How to Start a Church Podcast: Record, Edit and Publish Sermons

Your pastor is already preaching a message every week. A podcast lets people hear it in the car, on a walk, or months before they ever visit the building. The hard part isn’t the podcast. It’s getting clean audio, shaping it into an episode, and getting it onto Apple Podcasts and Spotify without a mess.

This is the from-scratch path I used when I led the video team at a church in Wheeling, West Virginia: how to capture the audio (lav, mixer or splitter), the connectors you’ll meet on the way, how to edit an episode people will still want in two years, and how a hosting platform publishes to every app at once.

Why a Church Podcast Is Worth It

Sermons and interviews are what many people listen to long before they step into a church building. A podcast puts that message where they already spend time.

Whatever you use it for, be intentional. Treat the podcast as part of your social media and communication plan, not an afterthought upload.

The whole workflow in one line: capture the cleanest voice you can, edit a simple and timeless episode, and let a host distribute it everywhere.

Step 1: Get the Audio (Maybe It Already Exists)

If your pastor speaks every week, someone may already be recording it. Start by coordinating with that person for a copy. They can upload the file to a free service like Google Drive or Dropbox and send you a link.

Guest speaking somewhere else? Ask the venue for samples of recent recordings in advance. It’s easy to skip, but it tells you whether their quality meets your podcast’s standard. If it doesn’t, or they don’t record at all, you have time to plan your own recording.

Step 2: Record It Yourself

The Easiest Way: A Lav Mic With a Built-In Recorder

The simplest way to get good audio every time is a lav mic: a mic that clips onto a shirt and records to a battery-powered body pack. These record to a microSD card and can run for many hours nonstop.

The one I recommend is the Tascam DR-10L. I’ve recorded hundreds of hours with it: vlogs, sermons, hosting, interviews, weddings and YouTube videos.

A lav works anywhere, and it doesn’t matter if the venue also mics the speaker. Clip their mic on beside yours, or hold their handheld and leave yours clipped on. Just remember to hit record before you start speaking.

When a Lav Isn’t the Right Tool

A lav is a good option, not always the best one. For a panel, several presenters, or anything already on the house microphones, you have two better choices:

1. Record a mix straight from the sound mixer into a recorder.
2. Put a Y-splitter on the mic cable. One output goes back to the mixer, the other goes to an audio recorder.

The Connectors You’ll Run Into

Look at a sound system with recording in mind and you’ll find these:

• XLR — usually a microphone cable. The mic has the male pins, and the cable’s female end plugs into it.
• 1/4-inch — usually thought of as a patch or guitar cable.
• 1/8-inch — the small jack on wired headphones and in-ear monitors.
• RCA — the old-school connector from DVD players to TVs. It still shows up on analog mixers.
• Y-cable (splitter) — plugs into a source and gives you two outputs, one to the original destination and one to your recorder.

Unless a mic connects over USB, expect an XLR port on it.

Phantom Power (Why a Mic Can Be Silent)

Condenser mics, like most podium mics, need phantom power: +48 volts sent up the mic cable. Most mixing consoles and audio recorders provide it with the flick of a switch.

That matters in two situations:

• Y-splitting a mic that’s already on a mixer: you don’t need to turn on phantom power at your recorder. The console is already providing it.
• Recording a condenser mic with no mixer: you’ll get no signal at all until you turn phantom power on.

Recording From the Sound System

Record the Mixer’s Output

After clipping a lav on the speaker, recording the mixer’s output is the easiest option. It isn’t ideal if you want to rebalance several mics later, like a panel discussion or a debate, because you get one finished mix.

Where to get that output depends on the mixer:

• Analog mixers may have a REC OUT, an output of the main mix on RCA jacks. Adapt RCA to 1/8-inch, XLR or 1/4-inch to fit your recorder.
• No REC OUT? Most analog mixers have at least one aux send, usually on 1/4-inch or XLR. Each channel has an aux knob, so you can build a separate mix just for the recording.
• Digital mixers can send a mix bus out an XLR output to your recorder.

A two-input portable recorder like the Zoom H5 is a great investment here. It takes XLR and 1/4-inch sources, and an adapter covers 1/8-inch.

The Catch: EQ and Effects

Recording the console’s output has a downside. If the engineer has EQ or effects on the vocal channels for the room, that’s baked into your recording, so you won’t get a clean signal.

The fix is the Y-adapter: put it on the mic channel, send the first output to its original destination and plug the second into your recorder. Need several mics at once? Look at a multi-input recorder like the Zoom F6 or Zoom H8 instead of a two-input recorder.

Behringer X32: Record Over USB

On an X32 or similar digital console, you can record digitally without extra hardware.

