Free images for worship. 
Immediate access.   See How-to above for directions.

Click on underlined names below for special collections.

Always return to the
HOME page for the 
most recent additions.

LENT WORSHIP

Haiti Disaster New

Gallery

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Valentine's Day

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FEBRUARY 14TH
Transfiguration
Pg.1
Pg.2 Think About It
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FEBRUARY 17TH
Ash Wednesday
Pg. 1
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FEBRUARY 21st
Lent 1
Pg. 1
Pg. 2 Think About It
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FEBRUARY 28TH
Lent 2
Pg. 1
Pg. 2 Think About It
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MARCH 7TH
Lent 3
Pg. 1
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Just a few of the many emails we receive:
 
Thank you so much for Church Power Point! It has made my job SOO much easier! Our church has two services -- a "traditional" and a "contemporary." We rely on Power Point for the contemporary service, and your site has been such a wonderful resource. I am so grateful for your ministry. --
Janet Means
Charleston, WV
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Since we discovered your website our presentations on Sundays at Orpington Methodist Church are so much better and we have had many compliments on the improved style and variety, so we are very grateful for everything that you provide.  Thank you so much. Jan
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I just want to thank you so much for the wonderful service you provide by means of the images. I prepare most of the presentations for our church, a catholic church outside Sydney, Australia. So often I get comments such as 'wonderful images', so thanks.  The Gallery is wonderful and I haven't fully explored it yet.
 
Have a very happy and holy Christmas, and may you be blessed in the New Year with many graces from our God.
God bless,
Ann Moloney
Australia
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I need to share with you how wonderful your ministry is.
Rev. Kathy Reiff
North Lewisburg UMC
Ohio 
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Think About It is just what I needed to get a fresh outlook on the text.  It's even more than that.  It brings into focus what our ministry should be all about.  Thanks.  Rev. William Smith California
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When I am looking for an image for a new program or special announcement, I can always find it on Gallery.  It is the best buy on the internet for the worship needs of a church.  I'm so grateful for all you do. I am not only the pastor, I also handle all the powerpoint for our service.
Rev. John Fisher
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I just want to thank you so much for your power point helps.  I am a fledgling media person and your web site makes my task so much easier.  Your artwork make our church's chapel service look so much nicer and more professional.  I thank God for all that you do.
Elyria First United Methodist Church
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I just wanted to express my appreciation for the PowerPoint slides you provide.  It's really tough for a church that operates on a very tight budget - like the one I attend - to be able to provide much more that just generic backgrounds.   Thank you and may God bless your ministry.
Dallas Central Church of the Nazarene
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I just wanted to thank you for your ministry in this effort.  We are a small church and we are focusing on the needs of the homeless in N Fort Myers.  These PowerPoint masters will help in that, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate them.   They are wonderful!   God Bless You!
Graham Milligan
All Souls Episcopal Church
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As a Church of Scotland minister starting out on the difficult journey of using multimedia in a old fashioned scots kirk I thank God for your site it encourages and inspires and helps a burdened minister   God bless you and your ministry
Gordon
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Thank you! I think your contribution to liturgy is a blessing to those of
us looking for creativity!
Kevin
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You are doing an absolute FABULOUS job - keep it up. I use your PowerPoint
slides every week.
Rev Ray Goddess
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Thank you for making the images available.  I prepare the power point slides for our worship service and it has been so helpful. I know that it takes a long time to come up with the right images for each Sunday.  Many thanks and blessings to you.
Freda Neie J







                   

Luke 13:1-9
Let us make no mistake: we are facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions throughout the so-called developing world. A health crisis!  And it is not caused by the H1 virus: it is caused by what we eat and how we produce it. 

Were you aware that it is only medical interventions which prolong the lives of sick people, which have enabled us to ignore the stark reality of our rapidly deteriorating situation: without those interventions - which are costing us a fortune - our mortality rates would be astronomical!

