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Publish your first sermon

Upload audio or video and post your first sermon to your church website.

In this article

Sermons are usually the most-visited part of a church website. Members catch up on the ones they missed, people who moved away stay connected to home, and a visitor gets a feel for your church before ever walking in the door. Publishing your first one takes about five minutes.

What you'll need

Before you start, gather:

  • A link to the recording. For video, a YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook link. For audio, a direct link to the file (an address ending in .mp3, for example).
  • A title and a short summary of one or two sentences.
  • A Scripture reference (for example, "Romans 8:28-39").
  • The speaker's name and, if the sermon is part of a multi-week series, the series.

How to publish

  1. Go to New sermon (Content in the sidebar, then Sermons).
  2. In Settings at the top, choose the publish state (see below). Turn on Members Only if only signed-in members should see it.
  3. Under Content, fill in Title, Speaker, Scripture Reference and Description, and pick the Date, usually the Sunday the sermon was preached.
  4. Paste the recording's address into Source URL. The form recognizes YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and direct audio or video files, and tells you what it detected. Add a Thumbnail if you have one.
  5. Pick a Series if it belongs to one; you can create the series right there.
  6. Click Save Message.

A sermon has one Source URL. Hosting audio or video files directly in EasyChurchApp is a separate add-on that is still being rolled out. Until it is switched on for your church, there is no upload button, and media goes in as a link.

Draft, scheduled, or published

The Publish state selector in the Settings section has three options:

  • Draft: only you can see it. Use this while you're still editing.
  • Scheduled: picks a future date and time. The sermon appears on the public site automatically when that moment arrives.
  • Published: live now.

For your first sermon, just pick Published and click Save.

Where the sermon shows up

  • On your church's public site under /messages (or whatever you've named the section).
  • In the Messages section on your home page (if that block is enabled).
  • In the member app, in the sermon list.
  • In your podcast feed, if it has a direct audio file link.

Publishing a sermon does not send anyone a notification. If you want members to know it is up, send an announcement from Notifications.

Audio files

For a podcast, point the Source URL at a direct audio file (MP3 or M4A). For spoken sermons a 96kbps file is plenty, and it keeps the download small for listeners on a phone.

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