I have a background and a still image in my timeline and that has worked out fine and I've saved it (it saved as .vf). In order to save it in another format, do I need to render it even though it is not a video?
You have to render in some fashion. The .vf file doesn't contain any media.
You can use the "copy preview" function. Over the preview window's right corner are two icons. One of the copies whatever you currently see in the preview window to the clipboard, the other saves it to a file.