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Around Christmas, Easter, and Vacation Bible School times, there’s an uptick in ads for churches on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. They catch your eye and you click over to their profile to see all the other things they’re sharing. Jealousy and comparison start creeping in as you see all the beautiful graphics they’ve created. Of course, their church looks more inviting and intriguing than yours. Look at all the pretty pictures! How can you possibly get people to look twice at your church’s page when you haven’t done any type of design since Microsoft Paint was in vogue?
Sometimes it feels like you have to have an in-house graphic designer and social media expert to “keep up” with the big church down the road. How could you possibly make something that can compete with the church that has a social media budget that rivals the budget of entire ministries at your church?
The answer is Canva. You can use Canva to create a wide variety of visual content – all without a degree in graphic design! Canva is an incredibly user-friendly tool that allows you to make just about any kind of visual from posters to social media posts to business cards to videos. You don’t need to be intimidated by Photoshop or video editing tools. You don’t have to spend hours hand-drawing a poster. You don’t even have to start from scratch. Canva has a massive selection of free templates and stock images to help you design like a professional.
The best part? If your church is a registered non-profit, which most churches are, you can get Canva Pro for free. How does that sound for the small church budget?
What Is Canva And Why Is It An Excellent Tool?
Canva is an online graphic design tool that lets you create just about any type of visual you want. You can select from a huge list of design types in dimensions best suited for that project (from the perfect size for Instagram posts, to the right dimensions for a presentation shown by the projector, to the correct shape for a postcard and beyond), or you can enter your own dimensions and start a project from scratch!
Canva has a vast library of stock images, videos, fonts, clip art, audio, and more to help you design just about anything your mind can think of. More items are added every day. Still can’t find quite what you’re looking for? You can describe it to the Artificial Intelligence tool built into Canva and it’ll do its best to create what your mind’s eye is seeing.
Did you take a picture of something that happened this Sunday but there’s something distracting? Use Magic Erase to wipe it from the photo.
Have a graphic that you want to separate from its background? Use Background Erase and it’s gone in seconds.
Like an image but the colors aren’t quite right? Change them in a matter of clicks.
Have a horizontal Sunday sermon that you want to turn into a vertical clip for TikTok or a reel for Facebook? Choose “mobile video” from your list of design types and watch the video dimensions change shape right before your eyes.
Need input from someone else in your church? Share the design with team members and collaborate on screen.
People love how much time Canva saves them. Even professional graphic designers have added Canva to their arsenal of tools because it’s just so simple to use and allows them to create graphics and other visual aids at a speed other platforms can’t.
Why Your Small Church Should Use Canva
Canva is the perfect tool for small churches with small budgets. It allows you to create professional images without going back to school to get a degree in graphic design or having to pay professional prices to have someone else do it for you.
We live in a culture that likes visual aids. Images and videos help us learn, remember, and share. Whether you want to make visual aids for on the screen behind the pastor while they preach, a flier to pass out inviting the community to an event, a Facebook post sharing some encouragement, business cards, a weekly bulletin, a baptism certificate, or just about anything other kind of visual, Canva has you covered.
The learning curve for Canva is not too terribly steep, and it can even be a pretty fun adventure to find out what you can do! The more you use it, the more resources, templates, and tools you find and the easier it is to understand what makes your work look more visually appealing or attractive. Your first few projects will take you some time to create, but I promise the time you spend learning how to use Canva will be a huge blessing in the long run as you elevate the graphics your church produces.
A Great Way To Start Out
Canva has a free version that’s free forever, but it is limited. If you want to try Canva Pro out before you submit your information to get it free as a nonprofit, or if you aren’t registered as a nonprofit and want to decide if the cost for the Pro version is worth paying (which, for me, it absolutely is), start with a free trial. You’ll get 30 days of access to Canva Pro, which is plenty of time to try it out and fall in love.
Once you sign up, one of the best places to start is with some social media posts. There are a wide variety of templates to choose from for Facebook/Instagram posts if you don’t want to start completely from scratch. Try creating an image about an event you have coming up so that you can share it on your church’s social media page(s). Social media posts are a great place to start because you’ll get feedback about how your work is received by way of reactions, comments, and shares.
One of the biggest tips to keep in mind when you’re starting: Less is more. This is true both with the number of elements you use (blank space is NOT the enemy!) and with the amount of text you use. Remember that with social media posts, you have the caption to add details, so don’t try to type everything they need to know into the picture. For a post about an event, try to limit the text in an image to what (the event name), where, and when.
