Distractions
Your only job is to remove distractions. Regardless of the task or responsibility, you should always be thinking, “How can I remove distractions from the communication of the Gospel.” This should drive your approach to every task or responsibility.
When you work on graphics for a sermon series or social media post, keep the question of distraction in the forefront of your mind and process.
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1 that the Gospel is a stumbling block and foolishness to some. The hope found in Jesus is offensive to many.
When you create graphics or produce content, your job is to ensure you don’t add distractions or barriers to the message. Make sure that your creative enhances the communication, not distract from it. Good design matters!
Tips To Remove Distractions
As a church creative, here are three tips to help you remove distractions in your tasks and responsibilities.
- Edit, edit, edit
Always edit your work. Be critical of your designs and creative. Keep editing, removing, modifying, until the work is clear and effective in communication.
One of the ideas we use at our church is to edit until the design breaks and then put content back to the design.
We always have to much in our designs. We always include to much content, to many elements, to many fonts, to many colors, to much design in our initial work. The way to remove distractions is to edit. Take away elements and evaluate. Edit! Edit! Edit.
2. Black and White
Always begin designing in Black and White. By forcing your creative process into black and white, you force your eye to look at the designs as a communication medium and not an art piece. If the design will work in black and white, it will work in color and texture.
3. Ask a Lot of Questions
You need to ask a lot of questions to your pastor and staff. Get to the why and understand the win. When you are in the creative process, you need to know what MUST be communicated and this requires questions. Ask more and more questions until you have a clear understanding of the why and the win. By knowing the why and then win, you can make better design and creative decisions.
You only have one job! Remove distractions. There is no reason for church creative and design to add a barrier to the Gospel.