In today’s scripture, Jesus obviously referred to people that had the power to do good, but chose instead a life devoid of any merit.  In the United States, the Supreme Court just ruled that a corporation should be considered a “person” with all their legal rights.  I assume this also means they should suffer all the consequences of any unlawful activities.

• The food industry involves the well being of all peoples.  If you deliberately caused someone to become ill….in some cases, die, you would be held responsible. Why isn’t the food industry? Isn’t it a moral issue?  Why can’t the foods that cause health problems be heavily taxed as cigarettes are?

• The churches should speak out…..reform or be cut down!  It is no small matter to the members of your church.  Look out at your congregation.  Believe me; most of them have been injured by the “bad” foods they eat!  Yet, we pastors never discuss it, do we?  I think it’s time, we took some responsibility. If an enemy of our country was poisoning the food, it would make headlines.  Churches would be warning their members.  Why are we so silent when it is our food industries that are doing it.

• Could it be that the U.S. is silent because Americans spend only 9.7% of our income on food, a smaller share than any other nation? We in the U.S. are as addicted to cheap food as we are to oil, but with an even more tragic outcome.  All this "cheap food" is making us fat and sick. Shouldn’t we be concerned?

The stats are depressingly familiar: more than 60% of the people in the U.S. are overweight, and the percentage of us who are considered obese has nearly doubled since 1980. Health-care spending attributable to obesity reached $75 billion in 2003, by some estimates, with taxpayers shelling out more than half of that through Medicare and Medicaid programs. Government researchers estimate that obesity is associated with anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 deaths a year.  We started a war with considerably fewer deaths.

The following is a 5 part series by Peter Jennings:  How the Food Industry is Deceiving You. It is worth watching…we need to open our eyes to the truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXAZ_7JO7EA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEAJTgosdo0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6ksPAEGLgk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcrQixAKJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUQOjGq3wRE

There is a considerable body of international opinion that it is our affluent western diet that is primarily to blame for the upsurge in degenerative diseases — like coronary heart disease, strokes, various cancers, diabetes, and obesity — at earlier and earlier ages. And it appears to be true.  These degenerative dietary-related diseases are a major burden on our health system and their upsurge a major cause of spiraling costs. Type II diabetes, asthma, obesity and many cancers were rare or virtually unknown a mere 80 years ago.  The industrialized western diet, consisting of highly processed foods low in nutrients but high in fat, salt, sugar and additives, and often containing residues of pesticides and veterinary medicines, is making us all ill.

• Of great concern, obesity among children and teens has tripled in the past 25 years, resulting in a potential epidemic of lethal Type 2 diabetes.  Once known as an adult disease, it is being seen among children as young as 10 and 11. Without some intervention, this is the first generation of young Americans, being born today, who are expected to have a shorter life span than their parents or grandparents according to the New England Journal of Medicine.  Unless we radically change the food our children eat, they will be the first generation of children to die before their parents.

I say, pay no attention to the health claims on the package.  It’s just that I don’t believe them.  Remember, it was science that told us margarine made from trans fats is better for us than butter made from cow's milk.

• It isn’t only Americans that are suffering and dying.  For example, poor diet is the leading cause of preventable death in New Zealand accounting for an estimated 30 percent of preventable deaths.  They have the 3rd highest rate of breast cancer in the world, and one third of their children are obese or overweight. New Zealand is one of the world's great food baskets; food exports are the basis of their economy. Yet they, too, have incredibly high rates of chronic illness.

Society has become so disconnected from its food supply that children now can recognize food corporate logos like McDonald's, but many cannot identify vegetables such as celery or asparagus - thanks to the manner in which the food industry controls children's eating habits through massive PR campaigns that aim to establish brand loyalty not healthy eating.

Most people in the Western world are relatively affluent: you would think we should be a healthy bunch of people. We are ill, but not from lack of access to good food, not from poor hygiene or lack of sanitation — those things we associate with chronic ill health in so-called developing countries. We must confront the reality that our escalating chronic illness has come with affluence, and what affluence has brought with it. Our exposure to a cocktail of toxic chemicals such as pesticides, food additives, cosmetics and thousands of household products to which we are exposed every day are carcinogenic, cause endocrine disruption, and impair the immune system. Clearly these chemicals are implicated in our ill health.