Stereo to a USB drive: put a USB drive into the port on the console’s surface, press the recorder’s View button, go to the Config tab and arrow over one. Choose what to record: the main left and right, or any mix bus. A separate bus lets you balance the recording differently from the room mix.

Multitrack to a computer: on any X32 console or rack, plug a USB type-B cable into the port on the audio interface expansion card. The console then shows up on your computer as an audio interface (X-USB). With free software like GarageBand you can record up to 32 channels as a multitrack. Make sure the settings under Routing → Card Out match the inputs.

If the default card has been swapped for a Dante card (or another card), that USB port may not be there. In that case, I can almost guarantee someone is already recording audio. Ask them.

Step 3: Edit the Episode

Editing should be simple, on Mac or PC. Free editors will assemble a podcast fine: GarageBand on Mac and Audacity on PC are the two I’d look at first.

Plan the Format Before You Edit

In pre-production, decide on the style, the elements, any breaks, and the type and placement of music. Settle it once and every week gets faster.

Write an Intro That Won’t Go Stale

For weekly messages, spend about 30 seconds at the start welcoming listeners to the podcast or to your church, and share relevant information about the church. Also say who is speaking today.

Remember that someone might hear this episode two years after it’s published. They don’t need to hear about the event happening in two weeks. Point them to the church website for more about the church and gathering times.

Close the Loop in the Outro

At the end, bring the music back up and share a short closing message. Invite listeners to rate the podcast and subscribe, then send them to the website for other messages and details about visiting in person.

Record the intro and outro with the same mic you speak with, or plug a microphone into your audio recorder and capture them that way.

If the Weekly Sermon Export Is the Bottleneck

Once the format is set, the same job repeats every week: find where the sermon starts, trim it, fix uneven levels, add the intro and outro, export. We built Media Processor for that job. It’s a Mac app that trims the sermon on a waveform, balances the audio to the −16 LUFS podcast standard, attaches your intro and outro untouched, and exports an MP3 or WAV (plus a YouTube-ready video from the same trim if you want it).

Step 4: Host and Publish

A podcast needs a hosting platform. The host stores your episodes and sends them out, so one upload reaches Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the other major apps at the same time.

There are several hosts, each with different pricing and features:

• Anchor was the free option I pointed people to when I made the video, with a drag-and-drop online editor for assembling episodes and adding music. It has since become part of Spotify’s podcast tools, so the name and interface have changed.
• Transistor is the platform we used for that church’s podcast. Creating an episode is simple: add a title, upload the audio file, and add artwork and a summary. You can personalize each episode with the author’s name, keywords and show notes.

What stood out in Transistor:

• Scheduling, my favorite feature, so an episode goes live at just the right moment.
• Analytics and listener trends per episode: when people listen, for how long, and where.
• Multiple shows under one account, handy if you run a sermon podcast and an interview series.

Whichever host you choose, check its current plans and trial before you commit.

Troubleshooting Common Podcast Recording Problems

• No signal from the podcast or podium mic. It may be a condenser mic that needs phantom power. Turn on +48V at the recorder or mixer (unless you’re Y-split off a console that already provides it).
• The recording sounds like the room mix, with reverb or harsh EQ. You’re recording the console’s output, with the engineer’s EQ and effects baked in. Put a Y-split on the mic channel so the recorder gets the mic before the console processes it.
• The panel recording can’t be rebalanced. A single mixed output can’t be separated later. Record each mic to its own input on a multi-input recorder, or multitrack from the X32.
• The X32 multitrack channels are silent. Check that Routing → Card Out matches the inputs you’re recording.
• No USB port on the X32 card. The card has probably been replaced with Dante or another card. Find whoever is already recording.
• Guest-venue audio came back unusable. Next time, ask for sample recordings in advance and bring your own lav as backup.

Watch the Video

The full walkthrough covers everything above. Jump to audio connections, recording via USB from the X32, editing the podcast or hosting and publishing:

Gear mentioned in this guide

Affiliate links — clicking them helps support what we do at no cost to you.

• Cable Matters 1/4” TRS to XLR Cable (6ft) — gets a 1/4-inch aux send from an analog mixer into a recorder’s XLR input. Buy →

Keep going

• Ready to capture every channel? Follow X32 multitrack recording over USB.
• On a smaller Behringer mixer? See XR18 USB audio: send and receive.
• If the same audio also feeds your stream, read why church livestream audio sounds bad.
• Want the weekly export done in minutes? Media Processor handles the sermon trim, levels and podcast export.

More training is on the YouTube channel: youtube.com/@CrazyAmazingDesigns.