WordPress is a great tool with so much to offer in the way of niche blogs. Church blogs created in WordPress won’t be short on functionality. Here are a few great plugins relevant to building a church blog and information how some other favorite WordPress plugins can enhance a church blog as well.

Sermon Browser
Sermon Browser by developer Mark Barnes is a free WordPress plugin for churches allowing users to upload sermons with enough detail allowing a church to catalog each sermon by who the pastor is, if the sermon is part of a series, what the key verse is and more. Visitors can search, listen and download sermons for use.

Verse-O-Matic
Display random or specific Bible verses for each day. Plugin adds widgets to place in a blog’s sidebar.

Bible Text
The Bible Text plugin allows a user to add shortcode to a blog post to display Bible passages. User is able to add a code for which Bible version is preferred.

Calendar
The Calendar plugin by Kieran O’Shea is perfect to manage events online in WordPress. Functionality allows display via widgets and also a full page calendar view setup using shortcode.

Contact Form 7
The Contact Form 7 plugin allows users to easily add online forms to collect data. Add permission forms, order forms, facility use forms and more. Data is emailed to any contact in an organization.

Mingle Forum
Mingle Forum is a plugin to easily add a forum to a blog, great for building an online community.

In addition, a few plugins from our list of seven WordPress plugins that enhance a blog are important for a church blog for the following reasons.

Akismet – Churches are a target for spam. If a church organization decides to allow comments to posts or pages, a plugin to manage spam is necessary.

All in One Webmaster – Knowing where and how your traffic comes to you is important. Are people looking for a church in your community, or are visitors type-in traffic from your congregation? The All in One Webmaster allows the user to insert tracking codes in the appropriate places to track visitors.

WordPress Editorial Calendar – A church is likely to have more than one person from different parts of the church body sharing information (deacons, elders, women associations, youth groups etc.) Use the WordPress Editorial Calendar to have the church office manager easily move content in a calendar view to publish information on the days when needed.

NewsPage – Make your church website the place for the congregation and community members to find local news. Add RSS feeds from local newspapers and local government, school district and informational community sites.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) – Link readers to relevant content for each post published. If you are publishing a post on the upcoming Deacon’s Dinner, a link to last year’s post with photos and highlights, or a similar event is automatically published below the post.

Learn more about how WordPress and setting up a church blog in other articles from Blogs & Social Networking at BellaOnline.com