Simple Church WordPress Theme

Published in WordPress Themes

For churches that are working with limited budgets, free WordPress themes can be an excellent option. Our Simple Church WordPress theme will provide your church with a quality website that includes important functionality to highlight upcoming events and to offer sermon/massage audio files for visitors.

Theme features include:

  • Image slider on the homepage that can be customized through the WordPress dashboard
  • Media page where visitors can listen to your recent sermons or messages
  • Events calendar that displays events in chronological order
  • Upload your own logo

Simple Church WordPress Theme

The design of this theme is rather basic, with a white, black, and red color scheme. The theme includes a home page template with the image slider, an area for welcome text, list of upcoming events, and links to recent sermon audios.

For the sermons or messages we recommend using a service like Amazon S3 to host audio files so they do not put a strain on your server, although it is not necessary depending on your host.

The events calendar, an essential part of any church website, is easy to maintain. You’ll set up the events, including time, location, and any other details. As the dates and times of the events pass they will automatically be removed from the site, so you won’t have to manually delete them. The sidebar of pages and posts is set up to display the upcoming events for added exposure.

The theme uses custom navigation menus (header and footer) so you can include links to any pages that you like. The header menu is set up for drop downs.

Documentation for the theme is available here.

View the theme demo | Download for free

We Recommend BlueHost

If you’re looking for a hosting company, we recommend BlueHost. They offer quality shared hosting and responsive customer service at low prices, plus they provide excellent support and options for WordPress users. The video below shows how to sign up with BlueHost, install WordPress, and upload one of our free themes in a matter of just a few minutes. Read a more detailed explanation of why we recommend BlueHost.

Sign up with BlueHost

Disclosure: As a Bluehost affiliate we receive a commission for any customers that we refer. Our recommendation is based on our experience with Bluehost, as well as the needs of our typical customers and readers. You are free to use our templates with the web host of your choice.

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13 Responses

Joey December 14th, 2012

Hello Sir/Maam,

I’m writing for our church and we just signed up with just host and are using wordpress 3.4.2. thank you for the free church websites that we can use. I downloaded the simple, stylish and two others but am having problems setting up the sliders and the arrangement of the theme overall. I followed your documentation but it still doesn’t work.
In one I got a 404 error message saying that the slide does not exist. We are using another theme from WordPress at the moment but we would prefer to use your themes.

Is it perhaps the version of WordPress that matters because I am using a later version? Thank you in advance for your help regarding this matter.

Joey

Steven Snell December 17th, 2012

Hi Joey,
No, the problem shouldn’t be related to the version of WP. All of these themes have been working on that version. Most 404 errors on the themes are related to permalink settings, but I’m a little confused as to what you are saying about getting the 404 for the slide not existing. So your homepage is showing and the 404 message is showing up inside the slider area? There is not much I can say without being able to see what is happening and since you are not currently using the theme I’m not able to see it. If you want, you could set up the theme in a directory on your site and send me the link so I can check it out.

Joey December 18th, 2012

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your e-mail. I will set the simple church theme up on our website at http://www.jesusrisenlord.org so you can see that there are no sliders set up. What I tried was to add the sliders using WordPress “add new slide” on the left column under sliders. I followed all the directions and when I viewed the website there were no slides. I’m still learning wordpress so I’m getting familiar with the terms being used.
Thank you for your patience and help.

Joey

Steven Snell December 19th, 2012

Joey,
It looks like you haven’t set the home page to use the “home” template. Please refer to the theme documentation (it’s near the beginning of the documentation). I’m not seeing any 404 errors.

Joey December 21st, 2012

Hi Steve,

Thank you for the tip regarding setting the home page to use the “home” template. I corrected it by editing the home page and set the default to the “home” template. The slide now appears. I just need to adjust its size and the logo size as well. Thank you again. Its a good learning experience for me.

Joey

narath January 19th, 2013

i’m having issue with my permilink and would like to direct link to different page under VIEW ALL COMMING EVENTS and VIEW MEDIA ARCHIEVES. Where can I edit and change the links in those two places?

Steven Snell January 28th, 2013

Narath,
You can edit them in the home page template file.

Michael March 19th, 2013

Thanks for the theme…I like it’s simplicity (hence the name, I know!) :-)

Having a problem with my media link. It’s going straight to /media/ but not showing in template form…instead just server directory. Any suggestions? My Media page is set to use the Media template. Thanks!!

Steven Snell March 20th, 2013

Hi Michael,
Which Media link are you asking about. When I click on the Media link in your navigation menus or below the sermon list on the homepage they are all working for me. Either I am looking at the wrong links or you got the issue straightened out.

Steve Popoola April 3rd, 2013

Hi, I am redesigning my Blog at http://demo.biblepraise.org. I am using SimpleChurch Theme and so far it is looking good. The only problem I have at the moment is the positioning of the logo and the posts content. When you increase the page by dragging to the right, the logo and post content move, leaving a blank space on the left. I have seen other sites using the same theme and did not see the same behavior. Any thoughts that can help me please? Thank you.

Steven Snell April 4th, 2013

Hi Steve,
When I check the demo link you provided it looks like you are using a different theme, so I can’t see the issue that you are asking about. I’m not sure what you mean by increasing the page by dragging it to the right. Unless the browser window is less than 960 pixels in width there should be no horizontal scrolling.

Steve Popoola April 4th, 2013

Hi Steven,
Thanks for your response. I am using the SimpleChurch child theme. What I meant is that at higher resolutions, the logo and post containers have spaces to the left. I am viewing on 1680 x 1050 and it there is so much space on the left side. It looks ok on lower resolutions

Steven Snell April 5th, 2013

Hi Steve,
The link that you provided, http://demo.biblepraise.org, is not using the Simple Church Theme. According to the code of the site and the footer link it is using the Standard theme. Without being able to see it there is not much I can do. If you can post a link to the site/page that is using the Simple Church Theme I will try to help. Or, you can email that info to me at info@vandelaydesign.com.

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