FAQ
If you do not see yours here, email [email protected] and we will answer it.
It is a way for a church to invite, display, and celebrate the visual, literary, and musical work of its congregation. Members submit paintings, drawings, photography, poetry, prose, songs, and more around a theme or scripture, the church displays it, and the wider body gathers around it. It builds community, puts people's gifts to work, and can reach people who would never come for a sermon first.
No. God equips us for what He calls us to, and running an arts ministry is mostly administrative and pastoral work, not art-making. You invite people, you welcome their gifts, and you tend the relationships. Hymn & Hue handles a lot of the details. Your artists bring the art, and you bring the shepherding.
Far less than running it by hand. Artists submit themselves from a phone or computer, so no one is collecting files by email. The main ongoing task is curation, choosing and approving submissions, which a leader can do in a few minutes. The gallery, the cards, and the archive are automatic.
Your church name and logo, a statement of faith, one series or theme to gather around, and a leader to approve submissions. That is enough to open for submissions and publish your first gallery.
Hymn & Hue is arts ministry management software for churches. It collects artwork, poetry, and song submissions, helps leaders curate and approve them, and publishes an online gallery, printed QR identification cards, and a lasting archive. It runs the whole administrative side of a church visual and literary arts ministry so leaders can spend their time on people instead of paperwork.
Hymn & Hue is for the leaders and volunteers who run a church arts ministry, and for the pastors who want to start one. It fits a single small congregation with art in the lobby as easily as a large or multisite church rotating several exhibits at once. You do not need to be an artist or a curator to use it.
Hymn & Hue is a product of Well Made Decisions. It grew out of a decade of running a real church arts ministry, Spectra Arts at Fellowship Bible Church in Northwest Arkansas, and was built with the artists who take part and the leaders who run these programs. You can read the fuller story on our About page.
Yes. Hymn & Hue is not tied to any tradition. Your church sets its own statement of faith, which every artist acknowledges when they submit, and your leaders approve every piece before it is shown. The tool carries the logistics; your convictions stay entirely yours.
It works alongside it. Hymn & Hue is not a church management system and does not try to be one. It does the one thing a ChMS like Planning Center, Breeze, or Realm does not: run a visual and literary arts program, from artist submissions through curation, the public gallery, printed cards, and the archive. Keep your ChMS for membership and giving, and let Hymn & Hue handle the art.
A form plus a spreadsheet can collect submissions, but then the work begins: chasing files, resizing photos, tracking approvals, keeping contact information private, making signage, publishing a page, and remembering what was shown last season. Hymn & Hue is purpose-built for that whole chain. Submission, curation, the public gallery, printed QR identification cards, and the season archive live in one place, with privacy and a statement-of-faith step built in, so nothing falls through the cracks.
We do not run a time-limited trial. Instead, we will set up a free working preview of a gallery for your church so your team can click through the whole flow before you commit. When you are ready, plans start at about $12 a month on an annual plan. See the pricing page for current tiers.
You can open for submissions the same day. All you need is your church name and logo, a statement of faith, one series or theme to gather around, and a leader to approve submissions. The gallery, the cards, and the archive build themselves as pieces are approved.
Yes. Hymn & Hue supports a team with roles: read only, edit, edit and delete, and super admin. You can scope a person's access to a single campus, so each leader sees and manages exactly what they should.
Yes. Artist contact information is visible only to administrators and is never shown publicly. You can request an export of your archive so your church always keeps its own record, and both artists and admins can hide or remove submissions. The details are in our Privacy Policy and Terms.
No. If you can share a link and tap "approve," you can run Hymn & Hue. Artists submit from their own phones, and the parts that are usually fiddly, resizing images, laying out cards, and building the gallery page, happen for you.
You share one link. Artists submit a photo, a title, the inspiration scripture or theme behind their piece, a short caption for the printed card, and an optional longer description and audio reflection. Every submission waits in a review queue, and nothing appears publicly until a leader curates and approves it.
Work of many kinds, across three types the form adapts to: visual art (paintings, drawings, photography, prints, fiber art, sculpture as a photo, calligraphy), poetry or prose, and songs. For each piece, an artist adds a title, the inspiration scripture or theme behind it, a short caption sized to fit the printed card, and an optional longer description for the website. Poetry and prose keep the full text with its formatting intact, and we suggest artists print and frame the piece so it hangs on the wall and photographs cleanly. A song can also carry a recording, sheet music and lead sheets for musicians, and a link to a music video. A spoken audio reflection is optional too. You decide which fields to require.
Whether to allow AI-generated or AI-modified work is a decision each church makes for its own ministry, and we give you a setting for it. We know the modern tools are powerful, and we are not here to police anyone's studio. We do value craftsmanship, the handmade, and the skill that grows through practice and repetition, and most of the churches we work with feel the same way. In your admin settings you choose how open or careful to be. You can leave it entirely up to the artist, or you can ask each artist to attest that they personally painted, wrote, composed, or performed the work they submit. It is your call, and the setting is yours to change.
No. Artists are ministry volunteers who freely agree to have their work shown for a time in their local church and online on the church's website. They can decide whether their work is available for sale or license, and if someone is interested, the two connect directly to make arrangements. We encourage supporters and collectors to invest in art in all forms. Hymn & Hue does not get involved or participate in commercial transactions between artists and their collectors.
