Sermons: publish your messages with video, audio and notes

Sermons keeps your church’s messages in one library. Add a sermon once, with its video, audio and notes, and when you publish it, it appears on your website at /sermons, in the member portal, and (if it has audio) in your podcast.

Sermons and media is included in the Pro and Elite plans. You need the Content editor role, or to be an owner or administrator, to see Website → Sermons.

Add a sermon

1. Go to Website → Sermons and choose Add sermon.
2. Title and Preached on are the only things you must fill in.
3. Speaker: choose one of your speakers, or type a new name. A new name is added to your speakers when you save.
4. Series: choose the series it belongs to, if any. Add series with the Series button (see below).
5. Campus: if you have more than one campus, the campus it was preached at. Leave it empty for every campus.
6. Scripture: type a reference, such as John 3:16-21, and press Enter. Up to ten.
7. Summary: a sentence or two. It shows on the website, in the portal and in podcast apps.
8. Video: paste the address of the video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=… or https://youtu.be/…) or Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/123456789). Your website plays it in the page. Other video sites are not accepted, for the same reason as the Embed block: HoW only places players it builds itself.
9. Audio: choose Upload a file (MP3, AAC or M4A, up to 50 MB) or Link to a file that is hosted somewhere else (an address starting https://). An hour of speech exported at 64 to 96 kbps is about 30 to 43 MB.
10. Artwork: an image from Website → Images. Without one, the series’s artwork is used.
11. Notes: an outline people can follow along with. Write it as you would a text block: a blank line between paragraphs, ## for a heading, - for a bullet, 1. for a numbered point, > for a quote.
12. Links: a study guide, slides, a sign-up form: up to twenty, each with a label and an address.
13. Choose Add sermon. It is saved as a Draft: nobody but staff sees it yet.

Publish, unpublish, delete

• Publish in the sermon’s row puts it on your website, in the portal and in your podcast. Visitors see it within about 30 seconds.
• Unpublish takes it back to a draft. It leaves all three straight away (podcast apps check every hour or so).
• Delete removes the sermon for good, and its uploaded audio file with it.
• View opens the published sermon on your website in a new tab.

Use the filters above the list to find a sermon by title or scripture, series, speaker, or date.

Series

A series groups sermons on one theme. Choose Series to add or edit one: a title, a description, artwork from your images, and optional start and end dates. Each series with a published sermon has its own page on your website, /sermons/series/<name>, and appears in the series grid at the top of /sermons. Deleting a series keeps its sermons; they just belong to no series.

Speakers

Choose Speakers to add a speaker with their name and role (“Lead pastor”, “Guest speaker”). The name is what your website prints. Switch In the list off for someone who no longer preaches: their sermons keep their name, and they stop appearing when you choose a speaker. Deleting a speaker keeps their sermons, with no speaker named.

On your website

• /sermons shows your series, then every published sermon, newest first, twelve to a page, with a filter by speaker. If your podcast is on, it offers “Subscribe to the podcast”.
• /sermons/ shows one sermon: its video player, its audio player, scripture, summary, notes, links, and more from the same series.
• The Sermon feature block puts sermons on any page: the newest sermon, the newest sermon with its video in the page, or a list. Choose which: the newest from all your sermons, the newest in one series, or one particular sermon. Add it with Add block → Sermon feature in the page editor (Edit a page).
• Both work in every theme.

Add /sermons to your menu (Website → Menus) so visitors can find it. If you already have a page of your own at /sermons, the sermon archive takes its place while Sermons and media is on.

Good to know

• Only published sermons are ever shown to visitors and members. Drafts stay in the dashboard.
• A speaker’s name and role are public once a sermon by them is published. Nothing else about the person is.
• Uploaded audio is public by its address, which is what lets podcast apps play it. Don’t upload anything you don’t have the right to publish.
• Sermons and media is its own module: a church without it does not see Sermons, and its website has no /sermons archive.

Coming from Planning Center

Planning Center Publishing keeps sermons as episodes in channels, with series, speakers, notes and links, and shows them in Church Center. HoW keeps one sermon library per church (no separate channels yet), with the same series, speakers, video, audio, notes and links, shown on your own website and in the member portal. Planning Center’s livestream chat and fill-in-the-blank notes are not in HoW; your livestream is the Live now block.