Resources hub
One place for your church's podcast, sermon series, training material, links and documents, embedded inside the app so members never bounce out.
Categories: how to organise your content
Start with a few clear categories
Resources sit inside categories: tabs your members browse from /member/resources. Good starter set for most churches: Sermons, Podcasts, Bible Study, New Here, Volunteer Training. You can rename or delete any of them later without breaking links.
Public vs hidden categories
Every category has a 'Visible to members' toggle. Leave it on for things members should see (the church podcast, sermon recordings, Bible-reading plans). Turn it off for internal content like volunteer training materials and leader-only guides. Those stay visible to staff in the admin area but never appear in members' apps.
How the slug works
Each category gets a URL slug auto-generated from its name. 'Podcasts' becomes /member/resources/podcasts. The slug is stable: renaming the category later doesn't change the URL, so any deep links you've shared stay working. If two categories would clash, the second gets a -2 suffix.
Adding resources: three types
Outbound links
The simplest type. Paste any https URL and members tap to open in their browser. Good for: a Google Doc with the welcome team rota, a Notion page with the youth programme, your church's separate website.
Embedded media
For Spotify, YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Buzzsprout, paste the source URL and the player renders inside the ChurchLinker app. Members don't bounce out to the platform. Works with show URLs, episode URLs, video URLs, playlist URLs and shorts URLs. We figure out the right embed automatically.
Documents
Paste a URL pointing at the document (e.g. a PDF hosted on your website, a Google Drive share link, a Dropbox link). Members tap to open it. A future update will let you pick directly from the media library; for now URL-based linking works with anything you've already got hosted somewhere.
Hidden resources inside a public category
Like categories, individual resources have their own 'Visible to members' toggle. Useful when you want, say, the Sermons category visible but a single under-review recording held back.
Supported embed sources
Spotify
Paste any open.spotify.com URL for a show, episode, playlist, album or track. Both the standalone Spotify mini-player and the full-height player work.
YouTube
Paste a watch URL (youtube.com/watch?v=...), a short URL (youtu.be/...), a playlist URL (youtube.com/playlist?list=...) or a Shorts URL. The player renders embedded in the resource card.
Vimeo
Paste a numeric Vimeo video URL (vimeo.com/123456789). Vimeo's embed player renders inline.
SoundCloud
Paste a track or playlist URL (soundcloud.com/artist/track-name or soundcloud.com/artist/sets/playlist). Branded with the ChurchLinker purple.
Buzzsprout
Paste an episode URL (buzzsprout.com/<showId>/<episodeId>...). The Buzzsprout player renders inline.
Why we don't accept raw embed HTML
Pasting <iframe> HTML directly would let a hostile admin (or a compromised admin account) inject scripts that run inside the app. Instead, we accept source URLs and our server builds the iframe from a constant template per host. The worst case for a tenant admin pasting something weird is an 'unsupported source' error, not a security issue.
Want a host we don't support yet?
Email hello@churchlinker.com with the host and an example URL. We add new ones based on what churches actually use.