Photo by Ove Tøpfer; from Stock Xchange

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. If so, it’s worth ten thousand bullet points. One of the best uses of PowerPoint is using lots of photos, drawings and maps to illustrate your sermon.

But doesn’t it take forever to find such stuff? Not if you know where to look. Here are some suggestions for finding royalty free resources:

• Wikimedia Commons—It’s fast becoming a favorite of mine. All of the pictures are supposed to be in the public domain.
• Stock Xchange—Great site for amateur photos. Be sure and read the fine print on usage restrictions.
• Flickr: Creative Commons and Government Sources collections are wonderful.
• You can find religious photos here, Bible land photos here, Christian clip art  here, and general Bible resources here.
• Several of the above sites have backgrounds for use in presentations. Heartlight is another good source for those.
• If you need more ideas, you can find a list of sites for free photos here and another list for high resolution photos here.

As you use these resources, you’ll learn where to look for what kind of resource, and you usually won’t have to spend much time finding what you need. (I was going to provide some links to Bible maps, but a Google search turned up so many sites that it didn’t seem necessary. If someone knows a particularly good site, feel free to comment)

Pictures can sometimes impact in a way that words can’t. How many times did God show someone a vision rather than just telling them the information directly? Don’t build your sermon around pictures, but do use pictures to bring your lessons to life.