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Show people how great your small church is. Use photo booths as a tool to build community, increase your social media engagement, and have a little fun, too!
There is great potential and many options for photo booths. This can make it easy and doable for small churches everywhere!
- They can be inside or outside.
- Small churches set up photo booths on holidays and non-holidays.
- Backgrounds differ.
- Props can be few or many.
- Design your setting or purchase a backdrop.
Using just a few items, you can put together an engaging photo booth for your small church during holidays, special events, or even every month of the year. The photo booths shown in this post are from small churches in our Creative Solutions For Small Churches Facebook Community.
Every photo booth is a new opportunity to create engagement in your church, build memories, and increase your church presence in your community.
Alicia Maxwell in Apollo Beach, Florida, shares this pic from The Life Church’s outdoor Mother’s Day photo booth area. It provides seating and an interesting background and gives the moment to make a memory.
Photo Booths Can Strengthen Ministry Teams
Use small church photo booths to capture moments of fun, smiles, family, friendship, and memories. Friends, ministry teams, and families can take their own group selfies to remember the moment. Gather your small church ministry team for a photo booth moment. Friendly and easy camaraderie moments like this can build or strengthen relationships among your ministry team members.
This also gives leaders pictures to use for future team-building activities, small church anniversaries, or even a Christmas card to print and send to the members.
Lorraine Skoze from Merrillville, Indiana, shares Impact Christian Church’s photo op area from their Thanksgiving theme’d 30 Days of Grateful series. This moment at your small church can create feelings of belonging and connection to the church.
Check out the simple props in this I’m Grateful Photo Booth
Build Community With Your Photo Booth
Photo booths aren’t limited to the main foyer of small churches. Youth ministry, children’s ministry, and women’s events are the perfect time for photo booths. We all love to have fun. Photo booths in your youth or children’s area can help get children and youth excited about the group and wanting to come back next week.
Build community in special events. A School’s Out Party, pastor appreciation, Father’s Day, birthdays, and baby showers are often missed opportunities for photo booths and building community. Photo booths are perfect moments for capturing memories at these types of moments.
Kristie Rodgers, from Crystal Springs, Mississippi, shares how her church created a photo booth in front of a large picture window with a wicker seat and an extra large frame wrapped with greenery for the background. They used this photo booth for a baby shower.
Youth Groups Love Photo Booths
Especially for youth groups, in this day and age of technology and social media, offering photo booth moments can build your youth group community.
Use photo booths as a way to build leadership skills in your teenagers. Invite a few to help you design a photo booth for a youth group lock-in, Christmas party, game night, or a soon-coming event. People are more committed to participating if they help plan something. The teens who help you design and build your booth may be the first ones to invite others to join them in the picture-taking fun.
Photo Booths Are Perfect For Tea Parties
Photo Booths at Tea Parties or Mother-Daughter Luncheons are an easy way to invite guests to join you in the fun. (Although, it can backfire if you pressure anyone to take a photo.) If mothers or daughters bring friends to the luncheon, you may have a perfect moment to engage in some photo booth fun.
Photos commemorate memories. Those memories may encourage guests who are looking for a church to return next month to your women’s ministry. Photo booths for women’s events can make the event memorable.
Capture Memories At Small Church Photo Booths
- Parents and children
- Mothers and daughters
- Nanas and grandchildren
- Cousins
- Dads and kids
Let your small church photo ops give them the moments to capture those memories.
Church Social Media & Photo Booths
Small churches often can underestimate the power of a social media presence. Underestimating social media can cause a disconnect with those in a younger generation, a large part of your community, and potential new guests.
Most thirty-somethings, twenty-somethings, and young families seek connection and authenticity. These needs can be met at your small church photo booth and social media.
Encourage members and guests to take pictures, tag each other, and tag your church. Posting and sharing pix gives people the opportunity to share the fun they have at your small church with the world.
Pam Faggart from Windom, Minnesota, shares First Baptist Church’s photo area for award selfies. This head and shoulder photo area uses a foil fringe door curtain and balloon arch. This foin fringe can be saved and used again in a New Year’s photo booth.
Many parents nowadays love to post pix of their kids on social media. Encourage them to tag the church when you do photo booths for awards, graduations, and other momentous occasions. (One word of caution: give every parent a photo permission form at the beginning of every year. If they choose not to sign, do your diligence not to post those children’s pictures on any social media.)
