WordPress is being utilized as the go-to tool for creating websites and building an online presence. WordPress makes it easier for those with little technical skills and low budget to create an online presence for their small communities. In the recent years, we have seen a huge increase in churches utilizing WordPress to power their website. In this article, we have compiled a list of some of the best WordPress themes for churches and religious organizations. These church themes for WordPress are specifically designed to offer specific functionality that churches need.
Before you can use any of these themes for WordPress, you must have your WordPress site setup already. If you do not have a website, then you can utilize our Free WordPress setup service where we guide new users through the process of creating and maintaining their own site.
1. SimplePress
SimplePress is a minimalist style theme with full features of a premium WordPress theme. It comes with multiple page templates, shortcodes for style elements, and an easy to use theme customization panel. Due to its simplicity and elegance SimplePress is ideal for Churches, religious, charity and non-government organizations.
2. Outreach
Outreach is an beautiful WordPress theme for Churches and non-profit organizations. Built upon the powerful Genesis theme framework, Outreach is a high quality theme with brilliant design team behind it. The theme is bundled with easy customization options.
3. Trinity
As the name suggests, Trinity is a WordPress theme designed specifically for Churches by ChurchThemes. Trinity comes with an extra feature which allows users to donate for the Church on the website with paypal. Apart from the ability to accept donations, Trinity also comes with widgets and features for churches.
4. Moses
The Moses Theme features a classy home page with a large image slider. It comes with 5 different styles and is ready out-of-the-box for a church to begin using as a fully-functional WordPress website. It also has the ability to post sermons as MP3 files with podcast functionality, events, and news articles.
5. Malachi
Malachi is a Church theme with special emphasis on handling multimedia gracefully. This theme can be used to manage a simple Church site as well as a church site with lots of videos, audio and photographs. It comes with standard WordPress features along with an easy theme customizer.
6. Epic
Epic is a responsive WordPress church theme with extra features such as the ability to handle podcasting, custom widgets, social media widgets, templates and easy customization options.
7. Ezekiel
Ezekiel is another church-specific WordPress themes with built-in features ideal for managing a church website. It can manage sermon podcasts, church news, photo galleries, and events.
8. Micah
Micah is a powerful WordPress theme for churches. Designed specifically for churches, this theme comes with easy-to-post sermons, news, events, photos, the ability to collect donations, built-in sermon podcasts and more.
9. Gallery Church
Gallery Church is a child theme built upon Builder theme framework. It comes with builder theme options such as easy customization, built-in blocks to handle church events, color and styling controls.
10. Cion
Cion is a blogging theme by Elegant Themes designed specifically to be simple. It comes with color controls, multiple templates, shortcodes and many other features which make it very easy to create a simple but unique church website.
Hopefully you found one of these WordPress church themes suitable for what you were looking for. These are by far the best church themes for WordPress as they are handpicked by our staff.
“We do not recommend themes from Themeforest because they do not follow the spirit of GPL ”
Thanks for the comment. What’s your take on plguins from themeforest? Same thing applies here?
Same applies to the plugins if your plugin has images and CSS because from our knowledge CodeCanyon doesn’t make those licensed under GPL.
We use a theme from Sharefaith.com that is built with WordPress: http://www.calvarygospel.org. It is very easy to use, but now that I know more about WordPress and would like to change some things, it doesn’t give the option.
Hey Jennifer, thanks for sharing. What are you looking to change? Shoot us an email using our contact form and perhaps we guide you.
Super good article…. I am trying to help our local church and this is perfect to show them some
samples of themes. A theme is the most important foundation for a site, so thank you!
Glad the timing worked out for you Mel.
I would like to recommend the Risen theme from Themeforest. I used it for a spiritual healers website- http://ascendinglife.com/.
It’s ease of use would be great for any organization putting up their own site.
Thank you for recommending my Risen theme for churches.
http://churchthemes.com will be online soon and that is where I will be releasing future WordPress themes for churches. They will be full GPL.
If I buy a wordpress theme for $79.00, may I use it on the free wordpress.com site? And do I have to renew this annually or pay rent or whatever?
I am a struggling Spanish teacher in Iowa trying to build a web site for students to use. My principal and superintendent are encouraging me to turn to “free” content management systems. I believe as my skills improve that WordPress will be a better choice for my students and me. Needless to say, the powers that control the money don’t want to spend the money. So I have to buy this myself. Sigh…
I really want to eventually create a small weekly news show with contests and video stories and student generated content. That’s the goal.
Thank you for reading this. Oh, and Aaron Manfull is my mentor from St. Louis. He was my class instructor last summer who started me on this path and inspired me!
Margaret Guetzko
Highland High School
Hey Margaret,
No you cannot use most of these themes on the free wordpress.com site. Here is a detailed article on Self Hosted WordPress vs. Free WordPress.com
http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/self-hosted-wordpress-org-vs-free-wordpress-com-infograph/
Another good article would be:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/why-is-wordpress-free-what-are-the-costs-what-is-the-catch/
I just put together a site for my church using WP Church by Net-Labs. Definitely would recommend this for the list. Really functional.
Theme link:
http://themeforest.net/item/wpchurch-powerful-theme-for-churches/201711
My church:
http://www.dixonbaptistchurch.com
We do not recommend themes from Themeforest because they do not follow the spirit of GPL (the license that WordPress is based on). Also from our experience, a lot of the themes there do not follow best practices which is not good for the long term strategy of your site. However, we also don’t believe in censorship
Great work on your site. Looks nice.
Stylish Church Theme by Vandelay Design is also a good church theme. It has custom post types for events, sermons, and an image slider along with a built in audio player for mp3 sermons. Really simple to use, too.
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/wp-themes/stylish-church/