18 Places to Find Free Church Media

by Aaron West | Jul 17, 2017 | Church communication tools, Visual media |

You want media that fits your church’s needs, but doesn’t cut into your budget. There are lots of places to find free church media, but you don’t have to hunt around for them. We already did that for you.

Here are 18 places to find great free media to use in your church presentations.

Free church media from high-quality brands

Lots of great church media producers make select items available for free. Some of them give away new media every month, and others offer free packs you can download as they produce them. This is a great way to build your media library with unique, exclusive content from high-end sources. Much of this media is only free for a limited time, so what you’ll get isn’t very predictable and you’ll need to plan ahead, but this is one of the best ways to get lots of free media you can use when you need it.

MediaShout free media library

We host a library of free media churches can use in presentations, bulletins, social media posts, or whatever they like without restrictions. We offer a variety of media packs from a range of producers that you can pick and choose from, and we’re adding new media regularly.

What you get for free:

• Motion loops
• Social media stills
• Pre-service stills
• Countdown videos
• Sermon backgrounds

How you get it:
Sign up for the free media email list. We’ll email you when we make more free stuff.

Shift Worship

Shift Worship has been making media for churches for over a dozen years now. They exist to help churches help all of us shift our worship from self to God. Their annual Memberships include unlimited access to everything they’ve made so far, as well as fresh, new content added every week.

Shift is offering a free Collection of your choosing from among most of the sets in their extensive library. Each Collection includes motions, stills, and a countdown, often with a mini movie or worship starter. Newer Collections also include Photoshop and After Effects files, transparent text layers, print files, social media files, and often sermon title media.

Get your free Collection at shiftworship.com/free-church-media

Church Motion Graphics

Church Motion Graphics, also known as CMG, produces some of the best motion backgrounds available. They’re constantly experimenting with new ways to create subtle, compelling motion, and they give away new backgrounds each month. You don’t even have to give them your email to download the media. Just scroll until you find something you like, or download them all.

What you get for free:

• Still backgrounds
• Photoshop templates for announcement slides
• Motion graphicss
• “Pro Layers” (graphics you overlay on other images)
• Stock photos
• More

How you get it:
You can download these pieces for free without signing up for anything! Just find what you want and click download.

Steelhouse Media’s free media newsletter

Steelhouse Media specializes in creating complete service sets. They produce short films, motions, and stills for each piece of your service. Signing up for their newsletter gives you a small sampling of their work

What you get for free:

• A motion graphic of your choice (from a small selection)
• Other free media offers

How you get it:
Sign up for Steelhouse’s free media newsletter.

Igniter Media free movie of the month

Igniter Media has a reputation for producing rich, meaningful mini-movies for churches under the name Igniter Originals. But they also offer videos from 10 other brands, including Dan Stevers, Lifeway Media, Graceway Media, and RightNow Media.

What you get for free:

• One mini-movie every month

How you get it:
Create a free Igniter account.

Dan Stevers free media collections

Dan Stevers is well-known for his thought-provoking animations and profound mini-movies. Some of his most celebrated work brings to life sermon audio from famous pastors like Timothy Keller. These popular videos can make a great introductions to your sermon series or turn transitions into teaching moments. Dan Stevers also produces motion graphics and sermon backgrounds.

What you get for free:

• Sermon intro videos
• Motion graphics
• Countdown videos
• Church backgrounds
• Animation packs to create your own animations

How you get it:
Sign up for Dan’s newsletter list.

Lightstock

Lightstock provides a platform for professional photographers to get their work in the hands of churches and Christian organizations. Every photographer has been vetted for quality and relevance, so every photo you see here is top notch and unique. To promote featured photographers, videographers, and designers, they give away some of their work for free every week.

What you get for free:

• A stock photo every week
• A stock video every month
• A vector graphic every week

How you get it:
Create a Lightstock account.

Free stock photos, church backgrounds, and more

When you’re looking for something specific, there are curated databases of free stock photos and church backgrounds to help you find what you need. These searchable images are free, but make sure you check the usage restrictions on each site.