They can, but it is off by default, and that is on purpose. We have no interest in turning a sanctuary into a store. Every piece defaults to "not for sale," and most artists and churches choose to display art for its own sake. Whether selling is even an option is a choice you make at the admin level. Some churches do open it up, often as a fundraiser for a ministry or a missionary. When a piece is for sale, the artist transacts directly with the buyer, off the platform for now. We do not take a cut and we do not process the payment.
A song is different from a painting. It can be sung by many congregations at once, so rather than a single for-sale price, a songwriter chooses how their song may be used. We do not invent our own licensing language. Instead we point to the frameworks the church already relies on, and the songwriter picks the one that fits their heart for the song:
The gallery shows the chosen terms plainly next to the song, alongside the recording and any sheet music, lead sheets, or video. This is general information, not legal advice. If a songwriter is unsure, we suggest choosing the paid-license option and talking it through with a leader.
When a piece is offered for sale, or when a visitor wants to license a song or reproduce a work, the gallery gives them a simple way to ask. By default that inquiry goes to your church, not to the artist's personal inbox, so no one's contact information is ever shown in public. Your team passes the message along to the artist, who decides whether and how to respond. A church that prefers a lighter touch can choose instead to route inquiries straight to the artist. Either way, Hymn & Hue does not process the payment and does not take a cut. The artist and the buyer settle the details directly, off the platform for now.
With care, and with the final say always in your hands. Because approval is required before anything goes public, a difficult piece never surprises you on the wall. You can hold it, decline it, or talk with the artist first. We have written a gracious decision framework for this on the blog.
Yes, as many as you allow, and across more than one campus if your church has several. There is no per-artist limit and no per-artist fee.
Every artist acknowledges your statement of faith when they submit, and the version and date are recorded with the piece. You set the statement, you can update it, and you approve every piece before it is shown. The tool keeps your convictions in the loop without making you police it by hand.
The artist owns their artwork. When they submit, they give your church and Hymn & Hue permission to display it. We host your ministry, but the decision of what to publish is always yours: you choose what is shown, for how long, and what comes down.
Our intention, and the intention of the churches we serve, is that this work is shown as an act of worship and as encouragement for the body. It is not offered for anyone to use, duplicate, reproduce, modify, resell, or use for commercial purposes without the artist's explicit permission. To make casual copying harder, the images on the gallery are watermarked. If you would like to reproduce or license an image, a poem, or a song for any commercial purpose, including using a piece inside another work, such as an illustration in a book, you must reach out to the artist directly to obtain permission. Hymn & Hue and the artist's local congregation are not the copyright holder on any of this creative work. The artist is, and permission is theirs alone to give.
When an artist submits, they choose the name shown with their work, which can be their full name, a first name and an initial, or a pen name. They agree to have that name and an image of their art, for which they keep the copyright, shown on the public gallery. Their contact information is visible only to system administrators, and it is used only if there is a question or concern about a piece, or to coordinate physical display details off the platform. Contact details are never shown publicly. All of this is spelled out in our Privacy Policy.
Yes, and Hymn & Hue captures it as part of submitting. When an artist submits a piece, they agree to have their chosen display name and an image of their work shown on the church's public gallery, and that agreement is recorded with the piece alongside the statement-of-faith acknowledgement. The artist keeps the copyright; the church receives permission to display. If you ever take work down, you can.
This is worth settling before your first show, and it is a decision for your church rather than for us. Many churches address displayed artwork through their existing property or liability coverage, and state plainly in their submission guidelines whether the church accepts responsibility for loss or damage. We give you a place to publish those guidelines to artists, but this is general information, not legal or insurance advice. Confirm the specifics with your insurer.
Many churches include work by children and students, which is one of the joys of an arts ministry. When minors are involved, get a parent or guardian's permission for both the submission and the public display, and follow your church's existing child-protection and photo-release policies. Hymn & Hue records the consent given at submission; the safeguarding policy itself is yours to set. This is general guidance, not legal advice.
Decide the answer in advance and put it in your submission guidelines: how long the church will hold a piece after a show closes, how you will reach the artist, and what happens to unclaimed work. Because Hymn & Hue keeps each artist's contact details and the record of what they submitted, following up is simple. Setting the expectation up front prevents almost every awkward conversation later.
Yes. Our higher plans support as many campuses as you have, each with its own gallery and curation, and let you scope a team member's access to a single campus. A visitor browsing the gallery can filter by campus.
A few ways, depending on your plan and your web team:
Not sure which fits? Tell us about your setup and we will help you choose.
Yes. An admin can set the gallery's style, including a serif or sans-serif font and your basic brand colors, so it feels like part of your church's own site rather than a generic page.
Plans start at about $12 a month on an annual plan, with no setup fees and no per-artist charges. You can pay annually for the best rate, or go month to month at a slightly higher rate. For most churches that is a small fraction of what the same coordination would cost in volunteer hours. See the pricing page for current tiers.
Yes. Your archive can be exported so your church keeps its record of every series, and our data-retention terms spell out exactly how long we keep and host your content if you pause or cancel. Artists can hide or remove their own submissions, and admins can do the same.
Last updated: September 2026
We answer personally. Ask us anything about starting or running an arts ministry.