Church Radio Station Website: Sermons, Services, Giving and Events

A church or ministry radio station has two audiences online: the congregation, who want last Sunday's sermon and this week's service times, and people who don't know you yet, who arrive from a search or a shared link. The website has to serve both, around a live player that works.

This guide covers the website side: what pages a church station needs and how to set them up. Running the station itself (automating the week, recording services, music licensing, volunteers) is covered separately on our RadioHost Studio page for church radio.

The pages a church station needs

Sermons and service recordings as a podcast archive

Sermons are usually the most-visited content on a church station's site after the player, so make them easy to find and play.

Set them up as podcast series, for example "Sunday Sermons", "Midweek Bible Study" and "Youth Service". If you already publish sermons through a podcast host, paste the feed URL when you create the series in RadioSiteMaker and the existing episodes are imported, each with its own page, description, date and artwork. You can add later episodes to the series as you publish them.

Write a few lines for each episode: the speaker, the passage or theme, and the date of the service. That text is what someone searching for a particular sermon will find, since search engines can't listen to audio.

If you don't have a podcast host yet, our guide to podcast hosting for radio stations explains the options.

A service and programme schedule people can read

Your schedule answers "when is the service on?" for people who can't attend in person, and for listeners in other time zones. Enter each regular programme as a show (the live Sunday service, the morning devotional, the evening worship hour, the teaching programme) and place it on the weekly grid.

Give each show its own description: what happens in it, who leads it and whether it is live or a repeat. If services move for Christmas, Easter or other festivals, add those as events so the regular grid stays accurate.

Giving and donations

RadioSiteMaker's donations page links out to the giving platforms you already use: PayPal, Stripe, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, Patreon or GoFundMe. Payments happen on those platforms, not on the station site, so receipts, recurring gifts and any tax paperwork are handled by the platform and your church's own processes.

Write a short, specific message on the page about what giving pays for (keeping the stream on air, equipment, a building project) and keep it up to date.

Our donations guide has more on what makes listeners give.

Events

Concerts, conferences, special services, outreach days and fundraisers each get an event page with date, time, venue, address, image and a ticket or registration link if there is one. Events are marked up with structured data so search engines can understand them, and they sit in one events list visitors can browse.

Our event promotion guide covers promoting events on air and online.

Ministry and presenter profiles

Give each pastor, worship leader and regular presenter a profile with a photo, a short bio and the programmes they lead. Listeners like to put a face to a voice, and a profile page links to every show the person presents. Social links are optional; add only the ones the person wants public.

Listener messages and prayer requests

The contact form is the simplest route for prayer requests and listener messages. If you want to hear from listeners in their own voice, the voice messages feature lets them record a short message on the site for you to listen to in the dashboard. You can turn features like voice messages, chat and dedications on or off depending on what your team can look after.

Running the station side

The website shows what's on and plays your stream. Producing that stream, from automating the week to playing services live, voice tracking and scheduling repeats, is a separate job. If you need tools for it, see RadioHost Studio for churches. The website and Studio are separate subscriptions; you can use the website with any stream host.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can we put our existing sermon podcast on the station website?

Yes. Create a podcast series and paste your podcast's RSS feed URL, and the existing episodes are imported to your site. The audio stays with your podcast host, and your feed and subscribers don't change.

Can people give through the website?

The donations page links to your giving platforms (PayPal, Stripe, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, Patreon or GoFundMe), where the payment takes place. The station site doesn't process payments itself.

How do we show service times for people in other time zones?

Enter each service as a show on the weekly schedule, and say in the show description which time zone the times are in. For special services, add an event with the date and time.

Do we need a separate site for the church and the radio station?

Not necessarily, but the station site is built around the radio: player, schedule, programmes and podcasts. Many churches keep their main church website and link to the station site from it, or the other way round.

Is the website the same thing as RadioHost Studio?

No. The website (RadioSiteMaker) is your station's public site with the live player. RadioHost Studio is the browser-based software for running the station itself. They are separate subscriptions and you can use either without the other.