Public Lesson Sharing

TimelyChurch can publish individual lesson pages on the public web, so families, prospective members, or visiting parents can view what is being taught -- without needing a login. This article covers how to enable public sharing, configure visibility per lesson or schedule, protect materials with a PIN, and brand the public-facing page.

When to Use Public Sharing

Public lesson sharing is useful when you want:

• Visiting families to see what a class is learning before they drop their child off.
• Prospective members to evaluate the depth and approach of your education program.
• Parents at home to look up a lesson when their child mentions something they learned, without needing to log in.
• Curriculum sharing with sister churches or your association.

It is not the right tool for protected curriculum, copyrighted licensed material, or anything that should only be visible to enrolled families. For those cases, leave public sharing disabled or use the Hidden / Private settings.

How Public Sharing Works

When public sharing is enabled, each lesson gets a public web address you can share. There are two link styles:

• Path-based: https://timelychurch.com/c/your-church/lesson/...
• Subdomain-based: https://your-church.timelychurch.com/lesson/... (when your church has subdomain addresses enabled)

Both link styles open the same public lesson page.

Enabling Public Sharing for Your Church

1. Open Church Settings (the church profile page) and find the Class Schedule section.
2. Toggle Enable Public Schedule Page to on. Without this, the public pages are not available.
3. Once enabled, a Schedule Page URL appears with a Copy button so you can grab the public link right away.
4. Under What to Show, choose which fields appear on the public pages:
   • Class Names
   • Times & Rooms
   • Teacher Names
   • Teacher Photos
   • Lesson Titles -- If off, individual public lesson pages return 404 even when public sharing is enabled. This is the master switch for individual lesson pages.
   • Lesson Descriptions
   • Learning Objectives
   • Scripture References
   • Church Contact Info
5. Choose who can access lesson materials (see below).
6. Save.

Each toggle controls what fields render on the public page. A field that is hidden by your settings will simply not appear, even if data exists in the lesson.

Per-Schedule Visibility Overrides

Sometimes you want a lesson to be visible to the public globally, but for one specific Sunday you want to hide the description (e.g., a sermon series with a surprise reveal). Schedule-level overrides handle this.

On any individual schedule, you can override:

• Public Visibility -- Public, Private, Limited, or Global Default. See the table in Teacher Scheduling.
• Per-field overrides -- These merge with the church-wide defaults when the public page is shown, so a single field can be hidden for one schedule without affecting others.

Materials Access and PIN Protection

Lesson materials -- attachments like PDFs, worksheets, and external links -- have their own access level, separate from the lesson's text content. This lets you publish the lesson summary publicly while keeping copyrighted curriculum PDFs gated.

The church-wide setting (a radio choice under Class Schedule > Lesson Materials) offers three modes:

An individual schedule can override the church-wide mode. At the schedule level there is an additional Inherit (Church Default) option, which simply uses whatever the church-wide setting is.

How PINs Work

When the mode is PIN Protected, the PIN can be set at two levels:

1. Per-schedule PIN -- If set, this PIN must be used to unlock that specific schedule's materials. Useful when a particular Sunday's materials need a different code (e.g., for a small-group only event).
2. Church-wide PIN -- The fallback. If a schedule has no per-schedule PIN but is set to PIN Protected, the church-wide PIN is checked instead.

To set the church-wide PIN, choose a PIN Length (4 or 6 digits) under Lesson Materials, then click the refresh icon to generate a new PIN. The generated PIN is shown so you can share it with parents.

When a visitor enters a PIN on the public page, the system checks the per-schedule PIN first, then falls back to the church PIN. After successful verification, the materials stay unlocked for the rest of their visit. The system also limits how many PIN attempts a visitor can make to deter guessing.

Branding the Public Lesson Page

The public lesson page inherits your church's branding (logo, colors, name) automatically from the church record. Specifically:

• Logo appears in the page header.
• Church name appears as the page title.
• Color theme is pulled from your church's brand color settings.
• The footer shows a "Powered by TimelyChurch" attribution.

There is no per-page branding override -- if you want to change the look, change it at the church level and the change applies everywhere.

Sharing the URL

Once a lesson is published publicly, you can share its URL via:

• Email or text -- Just paste the URL.
• iCal feed -- The church's public calendar feed can be subscribed to in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and similar apps. Its URL is shown under Class Schedule > Calendar Subscription.
• QR code -- Generate a QR code pointing to the lesson URL and print it on bulletin handouts.
• Bulletin or order of service -- Print the URL or a short link.

Who Should Use This and Why

Good fits

• Churches that want transparency with prospective members and visiting families.
• Churches with a strong public-facing website where the lesson page complements other content.
• Multi-site or association churches where leaders want to see what other campuses or member churches are teaching.

Not great fits

• Churches with licensed curriculum restrictions that prohibit public posting -- always check your curriculum's license before enabling public sharing.
• Churches with strong child-safety concerns about identifying which classes are running on which dates -- consider Limited visibility or leaving sharing off.
• Churches that prefer all communication to flow through the member portal -- the Family Lessons portal page may be a better fit. See Family Lessons in the Member Portal.

Quick Setup Checklist

• [ ] Enable the Public Schedule Page in Church Settings.
• [ ] Confirm lesson approval workflow is producing well-edited, public-ready content.
• [ ] Set the church-wide materials access mode (most churches: PIN Protected).
• [ ] Generate a church-wide PIN that you can give parents.
• [ ] Pick one lesson, view its public URL in an incognito window, and verify the experience.
• [ ] Add the public URL or a QR code to your bulletin.

Related

• Teacher Scheduling -- per-schedule visibility and materials access details.
• Family Lessons in the Member Portal -- the logged-in alternative to public sharing.
• Managing the Lesson Library -- approval workflow that gates which lessons are eligible for public display.