Talk to us about your sermon library project.
Tell us how your church publishes sermons today -- the platforms, the formats, the audience -- and we'll tell you what we'd build and how.
Sermons published on YouTube where the algorithm recommends unrelated content to your congregation after every video?
No way for members to search your message archive by scripture reference, series, or speaker -- so most content goes unwatched after the first week?
Church Sermon Library and Content Platform Software
Built for churches that want to publish sermons on their own domain -- with full control over branding, content organisation, and audience data rather than depending on YouTube or a third-party platform.
Custom sermon library software gives your congregation a searchable archive of every message, a podcast feed on every major app, and a direct connection between live services and the content library.
Sermon archive with video and audio hosted on your own domain
Podcast feed for Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and any podcast app
Search and filtering by speaker, series, topic, and scripture reference
Live streaming integration connecting broadcasts to the content library
RaftLabs builds custom sermon library software for churches that want sermons on their own domain. We deliver video and audio archives with series organisation, speaker attribution, automatic podcast feed generation for Apple Podcasts and Spotify, scripture and topic search, and live streaming integration. Churches keep full control over content and audience data. Most projects ship in 8 to 12 weeks at a fixed cost.
- Faith organisations served across 5+ markets
- 15+
- Week delivery for sermon library platforms
- 8-12
- Software products shipped
- 100+
- Cost delivery
- Fixed
Why churches build custom sermon library platforms
YouTube and Vimeo solve the storage and playback problem. They do not solve the church's problem. When a member finishes a sermon on YouTube, the platform recommends what comes next -- and what comes next is not your next message in the series. The church has no control over that recommendation, no access to who watched, and no way to connect what the viewer watched to anything else happening in the congregation's digital life.
A custom sermon library gives the church back control over the experience. Sermons live at your domain. The series structure, the speaker pages, the study guide files attached to each message, the search by scripture reference -- all of it is designed around how your congregation actually engages with your content, not around what keeps a platform's average session time high. A member searching for your pastor's series on the book of Romans finds it directly, without navigating around unrelated results.
The third reason to build custom is platform risk. A church that has built its content strategy around a third-party platform is exposed when that platform changes its terms, its algorithm, or its existence. Owning the archive, the podcast feed, and the distribution means the church's content investment is protected. When a new platform matters, you add it as a distribution channel -- the content stays yours.
What we build
Sermon archive with video and audio
Sermon archive hosted entirely on your church's own domain, with video and audio files stored and served from infrastructure you control. Each message has a dedicated page with the recording, the date, the speaker, and the series it belongs to. Series are organised with series artwork, a description, and an ordered episode list so members can follow a teaching sequence from beginning to end. Speaker attribution links each message to a pastor or teacher profile, so a new member who wants to hear everything from a specific voice can find it in one place. Upload workflow designed for whoever manages content at the church -- media team, admin, or pastoral staff -- without requiring technical knowledge. The archive is built to hold years of messages without performance degradation.
Study guide and resource distribution
Each sermon page supports attached resources -- notes, PDFs, discussion guides, and any file the teaching team produces alongside the message. A small group leader preparing for Wednesday night downloads the discussion guide directly from the message page. A member who missed a service downloads the notes and follows along with the recording. Resources are attached during the upload workflow and displayed on the sermon page without any separate content management step. File access can be open to anyone or gated to logged-in members, depending on the church's preference. Resource download counts give the content team a signal on which messages are driving active engagement beyond the initial view. Version control lets the team update a guide after publication without breaking existing links.
Podcast feed generation
Every sermon published to the archive generates a podcast feed entry automatically. The church gets a valid RSS feed that meets the submission requirements for Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and any other podcast app. No separate podcast workflow, no manual episode creation -- publishing to the sermon library is publishing to the podcast. Feed metadata covers episode title, description, speaker, series, duration, and publication date. Series can each have their own podcast feed if the church wants to offer subscribers a focused topic series rather than the full church feed. Feed URLs are stable and permanent so subscriber counts are not disrupted when the church moves to a new platform or domain. New listeners who find the church through podcast search are linked back to the sermon library for the full archive.
