Community Christian Church

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A Thousand Words: Using Icons Instead of Photos

Written by Tom Greever Friday, June 27, 2008

A picture is worth a thousand words, but if you’re going to use one with your own words, it better be the right picture. Now that using imagery with preaching has become fairly common, it’s important for churches to really think about what they’re projecting on-screen during a talk.

The right images can enhance the message, evoke emotion, or even motivate a participant to action. The wrong images, however, can distract from the message and drive our audience’s minds back to the pot roast in the oven at home.

I recently attended a service at a large, very well known church. These guys have a large media staff and spend millions on multimedia every year. During one of the worship songs an image of chocolate ice cream appeared as the background to the worship lyrics. After a few minutes, the image changed to coffee beans. I know for sure the song had nothing to do with ice cream or coffee, the lyrics dealt with God’s creation. And I’m no theologian, but I’m pretty sure ice cream and coffee weren’t created during the first six days.

I was totally distracted and so were the other people I was with. Now, maybe the producer had some artsy explanation for why ice cream went with that song, but I didn’t get it. It’s ok to take artistic risks, but if it’s distracting from the message, it’s not worth it. The same principle is even more important during a teaching time because there are no other elements to attract the audience’s attention: it’s just a pastor and an image. And so creating imagery to enhance our pastor’s talks is just as important as the talk itself.

Part of the journey to discovering better imagery for preaching involves understanding the difference between icons and photos and what effect they have on an audience. For our purposes here, when I talk about icons or illustrations I’m referring to any hand-drawn or computer-generated image that is meant to over-simplify and represent an idea rather than embody the idea itself. A photo, on the other hand, is a specific image of a specific thing taken with a camera.

I should note that when I talk about iconography I am not talking about clip art. In general, clip art is iconography. But it’s usually very bad iconography, so please don’t search the web for clip art. Instead use a reputable stock media web site and look through their illustrations. iStockPhoto is one of my favorite cheap places to buy both illustrations and photos. Icons are usually vector graphics, meaning they are made with scalable lines. Photos are usually raster graphics, meaning they are made of individual pixels.

You see, what the teaching pastor says is more important than what is shown on the screen. Without their words, the images would mean nothing. It’s true! If we show the audience literally everything the teaching pastor is going to say, from bullet points to photos of an alligator (for that great alligator joke), then we are leaving our congregations with no room for interpretation or personal application and are thereby actually distracting from the message.

Photography tends to have that effect on people because a photo is an image of a very specific thing. If I tell you about a sunset, then show you a picture of a sunset: that’s the sunset you’ll have in mind as I continue to talk. You won’t think back to that great sunset you saw in Honolulu. You’ll think “Gee, that’s a great sunset. I wonder where he found that photo?” Because that’s what a photo is: it’s specific.

Iconography, on the other hand, is a generic way of visualizing an idea without telling the audience what to think. So when I show you an icon or illustration of a sunset, you’re more likely to call up a great sunset in your own memory (like the one in Honolulu). The key to using iconography is understanding the difference between something specific and something generic.

For a recent series called Directions at my church, the teaching pastor was highlighting the two most important places you build relationships: where you live and where you go. His original request was to show a photo of a house (where you live) and a photo of a road or highway (where you go). While this approach could have been fine, I decided it would be much better if we used icons instead of photos. Since these points have to do with an idea and not a specific thing, iconography is the better choice.

If I show a photo of a house (and stock photos of houses tend to be very suburban and expensive looking), some audience members might respond with, “I sure wish that were my house!” or attenders at our urban campus in Chicago would think, “Hey, that’s not where I live!” – You see, when you try to force a generic idea onto a specific photo, the audience isn’t convinced.

An icon of a house, though, leaves the audience member room to apply that idea to their house. Even if the illustration looks suburban and expensive, because it’s obviously an illustration we are giving them the opportunity to translate it into their own context. It’s not real and they know that, so they can more easily fill in the visual gaps with their own neighborhood.

The opposite is true, then, for specific stories and sermon illustrations. If your pastor is going to tell a story about his dog Frodo, then you should show a picture of Frodo. The story will be enhanced as the audience connects with their pastor’s cuddly puppy. But if you were to show an illustration of a dog, it would come off kind of cheesy. “Why didn’t they just take a picture of Frodo?”

Iconography also has the added benefit of transcending the real, giving you the opportunity to visually represent things that don’t tangibly exist. There may be ideas or concepts that have no photo in real life. For instance, one of our sermons last year highlighted people who are ‘consumer Christians’ – people who come to church primarily for their own benefit. They only consume. We originally wanted to show a photo collage of someone in a grocery store, with a picture of a Bible, with a picture of a worshipper, and so on. Instead, I scoured the internet for some great Christian icons and threw them into an illustrated shopping cart. The result was an image that some people have still not forgotten.

The final benefit to using icons is simplicity. Often times, our well-intentioned pastors just have too many wonderful ideas flowing in their sermons. To illustrate them all would be disaster. In this case, the best approach is to simplify what’s shown on-screen. Photos can be busy and filled with too much information. Icons can be made intentionally simple enough to reinforce the concept. Simple is beautiful.

The problem that I see for many churches is that stock photography is widely available, cheap, and easy to drop into PowerPoint. However, about half the time photography is probably not the best choice to reinforce the message. In fact, my guess is that it is often a distraction more than help. But nowadays, stock illustrations and icons are also widely available on the same sites you buy stock photos. For some, they’ll be more difficult to use: you can’t drop them into PowerPoint directly, so you’ll probably need to edit them in Photoshop or Illustrator. If you don’t have the expertise yourself to do this sort of thing, ask around. Chances are good that a 15-year-old at your church is just dying to play around a little more on the family computer. But if you can’t find a graphics person to help, then don’t do it. It’s better to show no image at all than to use one that will distract your viewer from the message Jesus has for them that day.

My hope is that the end result is a visual presentation that complements the speaker; one that enhances the message in a clear and simple way without distracting from it. As church media artists, we have an enormous influence on the message. What people see will affect what they hear (or don’t hear!) and it will change the way they respond. Our job is not just to show a pretty picture, but also to help illuminate the message of Jesus with artist clarity.