Description
Lectern is a modern sermon plugin for WordPress. It gives your church website a proper home for your sermons: publish each message with its video and audio, organize by series, speaker, topic, and Scripture, and display it beautifully on any theme — no locked-in “church theme” required.
Built for how churches actually work. Put your full-length sermon on YouTube or Vimeo and paste the link — Lectern embeds it — or upload the audio to your Media Library. Either way, visitors get a clean, browsable sermon library, and every new sermon slots right in.
Moving from Sermon Manager? Lectern includes a one-click importer that brings your whole library across — titles, dates, Scripture, media, artwork, series, speakers, topics, and books — and it works even if Sermon Manager has already been removed from your site.
What you get (free)
- A real sermon library — a dedicated Sermons section, organized by Series, Speaker, Topic, and Book (Scripture).
- Designed, theme-agnostic display — polished sermon cards and single-sermon pages that adapt to your theme’s colors, light or dark. One accent color, easily overridden.
- Audio and video, done right — YouTube/Vimeo embeds, self-hosted files, and a download button for audio.
- Block + shortcode — drop a sermon list on any page with the “Sermon List” block or the
[lectern]shortcode, filtered by series or speaker. - Automatic sermon archive at a URL you choose.
- One-click “Add the 66 Bible books” so you can tag Scripture instantly.
- One-click import from Sermon Manager — safe to re-run; it updates instead of duplicating.
- Lightweight, standards-compliant, translation-ready — and your sermons stay yours.
Lectern Pro
- Podcast feed for Apple Podcasts & Spotify, generated automatically from your sermons. No separate podcast host, no re-uploading — your website becomes your podcast, and new sermons appear in the feed on their own.
- On the roadmap for Pro: transcripts, advanced sermon search, series landing pages, and play/download analytics.
Lectern Pro includes a 30-day free trial. Learn more at https://lectern.studio.
Screenshots
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Sermon List
Installation
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins Add New Plugin Upload Plugin.
- Upload the Lectern ZIP, click Install Now, then Activate.
- A new Sermons menu appears. Go to Sermons Add New to publish your first sermon.
- (Optional) Sermons Settings to set your archive URL and add the 66 Bible books.
- Migrating from Sermon Manager? Go to Sermons Import.
FAQ
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Is Lectern free?
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Yes. The sermon library, audio and video players, the block and
[lectern]shortcode, the automatic archive, Bible-book seeding, and the Sermon Manager importer are all free. Lectern Pro adds the automatic podcast feed (with more features on the way) for churches that want it, and includes a 30-day free trial. -
Does Lectern host my sermon videos?
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It doesn’t need to. Most churches upload full-length video to YouTube or Vimeo and paste the link — Lectern embeds it. You can also upload audio (or smaller video files) to your Media Library and choose them with the “Select File” button.
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Will it work with my theme?
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Yes. Lectern works with any theme, classic or block. It adds your sermons to your theme’s own pages and provides a block and shortcode, so it adapts to your design rather than replacing it. Its sermon cards and single-sermon layout adjust to your theme’s colors in both light and dark.
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I used Sermon Manager. Can I move my sermons over?
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Yes — Sermons Import copies everything across in one click, including media and artwork. It reads the old data directly, so it works even if the Sermon Manager plugin is no longer installed. While both plugins are active they share the same “/sermons/” address; after importing, deactivate Sermon Manager and re-save Settings Permalinks.
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How do I turn my sermons into a podcast?
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With Lectern Pro active, Lectern publishes an Apple/Spotify-compatible podcast feed built from every sermon that has an audio file. Set your podcast title, artwork, and details in Sermons Settings, then submit the feed URL shown there to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. New sermons are added to the feed automatically.
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Will removing the plugin delete my sermons?
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No. Your sermons are safe by default. Only if you tick Settings On uninstall Permanently delete all sermons will deleting the plugin remove them.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Lectern” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“Lectern” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “Lectern” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.6
- First public release of Lectern — a modern sermon library with audio, video, series, speakers, and Scripture that looks designed on any theme, plus one-click import from Sermon Manager. Optional Lectern Pro adds an automatic podcast feed for Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
0.13.0
- The podcast feed is now a clean premium-only feature: its code ships only in Lectern Pro and is absent from the free build entirely, rather than being present and switched off. No change for users — the free version keeps every free feature; Pro keeps the podcast feed.
0.12.0
- Renamed the plugin to Lectern. Sermons are still called sermons; only the plugin brand changed. Freemius product and licensing are unchanged.
0.11.1
- Reword the upgrade prompt to reference the 30-day trial without claiming “no card required” until confirmed.
0.11.0
- New: a tasteful “Upgrade to Pro” prompt on the Settings page for free users, linking to the built-in upgrade/trial flow.
0.10.3
- Move uninstall cleanup from uninstall.php to the Freemius after_uninstall hook (required by Freemius deployment). Same safe behavior: sermons are kept unless you opt in to deletion.
0.10.0 – 0.10.2
- Freemius commerce integration: SDK bundled, official init, 30-day trial, and the free/premium auto-deactivation guard.
0.9.0 – 0.9.3
- Designed front end: sermon-card archive and a redesigned single-sermon page (series eyebrow, one primary media block, topic/Scripture pills), on classic and block themes. Fixes for media embeds and for themes with loud link colors.
0.8.0 – 0.8.2
- Redesigned sermon cards with play overlays and one overridable accent color; artwork thumbnail column on the admin list.
0.5.0 – 0.7.1
- Import from Sermon Manager; audio/video players and Media Library picker; settings screen; Bible-book seeding; podcast feed (Pro) and the license gate.
0.1.0 – 0.4.0
- Foundation: sermon post type, taxonomies, detail fields, and front-end display.