Magazines are the new books.

A while back I built a Squidoo page pointing to many quality magazines that are published by Churches and Christian organizations. Many of them can be downloaded in PDF form or viewed in your browser. Check them out here.

If you know of any other great magazines, let me know in a comment and I’ll look them up.

Corey and I actually met by working on Graphe magazine almost two years ago.  I’m planning on sharing some of that with you in the near future.

Here are some links to great magazines:

The Cutting Edge

Vineyard Church planting magazine

Graphe

This magazine is published by a small church, Oikos Fellowship, in Bellingham, Washington that is looking to reach out to the community through art, beauty, and story.

Mars Hill Church: Vox Pop

This is a magazine intended for the community of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. It focuses mainly on the body, but is beginning to look at the city around it as well.

Tabletalk Magazine

A beautifully thoughtful magazine who’s goal is to proclaim the holiness of God.

The Movement

Redeemer Presbyterian Church in downtown New York City is laser focused on urban church planting. Tim Keller’s church plating philosophy is a must read for any Christian.

Outreach Magazine

If you like top 100 lists, then this is the magazine for you.

Relevant Magazine

Sweet graphics, radical rockers, and a bit of spirituality. Relevant seeks to span the gap of religion and culture. An interesting method of reaching people for Christ. Relevant has some great strengths to be learned from.

Specific & Practical

This is a magazine about ministry from Granger church.

Soul Purpose

The New Zealand version of Relevant.

Travelogue

Sojourn Church in St. Louis, Missouri publishes this community focused magazine.

Tutorial: Designing a Sermon Series to Glorify God

Every time I go to the movies- the previews make me want to see eight more films. Trailers set the tone and emotion of the movie, getting us excited and prepared to see it. Like trailers, visuals for sermon series set the tone for the  listeners, getting them in a proper mindset. When I set out to design the graphics for a sermon series the most important question I ask is this—What is the message the pastor is preaching to his people? Give me 3 minutes to share with you how I design a prototypical sermon series. The Book of Mark-

Planning

A great phone conference with Pastor Steve left me with a page full of notes on the series his church is starting this January on the book of Mark. They will begin the new year with the birth of Christ and work through chapter by chapter to Christ’s death and resurrection on the Easter weekend. The story of Christ’s life will be told in a way that shows reverence and relevance, so the design must convey mystery and power that will draw it’s viewers to the person of Christ. Pastor Steve and I agreed that this would best be done with  iconic or classical art that confronts the viewers immediately with Christ.

Next Step Research

After searching through iStockphoto, and searching though a few universities/museums open art collections. I felt I had three captivating images of Christ that would fit the description Steve and I had discussed.

Action- Inside the Designers Mind

Now I will share with you the reasons I used certain visual effects while designing: I began by importing the main image of Christ into Photoshop. This is a great photo. It has Christ holding the Bible with the hand symbol that he is God. The exact message we want to send to people. “Jesus is Lord, and the Bible is his Word.”

I want this series to have an ancient and reverent tone. So I will add a textured layer.

I then placed the texture over our picture and use the multiply effect to see Christ through the texture image. I then turn down the transparency.

I want to add a vignette to the corners of this image. Again, I want a dark and reverent style so I will add a gradient.

I then multiply and turn down the transparency until the vignette is perfect.

It’s now time to work on the typography. The series is called the ‘Jesus Factor: The Book of Mark’. I open up Adobe Illustrator and play with the text.

Now I grabbed the paper art again to make a backdrop for our type.

Add it to our picture.

Now add the text.

And we’re done… this was a simple series that I believe carries the message and sets the tone for a study on the book of Mark. I chose this simple series because sometimes I will have a series that has dozens and dozens of layers and all kinds of original art- like this one.

Hello from MG Land!

Mike and I just finished a top level photo shoot on my Mac and we wanted to share it with you. We are hoping these will make it in the next GQ magazine, but we will settle for Relevant if we must.

God has blessed us with a great working relationship and friendship. It is great to step back and see where God has placed you, and who he has placed in your life. Where ever we are in our lives is right where God wants us, and at the moment I feel truly blessed. 

Redesign. Redesign. Redesign.

