Sermons are a must-have on any church website—but what’s the best way to display sermons on my church website? The good news is you have a few options to choose from. The best choice will depend on your goals and how you’re recording your messages each week.
The even better news is you don’t have to be an expert at coding or technology to add sermons to your site! Here are my top three recommendations for the best ways to display sermons on your church website.
Best Ways to Display Sermons on Your Church Website
1. YouTube Feed
Many churches upload their sermons to YouTube each week. Showcasing these videos on your website is (in my opinion) the best way to display sermons on your church website.
The process will look slightly different depending on your website platform, so you might have to install a plugin to get the results you want. On my church’s site, I was able to embed a YouTube channel within Wix, so all of our sermons automatically appear on the site once they’re uploaded to YouTube.
2. Embedded Podcast
If your sermon audio is being uploaded to a podcast, you can embed that podcast on your site to easily display your sermons! This is a great option if you don’t have video recordings of your sermons but still want to encourage people to listen.
The process is relatively simple, and you can easily find instructions for embedding a Spotify or Apple podcast in different website hosts. I recommend only embedding one podcast platform—it’s too confusing otherwise!
3. Blog Post
If you want to turn your sermons into readable and shareable content, you can convert them into blog posts! This option requires much more time and effort than the others, but if you have a robust search engine optimization (SEO) blogging strategy, it could be a great option.
Use a transcribing service to write out your sermon, and then break it up using formatted headers. At the beginning or end of the post, you can embed your sermon video YouTube link or link out to the podcast episode!
Tips for Your Church Website Sermon Page
Embed Your Videos
One of the biggest mistakes I see churches make is uploading their actual sermon video file to their website. This drastically reduces your site speed, which can negatively affect your SEO (how high your page will appear in search results) and your bounce rate (traffic leaving your website).
Instead, I recommend embedding your sermon videos into your website directly from YouTube or Vimeo. Visitors to your site can still play the video on your website, but it won’t affect the speed at which the page loads!
Automate the Process
The last thing a pastor or church worker wants to do is add another item to their to-do list each week. To avoid having to upload your sermon to your website each week, automate the process. If you’ve embedded your YouTube channel or podcast, you can check this off the list—videos or episodes will automatically appear on your website once they’re live!
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