ChurchThemes.com is a new WordPress theme shop specializing in church website solutions. Their goal is to provide churches with tools for building attractive, full-featured websites and to do so in a cost-effective way.
Their first release is an urban-inspired WordPress theme called Resurrect—a stellar church WordPress theme. They help make things easy by providing one-on-one support and dozens of searchable guides.
Resurrect
Something worth noting is that Resurrect (and all of their future themes) is powered by the Church Theme Content plugin in order to rightly separate presentation from functionality. In short, what this means is the user can switch themes in the future more easily. Steven Gliebe goes into more detail about this development philosophy in a post on his personal blog about how the theme shop came into being.
Another thing that stands out is that Resurrect uses core WordPress functionality for media, some of which is new as of WordPress 3.6. Users can upload an MP3 or video file for a sermon and WordPress’s new built-in player will be used to play it. Third-party services such as YouTube, Vimeo and SoundCloud can also be used. Simply paste a URL then WordPress and Resurrect will do the rest.
Features for Church Websites
Resurrect and the plugin it uses provide many features for church websites. Here are some of the heavy hitters.
- Sermons with audio, video and PDF, organized by topic, book, series, speaker and date
- Built-in Podcasting support for sermons
- Events divided by upcoming and past, optionally recurring by week, month or year
- Support for multiple Locations with maps and directions
- People with optional divisions by group for adding profiles of staff, deacons, etc.
- Templates and widgets that compliment native WordPress galleries
- Blogging capabilities are of course included as well (good for church news)
- Widgets for showing sermons, events, locations, people and photos
This theme also uses WordPress’s Theme Customizer to let churches adjust the appearance of their site. Here are some noteworthy appearance-related features.
- Dark and light color schemes
- Upload logo or enter text and set size (useful for churches without a logo)
- Choose from a selection of Google Fonts
- Choose a preset background pattern, upload an image or use a solid color
- Responsive design for a better mobile experience
- Retina-ready images and icon fonts for a sharp look on newer screens
Theme Pricing
- $50 for the theme includes one year of support and updates for one site
- Updates and support can be renewed at $25 per year
- 45-day money back guarantee so you can try it without risk
Consider Resurrect and ChurchThemes.com as a solution for your church website. WordPress is being used more and more by churches, which is not surprising since it is now powering about 20% of all new websites. WordPress and a solution like this is certainly economical.
Learn more and try-out the Resurrect Demo.
Jay says
Thanks for sharing, Eric! Our church (http://www.nhcconline.com/) has been looking to do a website overhaul for a while and this may be the best option I’ve see so far. Just shared your post with our creative director.
Eric Dye says
Awesome! 😀
Steven Gliebe says
Thanks Eric for sharing our Resurrect theme with your readers!
Just a note to say we go by “churchthemes.com” alone (another theme shop is called “ChurchThemes”).
Eric Dye says
Changed.
Take another look and make sure we got it right. I know how you feel. For example we are ChurchMag. Not Church Mag or Churchmag. 😛
Steven Gliebe says
Perfecto! Thanks for the update. And for understanding how I feel, bro. 😉
Hal Swift says
…guess I’m a few days late on this info! 🙂
Steven Gliebe says
Better late than never! 😉
Eric Dye says
True story.