Sermon Speakers
Sermon Speakers are the people who deliver the messages in your sermon library. Maintaining a speaker list lets you tag every sermon with who preached it, surface a speaker's full archive on your public website, and pull biography and photo information automatically from your Staff Directory.
Accessing Speakers
- From the admin sidebar, click Sermons.
- At the top of the sermons page, click the Speakers button.
You will see the Speakers index page with a paginated list of every speaker in your church (default 20 per page), each showing their name, title, photo, sermon count (published only), and an active/inactive badge.
Browsing and Searching
The Speakers index supports:
- Search -- A text box that matches against name and title.
- Status filter -- Choose "Active", "Inactive", or leave unset to see all.
- Sermon counts -- Each row shows how many published sermons that speaker has preached, helping you spot inactive accounts or guest speakers.
Speakers are sorted by their display order and then by name.
Adding a New Speaker
- From the Speakers index, click New Speaker in the top-right corner.
- Fill in the form:
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | The speaker's full display name. |
| Title | No | Their role or title (e.g., "Senior Pastor", "Guest Speaker", "Youth Pastor"). |
| Bio | No | A short biography (up to 5,000 characters). Plain-text or simple Markdown. |
| Photo | No | Upload a JPG, PNG, GIF, or WebP image up to 5 MB. |
| Linked Staff Member | No | Pick an existing public staff member to link to. If you leave Name and Title blank, they will auto-populate from the linked staff record. |
| Active | No | Whether the speaker shows up in the Sermon-form dropdown (defaults to active). |
- Click Save.
Linking to a Staff Member
If your speaker is already in the Staff Directory (and marked as public), pick them from the Linked Staff Member dropdown. The system will copy their name and title onto the speaker record if those fields are left blank. Only staff members within the same church and marked public are available.
A staff link is informational -- speaker records and staff records remain independent so you can have guest speakers who are not on staff, and so you can edit a speaker's photo without disturbing the staff directory.
Editing a Speaker
- From the Speakers index, click the speaker's row (or the Edit action in their row menu).
- The edit form shows every field from the create form, plus:
- Remove Photo checkbox -- Delete the current photo without uploading a new one.
- Recent Sermons -- A list of the speaker's last ten sermons by date, each linking to the sermon's edit page.
Make changes and click Save.
Toggling Active Status
From the speakers index, every row has an "Activate" or "Deactivate" action. Inactive speakers:
- Hidden from the Sermon-form Speaker dropdown (so you cannot assign new sermons to them).
- Hidden from the public sermon archive's speaker filter and the public speaker page.
- Still available in the admin Speakers index -- their existing sermons keep their speaker link, so historical attribution is preserved.
This is the right tool for retired pastors, one-time guest speakers you want to keep on file, or anyone whose sermons you want to keep but who should not appear in current dropdowns.
Deleting a Speaker
From the speaker's edit page, click Delete at the bottom-left and confirm. Deletion:
- Removes the speaker record and their uploaded photo.
- Clears the speaker attribution from every sermon they were attached to. Those sermons remain published; they simply lose the speaker attribution.
- Cannot be undone -- if you might need the speaker later, deactivate instead of deleting.
Public Speaker Archive Page
Every active speaker with at least one published sermon gets an automatic public archive page on your website. This page shows the speaker's photo, bio, title, and a paginated list of every published sermon they have preached, ordered newest-first. Visitors can use the speaker page as a way to follow a particular pastor's teaching or to find every message in a multi-speaker series.
Inactive speakers and speakers without any published sermons show a "not found" page; this prevents empty pages from appearing in search results.
Permissions
Adding, editing, and deleting speakers all require the Sermons module permission with the appropriate action (create / edit / delete). The active-toggle uses the edit permission. Browsing the index requires module access only.