Any other details (who, why, parking instructions, things to bring, etc.) should be in the text part (the caption) of the post. For things like event fliers, you can always direct people to a webpage for more information. Once you’ve caught someone’s attention, they’ll be willing to find out more. If you overwhelm them, their brain will filter it out as noise and they’ll move on.
Helpful Features That Are Perfect For Small Churches
Have you ever had an event and someone who missed it said that no one ever told them about it or that it wasn’t advertised? Canva is a great tool to make sure you can get the message out on a variety of platforms in a matter of minutes. Magic Switch is your friend. Let’s say you want to get the word out about your Christmas or Easter service.
Once you’ve created an image for an Instagram post, click “Magic Switch” and tell Canva to turn your post into a Facebook cover photo for your page, a presentation image for your in-service announcement slides, a web banner to put at the top of your church website, a postcard for your congregation to mail/give to invite family and friends, and a flier to hang on a community events board. Within seconds, Canva will resize your design so it fits all these different shapes and sizes. You’ll probably need to make some tweaks, but the leg work is done and all it took was the time for you to make the original design.
I also highly suggest crafting your church’s brand. Take your church’s logo (or you can try your hand at designing one in Canva if your church doesn’t have one!) and pull out the colors and font that go along with that logo. Save them in Canva’s “Brand Kit” so that you can quickly add your colors and use your font in any design you make. When you consistently use the same colors, fonts, and logos across your designs, it makes it easier for people to identify your church.
You’d know exactly which companies I’m talking about if I mentioned a golden “m” or a white apple with a bite taken out of it or an “f” in a blue circle. While your church’s name, logo, and colors may never reach national recognition, you can become better recognized in your local community when you’re consistent with brand imaging.
The Biggest Challenges That You Can Overcome
It may seem silly, but one thing that may be a challenge at first is how to get your image off of Canva and into whatever place you need it. Once you’re satisfied with your design, you’ll need to click “share” in the upper right-hand corner. From there, select “download,” which will give you several options to choose from.
Canva helps you decide what format is going to be best for you (for example, it’ll tell you that if you made a video, you want to download a .mp4; if you made a flier that you’re going to print out and share, “PDF print” would be the best option; if it’s a social media graphic, Canva will suggest downloading it as a PNG). Once you select the type of file you want to download and get it onto your computer, that graphic is able to go where you want it, whether you want to upload it to Instagram, send it to your copier, or place it on your website.
Sometimes what you’ve pictured in your mind just isn’t what your hand is creating on Canva. Things aren’t lining up the way you want them to, which, Canva helpfully will give you guidelines so that you can know if things are centered, evenly distributed, etc., or you just can’t find the element you want to use. It’s okay to walk away and take a break. It’s okay to start over.
It’s okay to spend time googling for inspiration. It’s okay to search out Facebook groups like Canva for Churches or Church Social Media Managers and ask for ideas. It’s okay to invite team members to look at your work and offer input. It’s okay to use templates. Even the best graphic designers get creativity blocks. What you shouldn’t do is doubt yourself. The more you try, the better you’ll get, and it won’t take long to get there.
Take The Leap
The next time a beautiful graphic pops up on your Facebook news feed, tell yourself that you can, in fact, do that too. You can absolutely make something that is visually appealing, catches the eye, gets the word out about your church, shares an event, offers hope, generates engagement, etc. Start with social media graphics, but don’t be afraid to expand to presentations, your website, fliers, and beyond. If you can see it, you can make it.
Canva will let your small church have a big impact. Canva will let you feel like a graphic designer without the college debt. Because nonprofits can get Canva Pro for free, it’s the perfect price for the small church budget.
You’re not alone when it comes to feeling like you don’t have the time, money, or skills to create graphics that welcome others to experience the love of Christ through your church. Canva provides the perfect solution to that desire through its easy-to-use features and a huge selection of elements and templates. It’s time to make your first design – you can do it!
Read More:
Social Media In Small Churches
If you are part of a small church that doesn’t have it’s own 501c3 determination letter from the IRS but which is part of a larger denomination or network of churches, it is highly likely that you fall under the 501c3 umbrella of your denomination as a subordinate unit. You can reach out to your denomination to request a letter from them verifying your status as a subordinate unit of the denomination. Canva will accept this documentation, but you may need to reach out to them directly after applying for Canva for Nonprofits. I suggest sending them a message on Facebook Messenger.
Thanks for that insight!
Thank you so much for the added information! Great tip!