Skip to content
Kleis Docs

How Sermon Content Works

Kleis turns Planning Center Publishing content into native WordPress content. This makes sermons available to WordPress templates, Query Loops, search, and theme styling instead of placing them inside an embed.

Episode posts

Section titled “Episode posts”

Each Planning Center episode becomes a WordPress post with the Episode post type. Episodes published to the Planning Center library are published in WordPress. Unpublished episodes remain WordPress drafts until they are published in Planning Center, so incomplete or accidentally created episodes do not appear on the public website. Kleis also waits to import a newly created episode while Planning Center gives it the temporary New Episode title; it imports the episode when a later sync includes its real title.

Kleis uses the Planning Center episode ID to update the same post during later syncs and to avoid duplicates. If a published episode is unpublished in Planning Center, its WordPress post returns to draft status.

The post can include:

  • the episode title and description
  • the Planning Center library publish date
  • synchronized artwork as the featured image
  • hosted or external audio information
  • resource links
  • an Open in Church Center destination

Channels, series, and speakers

Section titled “Channels, series, and speakers”

Kleis creates three WordPress taxonomies:

  • Channels organize the broad Publishing destinations.
  • Series group related episodes.
  • Speakers identify one or more speakers attached to an episode.

A taxonomy is WordPress’s way of grouping content. Themes can display these terms, and Query Loops can use them to select episodes.

What stays in Planning Center

Section titled “What stays in Planning Center”

Planning Center remains the source of truth for synchronized fields. When a webhook or full sync processes an episode, Kleis can replace manual WordPress changes to its title, description, date, featured image, audio metadata, resources, and taxonomy relationships.

Use WordPress to control the presentation:

Use Planning Center to control the sermon information itself.

URLs

Section titled “URLs”

Episode, channel, and series pages use stable Kleis routes based on their Planning Center IDs. Changing a title does not change the identity of the synchronized item.

You should now understand: Planning Center owns sermon data, while WordPress owns templates and presentation. A synchronized episode is a native WordPress post, not an embedded remote page.

Next: Build a Sermon Archive.