Outside Photo Booths Can Create Fun And Excitement
Rob Kitchen, the pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Landstuhl, Germany, shared this summer photo booth. It is 6-8’ wide and about 9 feet tall. It is versatile, and they use it for different holidays. The white pallets can host various decorations to complement the theme. (The background is actually two separate columns of 3 pallets fastened together, making it easier for storage.)
Outside photo booths can give good pictures because you get the natural light from being outdoors. Plus, they often give that “feel good” feeling from being outside in God’s creation. Green trees, grass, or mountains often surround rural churches outside photo opportunities. Urban church outside photo opportunities can still have the sunshine and bright sky and can make use of any green areas. Bring in flowers for color and another element of nature.
There are many photo opportunities at your small church picnic!
- Contestants for the pie-eating contest
- Cornhole tournament teams and the winners
- Volleyball teams
- Kickball teams
- Families
- Friends
- The BBQ team
- Pastor and all the kids
Plan Photo Booths For Outside Weather
Plan for the weather if you use a fabric or vinyl backdrop on a photo booth stand. When your photo area is outside, remember to weigh, tie down, or place heavy props on top of the bottom of your backdrop. Staking down any backdrop keeps the slight breeze or wind from picking up the backdrop and flinging it during the photo moments.
Use elements that work with your event and local seasons and climate. Consider and use what’s local and what’s available. Think about straw bales, pumpkins, gourds, and chrysanthemums. Think snow chairs, snowmen, and snowmobiles. Consider beach umbrellas, beach chairs, and surfboards. Use local flowers, either potted or tied together in a large bouquet.
Think about the outside walls of a cabin at a wilderness retreat. If you are at the top of a canyon or next to a river, let nature be your photo backdrop. To create intrigue, take all “photo booth” pix taken from the same angle at the same spot. Try to frame the same “photo booth” in every picture.
Using local helps people feel connected to the community and your local church.
Becky Sargent, from Cape Coral, Florida, shared this photo backdrop that her church, Cape Alliance Church, ordered from Amazon. They use this every year at a downtown festival; people love stopping by the booth for pictures. They hang it on a backdrop stand kit. Using the stand kit alleviated the need to weigh down the banner because it is attached to the stand.
Outside Photo Booths Are Great
- Church picnics
- Community festivals
- Outside Back To School Bash
- Easter Events
- Snow Day Events
- VBS
- Water Fun Days
- Harvest Events
Create extra fun at big events and festivals by having guests join a costumed character for a picture. Rent a snowman costume, create your own, or dress in character. Guests, especially kids, can love taking their picture with someone in costume. At Becky Sargent’s photo booth above, her church does that at a local town festival. They rent a Frosty The Snowman costume and passersby love to stop and take a pic with Frosty.
Photo Booths Help You Reach More People
The younger generations are super active on social media. Most love sharing photos of themselves at their work, play, restaurants, and wherever they have fun. Let your small church photo booth give them the fun they need to share with others.
Photo booths meet the need for connection, community, and authenticity for your younger generations. Photo opportunities allow someone to capture the moment they are in. This meets the need for authenticity. “This is me in the moment.”
Let Your Community Know You Exist
- Post your photos on your church’s Facebook or other social media (with permission – don’t assume everyone wants their picture posted!)
- Encourage people to take their own pictures or selfies and ask them to tag your church when they post on their social media.
- Comment on any photos your church is tagged. (And also comment on the ones on your church’s social media). Commenting brings your photos back to the top of someone’s feed.
Social Media in Small Churches tells one of the biggest mistakes churches make with social media.
Michelle Gemmill from Boulder City, Colorado, shares BC Home Church’s Mother’s Day Photo Booth. The furniture and elements in this photo booth can be recreated with different looks using a colored tablecloth draped over the end table, different colored pillows on the bench, and stars – party blowers, silk flowers, or balloons in the picture frame area. Switch out the vase of flowers for a pumpkin, a small Christmas tree, or a bouquet of American flags. This photo booth can be repurposed throughout the year with a fresh look every time!
Start On Your Photo Booth Adventure Today!
Photo booths can increase community on your ministry team, build friendships, and let people celebrate together. Photo booths can take you from taking pictures to reaching future members. A picture is worth a thousand words. Let your congregants create their memories and take a pic to capture the fun and smiles.
Read More:
8 Event Promotion Ideas for Small Churches
Marketing Ideas for Small Churches
How to Run Your Best Facebook Community
Decorating Ideas: Transform Your Small Church For Memorable Events
