3 Best Ways To Add Sermons To Your Church WordPress Website

One of the best website platforms (CMS) to build your church’s website on is WordPress because WordPress is a nonproprietary software, meaning you can choose how you want to add sermons to your website. 

As a church, you need to have the primary pieces of content on your website that will help people to turn from online visitors to in-person worshippers. You need pages like “Plan Your Visit,” “Our Beliefs,” “Our Staff,” and the various ministry pages, but you also need to have a home for your sermons and services so that folks can experience a service before they walk through the front doors. 

This guide is designed to help you know the best way to add sermons to your website, what plugins you can use to create a sermon media library, and how to create a sermon audio podcast using your website.

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Creating a sermon series portal using a WordPress plugin

There are many amazing sermon media plugins out there to help you quickly build out an entire sermon library. These plugins allow you to create series, add video, add audio files (mp3s), add speakers, attached Scripture references, and upload sermon notes (like your sermon outline or powerpoint slides). Not all plugins are created equally, but they all do the job. 

Series Engine

Cost: $99 one time

Series Engine is currently my favorite sermon series plugin because the cost is right and it provides you with everything that you need to built out a sermon media portal quickly. Series engine allows you to break down your sermons into service types (so that if you have multiple services like Sunday Morning, Sunday Night, and Wednesday Night, you can attach series and sermons to those service types), add relevant content for a particular sermon, and create a podcast feed to use on places on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

The reason why I like this plugin the most is because, although I would only give it a 8/10 for the front end design, for just $99, you get a complete and robust series engine tool. You can use the settings to change the look and feels like the colors, and if you ever get in a bind, the documentation is great and email support is also good. The plugin was designed by a local church minister, and I personally love supporting another ministry person who works full time for a church and built this tool to help other churches.

One thing I like about this plugin is that it uses Javascript to load the sermon plays so that you page never needs to refresh or load a new screen to show the series, sermons, or categories. 

Curious what Series Engine looks like on a real website? Here’s a few custom church websites that I built using the Series Engine Plugin:

• Parkway Christian Center
• Church at LifePark
• Bradfordville First Baptist Church
• Taylors First Baptist Church

CP Sermons

Cost: $9.99 Monthly | $99 Yearly | $249.00 one time

CP Sermons is a newer plugin on the WordPress scene and they have created an entire fleet of plugins to help churches build better websites, faster. They have other amazing plugins in their library, but for this article, we’ll just be talking about their sermon engine plugin. 

I gave their plugin a test run a while back and loved it! The problem? They only offered a subscription pricing model. With me building out church websites, my goal is to build everything where there are no ongoing website fees outside of standard domain name and hosting. If I used this plugin, I would have had to tell the church “you have to pay for standard domain and web hosting but then you’ll need to pay an extra $99 per year to keep your sermon portal plugin updated,” and honestly, I didn’t like that idea. 

Just recently (like I literally just discovered this fact while writing this article), they released a lifetime purchase deal! So now, you can spend $249 and always receive updates to the plugin!

Even though this cost is 2.5x higher that Series Engine, it makes sense because the plugin creator is actively adding new features to the plugin. For example, they just added both the ability to add a transcript to a sermon and the ability to connect the series engine to SermonAudio.com.

Note from Marc: I am series contemplating making CP Sermons my primary series engine WordPress plugin . . . and that’s saying something because I’ve actively used Series Engine for years. I talked with the Series Engine plugin creator about if their plugin will get an overhaul, and he simply said “I’m working on something fun. Stay tuned.” 

Advanced Sermons

Cost: Free | $49 yearly

Advanced Sermons is a great introductory plugin to use on your website if you aren’t too worried about having many different features or layout options. You can download this plugin for free from the WordPress plugin directory and start adding in your sermons immediately. If you decide to stay with the free plan, you still can trust that you can add sermons, attach to series, attach video embed files from YouTube or direct upload (but not Facebook, you need the pro version for that), and attach audio files using a separate plugin (the plugin doesn’t create it own podcast audio feed (like the others) so that’s a bummer but there’s still options!). If you decide to go with the Pro version, you are able to get more features, but if you simply want to get your sermons on your website for free, this is a great little plugin.