Church Media Drop

Church Media Drop lets churches and artists submit their custom works for other churches to use for free. They also offer tutorials on design and production.

What kinds of media they have:

• Audio files
• Sermon bumper videos
• Graphics for youth ministry games (with explanations of games)
• Logos and backgrounds
• Mini-movies
• Motion backgrounds
• Series graphics

Church Media Spot

Church Media Spot is a directory for a mix of free and premium media providers. Find the kind of media you need, and Church Media Spot will show you an extensive list of brands that offer that media. The media brands listed aren’t all specifically church media providers, so you’ll have to use your discretion.

What kinds of media they have:

• Stock videos
• Graphics
• Graphic design tools
• Stock photos
• Stock music
• Fonts

CMGCreate

CMGCreate is a massive library of free still backgrounds from Church Motion Graphics. You can choose the aspect ratio for each image, and CMG is adding more all the time.

What kinds of media they have:

• Still backgrounds
• Title slides
• “Pro titles” (text you can overlay on your slides)
• “Pro layers” (images you can overlay on your slides)

Seeds

Seeds is a hub for a wide range of church media types. You can easily filter by the type of media you need, or search for a topic or phrase and see what’s available.

What kinds of media they have:

• Series title slides
• Song lyric videos
• Dramas
• Mini-movies
• Motion graphics
• Kids media
• Youth group media

Visual Church Media group

While not explicitly a church media provider, this group is an active community of church media professionals and volunteers. If any media provider makes their media available for free, chances are you’ll hear about it here.

Freely Photos

Despite its generic-sounding name, this site exclusively offers Christian stock photos. The selection is somewhat limited, but it’s broken into these helpful categories: Bible study, Christmas, church life, creation, Easter, prayer, worship, other.

What kinds of media they have:

• Stock photos

Unsplash

Unsplash is one of the most popular sites for free stock photos (Christian or otherwise). Everyone knows about it, and while they have a lot of photos, they’ve become rather ubiquitous. For example, how many times have you seen this church?

Unsplash is a great place to find a stock photo in a pinch. But when you use an Unsplash photo, bear in mind that there’s a good chance your congregation has seen it somewhere else before.

What kinds of media they have:

• Stock photos

Pexels

Pexels isn’t quite as popular as Unsplash, but there’s a lot of overlap in their library of photos. You’ll be sure to find some of the same stock images on both sites, but the tagging system is a little different, so if you don’t find what you’re looking for on one, it’s still often worth trying the other.

What kinds of media they have:

• Stock photos

Barn Images

Although the name implies they have images of barns, in fact, it is quite the opposite. They have a huge collection of stock images of people, nature, buildings, and abstract that are perfect for sermon backgrounds, announcement slides, or lyrics. If you don’t find what you need, check out the other free media sites on this list.

What kinds of media they have:

• Stock photos

The Stocks

The Stocks goes one step further than Church Media Spot: rather than just listing various media providers, you can actually search them right on this site. Select the media type you want, choose a brand, search, repeat. Again, this is not strictly a Christian site, so there may be irrelevant search results, but you can quickly jump between sites to find what you need fast.

What kinds of media they have:

• Stock photos
• Stock videos
• Colors
• Icons
• Mockups
• Fonts

Flickr Creative Commons

Flickr Creative Commons has millions of stock photos to search through, so you’re bound to find something unique, interesting, and useful. While these are free to use, most photos require some type of attribution, such as clearly indicating the source of the photo. Photos are organized based on the type of license or attribution required. While there are millions of perfectly appropriate images here, Flickr also hosts explicit images.

What kinds of media they have:

• Stock photos

Pablo

Pablo is a media tool produced by Buffer. It’s a great place to create social media images, but you can also use it to create slides or add imagery to Bible verses. Pablo lets you search over 600,000 stock images, optimize them for the social media platform of your choice, use filters, add text, and even overlay your logo.

What kinds of media they have:

• Customizable stock photos

Start building your church media library

We want to help you create church presentations that look good. That’s why we provide a growing library of free church media resources. Sign up to get your media right now