We just worked on a series for a church in Southern California (EastLake Church)  called “No Perfect People”. This is one of those series that can’t seem to find it’s place in design, and we ended up with three completely different looks. In the moment redesigns can be so frustrating, but in retrospect it is kind of fun to see the message in all three. Each series seems to have it’s own personality, and speaks something different to me. This series wanted to communicate that none of us are perfect, and none of us can be good enough for God. God takes and loves us as is. Just look at Paul, he was arresting and terrorizing early Christians. But God still used him and loved him even though he was stained and broken.

1. The top series was the first and my concept was simple. Every man (and woman) is truly stained. No matter how we look, what kind of car we drive, or how people see us, we are covered with sin. I wanted the graphic to be simple with that message.
2. The middles series had a different approach, it attacked the stereotype we place on each other. The quest for perfection and beauty. To God that is nothing without him. (It was just brought to my attention that this concept has already been designed. I never knew about this one, but it will make a good blog post—always search series titles first!)
3. And the last is about how we see ourselves. We look in the mirror and can see every sin we have ever committed. We see the shattered life that we live, and think there is no way to repair it—but God can.

This series taught me to look at a message from different angles and different points of view. I won’t say that I did not get frustrated having to change it three times, but I am glad that I did.

Church Marketing Sucks: Flickr Pool

I’ve always thought they should change the name from Church Marketing Sucks to Church Marketing is Morally Neutral. Anyhow, they have a great Flickr community called the Church Marketing Lab. We’ve just started posting some of our work there. The great thing about this site is you can check out what other churches are doing, and get input for your own design.

Ed Marcelle: Theology of Art

Beatnik-poet and Buffalo Troy, NY church planter, Ed Marcelle, is one of my favorite artist-theologians alive today. Ed speaks at many of the Acts 29 bootcamps for church planters (Listen to the Audio), his words widen the minds of rookie church planters to see that art can be one of the best methods to communicate the glories of God.

This is a film on advent that you must see. Ed doesn’t use art as a cleaver skin just to draw people in, like a Geico commercial. Rather, he uses art to expand on the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO WATCH THIS VIDEO!

It would be amazing to see what the artists of the worlds churches could do if pastors told them that their skills are a gift from God and can be used to worship him.

simplicity screams

In our world of buzz words, marketing trends and relevance, we can lose the simplicity of the biblical illustrations that we have been given. The bible uses 2 contrasting ideas to describe christian life—darkness and light, and death and life. These ideas can be understood by any culture, sex, race, or age at any period of time.

We were given the task to come up with a series design called “Come Alive” that focused on “ identity, freedom from sin, and power in Christ”. When we started reading the description of each week the image of Lazarus and the Widow’s Son came to our minds. When Jesus commanded Lazarus to “Come Alive” it was nonnegotiable, his eye’s were opened. When Christ calls us our eyes are opened, and we now live in the light. That was what inspired us with this art. The visual of a dead man opening his eyes again in world of darkness to see the light. We wanted the art to be so simple that the message would scream though it. The bible is filled with powerful, challenging, beautiful and simple messages that are sometimes best to be keep as is. Let the simplicity of scripture scream.

Video Interview: Sean Taylor

Few people throw their whole life into their ministry like Sean Taylor. He’s a youth pastor at Christ the King in Lynden, Washington. Sean drives around town in a converted 1970’s van, vinyl wrapped to look like the ‘Mystery Machine’ from Scooby Doo—It’s called the ‘Ministry Machine’. He tries to share the gospel through all the senses—whether eyes and ears, or mouth and nose. Sean has been using Ministry Growers for a few months now, and stands out as an example of how to get a ton of value out of the MG package. His new website is live and rockin’, he has a new logo to unite all six of the youth groups across three campuses, and has made a few custom series. Make sure to check out the video below!

Art and the Bible: Francis Schaeffer

Creating art for churches can feel like slapping a new coat of paint on a beater car. Yeah it looks good, but what’s under the hood? That perspective on art is entirely wrong. Francis Schaeffer, a tremendously thoughtful theologian and author, has much to say regarding art in the church. Mainly that it’s a form of worship. Take 2 minutes and read these two quotes:

“If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just “dogmatically” true or “doctrinally” true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.”

“The arts and the sciences do have a place in the Christian life — they are not peripheral. For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts. A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God — not just as tracts, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. And art work can be a doxology in itself.”

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Art can be worship just as much as singing is worship. It’s using a gift God has given to praise him.