Sermon publishing

Sermons are the second data-driven content type in the Website Builder (alongside blog posts). Each sermon is one message — audio or video — with the surrounding metadata: who preached it, what series it belongs to, what scripture it covered, when it was delivered.

You manage them under Website Builder → Content → Sermons. Once published, sermons appear at /sermons/{slug} on your public site, surface in the Sermon feed and Sermon player blocks, and feed the podcast RSS automatically.

Add a sermon

From Website Builder → Content → Sermons, click + New sermon in the top right.

Title and slug

The title of the message — usually the sermon title the preacher used. The slug auto-generates from the title and powers the public URL. Same slug rules as everywhere else: lowercase, letters / digits / hyphens.

Speaker name

Who preached. Free-text. Doesn't have to be a member of your church — you can put visiting preachers, conference speakers, anyone. The Sermon feed block shows the speaker name on each card when the "Show speaker" prop is on.

Series

Free-text field for the series this message belongs to — "Lent 2025," "Letters to the Seven Churches," "Foundations." Don't overthink it. Type the series name on each sermon that's part of it; the Sermon feed block can filter by series so you can put a "Foundations" feed on a series landing page.

There isn't a separate "Series" management table today — the value is just a string. If you mistype a series name, the typo becomes its own series. The fix is to edit the sermons and align the spelling.

Scripture reference

A free-text field for the passage — "John 3:16-21," "Romans 8," "Psalm 23." Shows up on the sermon detail page and in the Sermon feed cards. No formal parsing — the value is exactly what you type.

Media type and media URL

The combination of these two fields determines how the sermon plays.

Available media types:

• Audio — upload an MP3 (recommended) or other audio file. The block renders an audio player.
• Video — upload an MP4. The block renders an HTML5 video player.
• YouTube — paste a YouTube URL. The block embeds the YouTube player.
• Vimeo — paste a Vimeo URL. The block embeds the Vimeo player.

For audio and video, upload the file with the Upload button — it lands in your storage bucket and the media URL fills in automatically. For YouTube and Vimeo, paste the full URL (https://youtube.com/watch?v=... or https://vimeo.com/...).

TIP

For weekly preaching, YouTube is the cheapest path — you're already uploading there for the live stream, just paste the URL here. Audio uploads are good for series you want as a podcast (see Podcast).

Cover image

The thumbnail for the sermon — used in the Sermon feed grid, the sermon detail page, and as the podcast episode artwork. 1200×675 (16:9) works well. Most teams use a series-branded image and reuse it across every sermon in that series.

Notes / description (the rich-text body)

A TipTap editor for sermon notes, an outline, a transcript, discussion questions — whatever supplementary text goes alongside the audio or video. Appears on the sermon detail page below the player.

This field is optional. Plenty of sermons ship with just title + speaker + media.

Published / Draft and Published date

Same pattern as blog posts and pages: each sermon has its own publish flag. Drafts don't appear in the Sermon feed, the /sermons index, or the podcast RSS — they're only reachable by admins at the direct URL for preview.

The published date drives the sort order on the Sermon feed (newest first by default), the "Preached on" line on the detail page, and the publish date in the podcast feed. Defaults to "now" when you flip from draft to published; you can override it to back-date older sermons you're uploading retroactively.

Surfacing sermons

There are three blocks that pull from your sermon library:

• Sermon feed — grid, magazine, or list layout. The right block for a /sermons landing page, with pagination and optional series/category filter.
• Sermon player — a single embedded sermon. Pick the sermon from a dropdown in the block props. Useful for "this week's message" on a homepage.
• Podcast feed (under Podcast) — your sermons become podcast episodes. Configure the show metadata once and Apple/Spotify pull from the same data.

Most homepages put the Sermon player block near the top showing the most recent sermon, then a small Sermon feed grid further down with three older messages.

Series landing pages

A common pattern: a "Foundations" series page that lives at /series/foundations and only shows sermons tagged with that series.

1. Create a page in the Pages tab with slug series/foundations.
2. Drop a Hero banner at the top with the series artwork.
3. Drop a Rich text block with the series description.
4. Drop a Sermon feed block. In its props, set the series filter to Foundations.

When new sermons in that series get published, the page updates automatically. No re-editing.

Editing and deleting

Same as blog posts. Click any sermon row to reopen it; trash icon to soft-delete (30-day recycle bin).

If you delete a sermon that's been pushed to a podcast directory, the entry will disappear from the RSS feed but might linger in Apple Podcasts / Spotify caches for a day or two.

See also: Blog posts, Podcast, Blocks catalog, Publishing + drafts.