Search and filtering
Full-text search across every sermon in the archive -- title, description, speaker name, series name, and tagged topics. Scripture reference search so a member looking for sermons on a specific passage can enter a book and chapter and see every message where that text was the primary reference. Filtering by speaker, series, topic, date range, and content type lets members narrow the archive without knowing exactly what they are looking for. Search results are ranked by relevance, not just publication date. Tags are applied during the upload workflow and can be added retroactively to older messages. The search experience works on mobile without a separate app -- members searching during the week find what they need through the church website on any device. Search queries are logged so the content team can see what members are looking for and identify gaps in the archive.
Live streaming integration
Connection between the church's existing live streaming setup and the sermon library so a recorded service flows into the archive without a manual upload step. The integration works with the major church streaming platforms -- Church Online Platform, BoxCast, Vimeo Live, and YouTube Live used as a broadcast source rather than an archive. After a live service ends, the recording is processed and published to the sermon library with the correct metadata, speaker, and series assignment. The live stream page on the church website embeds the active stream during service hours and switches to the latest sermon recording when no service is live. Members arriving after a service ends see the recording immediately rather than a blank embed. Live viewing counts and post-service replay counts are tracked separately so the church can see the size of both its live and delayed audience.
Church mobile app integration
Sermon archive accessible from the church's iOS and Android app as a native feature, not a webview embed. App users browse series, play video or audio, download messages for offline listening, and attach bookmarks to specific moments in a recording. Push notifications alert app subscribers when a new message is published -- useful for members who want to watch the Sunday service on Monday morning. The mobile app sermon feed pulls from the same content as the web archive so there is no separate content workflow for mobile. Audio-only playback continues in the background when the member switches to another app or locks their phone. If the church does not yet have a mobile app, we build the sermon library as a standalone web-first platform with a progressive web app option for home screen installation.
Frequently asked questions
YouTube and Vimeo solve the hosting problem. They do not solve the church's content experience problem. On YouTube, the platform controls what plays next after your sermon ends. The church has no access to viewer data, no way to connect a viewer to the member directory, and no control over the recommendation that follows a message on addiction recovery or marriage. A custom sermon library gives the church the full viewing experience -- series navigation, study guide downloads, scripture search, and related message suggestions -- without third-party recommendations interrupting the content. The church also owns the data: who watched, which messages, for how long. That data can connect to the member database and give the pastoral team a fuller picture of how members engage with teaching. YouTube remains useful as a distribution channel for public reach. The sermon library is the primary experience for the congregation.
Yes. Every message published to the sermon library generates a podcast feed entry automatically. There is no separate podcast workflow. The feed meets the technical requirements for Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps -- valid RSS, correct enclosure tags, correct duration and file size metadata. The church submits the feed URL to each platform once. After that, publishing a sermon to the library is publishing to every subscribed podcast app at the same time. Series-specific feeds are also supported so the church can offer a focused series as its own podcast channel. Feed URLs are permanent so subscriber counts survive any future platform migration. If the church already has a podcast feed from a third-party host, we handle the migration so existing subscribers are not disrupted.
The integration connects the church's streaming platform to the sermon library so a recorded service is published to the archive automatically when the live broadcast ends. The specific integration depends on which streaming platform the church uses -- BoxCast, Church Online Platform, Vimeo Live, and YouTube Live each have APIs that expose the recording after a broadcast. The integration pulls the recording, applies the correct metadata based on the scheduled service details, and publishes it to the library within a defined window after the service ends. The church website's live page embeds the active stream during service hours and switches to the latest recorded message when no service is running. We confirm the specific integration method and post-production window during project scoping based on the church's streaming setup and the file formats the platform produces.
A sermon library platform covering video and audio archive, podcast feed generation, scripture and topic search, and a content management workflow for the church team typically runs $15,000 to $30,000 and delivers in 8 to 12 weeks. Adding live streaming integration, study guide resource management, and member authentication for gated content typically adds $8,000 to $15,000 depending on the streaming platform and the authentication requirements. Mobile app integration -- surfacing the sermon archive in an existing iOS and Android app -- is scoped separately based on the app's current architecture. Every project is priced at a fixed cost agreed before development starts. Contact us with the size of your archive, your streaming setup, and the features you need and we will give you an accurate scope.
What clients say
What our clients say
Three-year average engagement. Founders and operators describing the work in their own words. No marketing varnish.
Charles E.
Entrepreneur at Aggie Technologies
All of the sprints were completed on schedule and on budget. We highly recommend RaftLabs!
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