Sermons Online
Posting sermons online are a great way for potential visitors to your church to get a taste of the personality and vision of your rector/dean/minister and community. Sermons are one of the top searches by people online and are often the most visited pages for churches with their sermons available online.
If you are unable to record sermons every week due to inability to find volunteers or staff to take this on, don't worry! Start small and make the commitment to record a few sermons. You can also ask your preacher to record their sermon separately from the live worship and use that audio as a podcast. Present the sermons as a sampling of your ministry. If you are able to record sermons weekly, consider providing opportunities for keyword searches, searches by topic, or search functionality even by liturgical season.
GETTING STARTED
Your website probably has an integrated sound file feature. Research what works best with your website platform by Googling your CMS name and "audio player." If you are unable to locate any information about integrated audio players, you can embed code from soundcloud.com or sermon.net. If you have a Wordpress website, consider using the Powerpress plugin from Blubrry. These integrated systems and other resources often have tools for podcasting as well. Do some digging around and find an option that works best for you!
MORE RESOURCES
Church Podcasting 101 (from BuzzSprout)
The Ultimate Guide to Taking Sermons Digital (from Pushpay)
COMMUNITY-RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
“You don't need a big investment to get good sermon audio recordings. My church uses the Zoom H1 handy recorder for sermon audio recording. We plug the recorder's mic "line in" to our sound system's output, start recording 15 minutes before the service, and stop recording after. We download the recording to a PC and use the free software Audacity to trim all but the sermon audio, and publish a MP3. The recorder is threaded for a standard tripod screw, so you can get a mic stand with that adapter head and place it near a preacher for good pickup through the X/Y stereo mic. At a friend's church, the preacher carried this handy recorder to the lectern, set it on the lectern, and did her own start/stop of the recording. That would require no trimming of audio!” —Submitted by Susan Kleinwechter