Sermons Overview
Everything related to sermons lives in Sermons in the Church Admin sidebar. The screen has two tabs:
- Sermons — your library of past sermons (the list)
- Planner — AI-powered content generator for a selected sermon (outlines, social posts, study notes, etc.)
Sermon sources
Sermons in your library come from two places:
- Live stream recordings — Every live stream you run is automatically added as a VOD (video-on-demand) sermon after the stream ends. Tagged as
source: live_streamin the list. - Direct uploads — Click Upload Sermon (button on the Sermons tab) to upload a video file you recorded another way.
Upload Sermon
Clicking Upload Sermon opens a dialog with these fields:
| Field | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Yes | Sermon title |
| Description | No | Multi-line text |
| Speaker | Yes | Dropdown — select from your existing Speakers list |
| Category | No | Free-text category tag |
| Video File | Yes | Any video format — opens your system file picker |
After selecting the file, the app uploads the video directly to your cloud storage, creates the sermon record, and shows it in the list.
If your Speakers list is empty, the dropdown says "No speakers — add one in Speakers tab". Create speakers before your first upload.
The sermon list
Each sermon card shows:
- Thumbnail (auto-generated from the video)
- Title
- Speaker name
- Duration
- Published date
- Source tag — "Live Stream" badge for recordings of past live streams
The first sermon in the list gets the Featured treatment at the top of the screen (larger card). Mark any sermon as featured via the Edit dialog.
Three-dot menu actions
Click the ⋯ icon on any sermon card to open the action sheet. Available actions:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Play | Opens the full-screen sermon player |
| Edit | Edit title, description, speaker, category, tags, featured toggle |
| Share | Coming soon |
| Optimize Recording | Compress the recording to save storage (desktop only, live-stream sermons only, before first optimization) |
| Delete | Remove the sermon from the library |
Edit a sermon
The Edit dialog exposes:
- Title
- Description
- Speaker — dropdown from your Speakers list
- Category — free text
- Tags — comma-separated
- Featured — toggle on/off
Changes save to your sermons API immediately.
Featured sermon
Toggling Featured on a sermon makes it show prominently on:
- Your Sermons tab (featured card at top)
- The member app home screen
- Embeddable links shared via social media
Only one sermon is "Featured" at a time — turning on Featured for a new one turns off the previous.
Source field reference
The sermon object has a source field used by the UI:
source value | Meaning |
|---|---|
live_stream | Recorded from an ended live stream |
| (other) | Direct upload via Upload Sermon |
This field controls whether the Optimize Recording option shows (only for live_stream sermons that haven't been optimized yet).
Next steps
- AI Sermon Planner — generate content from a sermon's transcript
- BYOK with OpenRouter — set up the AI key that powers the planner
- Transcription — how sermon audio becomes searchable text
- Shorts Generator — auto-create social clips
- Optimize Recording — compress past live-stream recordings