There are many food products that have been adulterated.  Click on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMHvMAUDHj4  A video on the additives put in our milk.

• Industrial food giants spend billions of dollars globally to seduce us into demanding food that is exactly the opposite of what we should be eating: food that is laden with fat and sugar.
• Children's cereals have about 30-45% sugar — and only about 1% fibre. They should really be labeled confectionary. A small packet of chips contains about 4 teaspoons of fat; a candy bar generally has 2 teaspoons of fat and 10 teaspoons of sugar; the average pie contains 6.5 teaspoons of fat; a bottle of coke (the third biggest seller in the supermarket) contains about 20 teaspoons of sugar; and a serving of French fries has 7 teaspoons of fat.

Compared with the diet that fueled human evolution, the so called affluent diet of today has twice the amount of saturated fat, a third of the former daily fiber intake, much much more sugar and salt, flour, carbohydrates, and a reduced intake of nutrients. What we eat has changed more in the past 40 years than in the previous 40 thousand years of human history.

Food ought to be one of the greatest contributors to our health —But our food supply has become so debased that much of it is anything but medicinal — in fact, it is so devoid of nutrients and so full of saturated fat, sugar and chemical additives, that some of it is more like a poison. So it is not surprising, but still shocking, that food has become the major cause of preventable diseases like obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and is by far the largest contributor to death, way more than alcohol, violence, cigarette smoking and road deaths combined.

• What do I mean by industrial food?
• More than 4000 additives are included in the ordinary processed food we buy and most of us, without realizing it, consume a rich assortment of coal tar dyes, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, acidity regulators, thickeners, stabilizers, anticaking agents, humectants, firming agents, foaming agents, antifoaming agents, glazing agents, bulking agents and preservatives - which are basically poisons that ward off the growth of micro organisms so that food can be kept fresh for years. Not to mention unlabeled ingredients like soy lecithin and corn starch, pesticide residues, and veterinary drugs. Many of these additives haven't been properly safety tested — nor for that matter have cocktails of pesticide residues, or contaminants.

• A survey the Safe Food Campaign (ref) carried out in 1998 estimated that a child eating a diet of mostly processed food could easily consume 158 doses of 200 different additives a day. That comes to an extraordinary 80 thousand additives a child eats in a year.

I realize it is a difficult goal, but shouldn’t we simply change the way in which we produce our food? And shouldn’t we stop flying it all over the globe? Consumers and growers must regain control of our food supply if we are to have food that sustains our health and our communities. Every year we spend an increasing amount of taxpayers' money just to stand still, or even worse to slide backwards as our health statistics worsen.  The costs are unsustainable. 

• Primarily due to the rise in obesity,  the majority of diabetes deaths related to overweight  is a silent killer that kills one person every 10 seconds!!! 

There is an alternative: we must drastically improve the food we eat, especially for our children. We must have a massive switch in our diet from industrialized, nutritionally empty junk food laced with fat, sugar and salt, to a diet based on locally-produced fresh organic produce — only this will sustain our health and our communities.

The source for some of this material is from
http://www.greens.org.nz/speeches/why-we-need-food-revolution

We pastors preach about all kinds of evils that affect the lives of our congregations, our communities, our country, and our world, yet ignore the most basic of all……the foods being produced today are causing illness and death! Isn’t this a moral issue that we should be addressing?

• We need to face it: Our food industry has not had the goal of providing “good” fruit!  They have instead placed profits ahead of health. 

We pastors need to warn our congregations and then help them secure the knowledge to choose their foods wisely! It is threatening their very lives. Let your congregation know that every decision they make in a supermarket helps determine whether they and their children will live long, healthy lives.  It is just that vital!

Think About it.