This being said, although it’s the cheapest plugin to use for the first two years (after year 2, Series Engine pays for itself here), the Pro version still doesn’t showcase a great design for sermons. Each sermon and the entire portal operates more like a blog post than it does a series engine. I also don’t know many churches that use this plugin. 

Which of these three sermon WordPress plugins should you use? If you want to try something completely free, then go for Advanced Sermons! If you want to stay budget conscious, but have a great plugin that will serve your church for many years to come? Go with Series Engine. If you want to utilize all the plugins in the Church Plugins (CP Sermons), enjoy the look of the plugins (on the user-end), and are okay with the price, than go with CP Sermons.

Use a YouTube Gallery WordPress Plugin to create an auto updating sermon page

If you decide to use the sermon media plugins above, you have to stay dedicated to uploading your sermons every single week. What should you do if you want your website to always stay updated with the newest sermon, never upload a sermon, and don’t care about having a podcast feed (or you already have one and you don’t want to change to a new tool)? You display your YouTube feed as a gallery on your website! 

I have done this quite a few ways for both churches and content creators, and here are my two favorite plugins. The best part? The free versions do the job well!

Note: for both of these plugins, you need a church YouTube channel and either broadcast live every week or upload sermons to the YouTube channel.

YouTube Embed Plus

This is my primary YouTube gallery plugin of choice. I like this plugin because by default, it shows folks the thumbnail of the video and the title. Based on how your WordPress website is built, this plugin can be a little annoying to setup, but once it’s set up, you never need to worry about it again. Once your church finishes a live service, it is automatically added to your website! Pretty sweet, huh? 

Examples of YouTube Embed Plus on live church websites I’ve built:

• Rehoboth Church Family
• First Baptist Mishawaka
• Shandon Baptist Church
• First Baptist Church Richardson

Feeds for YouTube by Smash Balloon

Feed for YouTube is the easiest plugin to get your church’s YouTube channel on your website. The setup is painless and the software helps you connect your website to your YouTube channel so much more efficiently and more easily than YouTube Embed Plus; however, I stopped using this plugin for church websites because the free version (you can pay to upgrade) didn’t show the videos title until you hovered over the video (which isn’t bad for desktop but terrible for mobile). However, I still highly recommend this plugin if your church uses graphics to give the sermon title.

Example of Feeds for YouTube on live creator website I’ve built:

• Tried, Tested, and True

*Note from Marc – having an outdated church always hurts your website’s reputation and trustworthiness. If folks come to your website and the most recent sermon on the website is 4 years old, that’s a terrible sign. Using a plugin that automatically adds the most recent sermon or service to your website is the easiest way for both small and large churches to keep their websites up to date.

Only Have Audio? Use a podcast WordPress plugin to self host audio files and share to podcast directories

There are many churches out there that don’t livestream or record their sermons and services – maybe this is your church. Honestly, that’s quite okay! With the trend in audio podcasts, your church doesn’t have to record or livestream your sermons to still make an impact. If you record your sermons as an mp3, you can still use your WordPress website to host your audio files and create an audio podcast! There are quite a few great plugins out there, and honestly, they all pretty much do the same thing, but here is my favorite and the extra plugins that you’ll want to also add to your website:

Seriously Simple Podcasting: 

This is the primary plugin that you need to create a podcast for your church.

Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/seriously-simple-podcasting/

Seriously Simple Stats:

This plugin is an add-on to Seriously Simple Podcasting that allows you to track the downloads of each episode (sermon).

Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/seriously-simple-stats/

Seriously Simple Speakers:

If you want to add speakers to your sermons (like different pastors), you need this plugin. Note, it hasn’t been updated in quite some time, but it does work.

Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/seriously-simple-speakers/

Now, there are instructions that you need to follow to create the podcast RSS feed and get it to directories like Apple Podcast and Spotify. Here is a link to the instructions from Seriously Simple: https://support.castos.com/category/27-distribute-your-podcast

FAQ About Adding Sermons To Your WordPress Church Website

Should you use the native WordPress blog post feature and create new posts with an embed of the video?

In short, no. I mean, honestly, you can use WordPress’ blog feature, but why use a blog post when you can have an entire sermon series portal that includes filtering, sorting, archive list, attachments, and podcast RSS feed creation? If you want to stay free, but at least have some sort of sermon engine, utilize the free Advanced Sermons WordPress plugin. But I honestly feel that the $99 Series Engine is a GREAT investment for your church.

Should you self host the videos or use a third party platform like YouTube, Facebook, or Vimeo?

Privacy is of great importance in today’s website world. Google is known as mining and selling people’s browser data, and now, governments and local authorities are requiring websites to notify website visitors if they are using third party cookies, including YouTube. In light of that, many business are no longer using YouTube on their websites and instead, they are using Vimeo or locally added videos (videos put directly on the website). 

But this is where it gets hard because YouTube is still one of the top search engines out there and is one of the best ways for your church to get found. However, because of privacy concerns and owning the uploads, a lot of larger churches utilize Vimeo to store and broadcast their videos. However, if you’re already live streaming to YouTube or Facebook, I usually recommend that churches keep their videos there and bring them into their websites through embedding the videos (if you’re using the YouTube plugin, it does this for you automatically). If this is the case, I recommend using a cookie consent tool like Termageddon to ensure that if you are using a YouTube video, you are getting people’s permission for YouTube to track their browsing data. 

Note: Termageddon is my favorite privacy policy and cookie consent policy tool. You can sign up for $12 per month or if you sign up for my WordPress Maintenance, Support, & Hosting Plan (starting at $99 a month), and Termageddon is included for completely free!

Should you post the full service or just the sermon?

I love this question and get it asked often. Personally, I lean towards if you have a video, use the full service! People care just about the worship and music as they do the teaching and want to see what your worship team looks like, performs like, and sounds like (I know they *shouldn’t* but they do, so let’s not deny that reality). Now, if the audio is TERRIBLE for your music, you might want to reconsider that idea, but people honestly want to see the full service! 

For audio, always do JUST the sermon. Now, you should do some sort of intro to your sermon welcoming people to the episode, who the church is, and how they can connect with your church because this is what is expected on an audio podcast. 

Why should you put sermons on your website?

Two reasons:

1. New people want to know what your church looks and feels like and how the pastor preaches. If they are going to visit, they want to make sure that they can actually sit under the teaching of the pastor. Or, you can reach new people with your sermons and services, and then bring them into the faith or the church.
2. Church members miss services all the time, and often, they do want to go back and catch up. For me, I missed 2 out of the 4 weekend services in September because I was sick and then I was traveling. I didn’t listen to the livestream, but I am able to go back and either watch the service or listen to the sermon audio via podcast. If this is true for me, and I can guarantee that it is true for your church members as well. Just remember to remind folks often of the podcast so that they actually know it exists (you’ll be shocked to know how many have no clue!)

Conclusion:

Your church’s website is the greatest tool to introduce people to your church life and encourage those who are already in your congregation. If you’re paying to have a website, you might as well make sure that you utilize it well. If you’re on WordPress, there are so many wonderful tools to help you get your sermons onto the website. The questions come down to “what is best for our church?” and “what can our church honestly keep up with in order to keep the website up to date?” No matter what solution you choose, I encourage you to at least utilize one of the options because honestly, why not?

If your church is in need of a new website that displays your church’s culture and heartbeat, introduces people to your church life, and has a great sermon media engine ready to roll, reach out today! I have helped many churches all across America, and I would love to help your church with a brand new WordPress website, too! Fill out the contact form below to get in touch about what we can do, together.