The Best Church WordPress Themes

If you’re currently shopping around for the best theme to build your church website, look no further. These are eight of the best WordPress themes for churches and religious groups, to suit a range of needs and budgets (there’s some free options here too)…

We have to start with the king of Church theme developers, ChurchThemes.com. They’ve been developing dedicated WordPress themes for churches for as long as anyone and with more than 10,000 sales under their belt are arguably the biggest seller of church specific themes in the world. They have 3 current themes which are all well worth a look…

Maranatha

Maranatha is a beautifully-designed, fresh church WordPress theme that will help you easily design your church website. This is their latest creation and I think it is the best yet.

This theme will let you be creative without the stress—it has guides and videos that will explain and guide you through the whole process, as well as a great support team that will help you from start to finish.

There’s real-time customization of fonts and colors, as well as custom header images and footer widgets. It is also responsive and mobile-friendly, which means that it will look excellent in all devices.

With Maranatha, you can present sermons in different formats (audio, video, text) and create a gallery where you can upload and embed videos from popular sites. At the top of your sermon pages is a compact menu that will let your visitors navigate easily (ie. by topic, series, or book). You can also upload podcasts, as this theme works with iTunes®.

Other theme highlights include a blog space where you can publish news and updates, an events calendar (which you can set weekly, monthly, or yearly), a locations option where you can include service time and map/directions, and a space for profiles of church staff and leaders.

Maranatha costs $99, with a year of theme updates and support. You can give this theme a try with Maranatha’s risk-free, 45-day money back guarantee – if you’re not happy with how it works, your payment will be refunded, no questions asked! Check out the demo.

Exodus

Exodus, an elegant and responsive WordPress church theme with clean layout and plenty of whitespace…

You don’t need to have a coding or design background—this church theme is newbie- friendly, making use of the WordPress Theme customizer that will let you easily customize and get creative with details like fonts, colors, and logos.

Aside from having a beautiful flat design and wide layout, Exodus is also responsive, which means it will look great in all devices—be it desktop, smartphone, or tablet.

With Exodus, you can upload text, audio, and video versions of sermons, make a podcast (Exodus is iTunes® compatible), create an events page with a calendar and maps/directions, and create a profile for the church and its staff. You can also write your updates on the blog, and upload photos on the gallery.

Site visitors will not have a hard time reading and navigating, as the slides and banners are wide, and there are multi-level dropdown menus.

Like all CT’s themes, if you need more help, there are step-by-step guides, one-on-one support, and video instructions prepared for you.

“Your support is fantastic – second to none – I really appreciate your speed and very good advice…” ~ Bren Nixon.

The Exodus theme costs $79, which comes with a 45-day money back guarantee. Exodus will give you a refund if you’re not satisfied with the service. Want to see how Exodus works? Here’s a demo.

Resurrect

Resurrect is a more modern and edgy design and will allow you to create a beautiful WordPress powered website for your church with no design or coding knowledge.

With this theme, you can upload your sermons in text, audio (including podcasts), and video; and create a calendar for events. You can write blog posts for news and other updates, upload photos in the gallery, and create profiles of the church staff.

If you need help, you’ll find the team at ChurchThemes.com to be very responsive.

“I really want to commend you all for a fabulous theme. I’ve looked at WordPress themes until my head was spinning, but never found one that really created a custom, professional look. Resurrect is it!” ~ John Craft, Senior Pastor.

The Resurrect theme also has an efficient search option, which makes it easier for visitors to search for any site content (ie. sermons they want to read, watch, or listen to; or blog posts they want to read).

The responsive design and attractive layout will make site browsing a breeze. You can also get creative by choosing from light and dark color schemes or choosing from the wide array of Google Fonts available.

You can buy this theme for $79, which includes a year of updates ad support, as well as risk-free, 45-day money back guarantee. Here’s the demo.

It is fair to say we’re big fans of Church Themes work, but they are not the only ones catering to this market and these are among the best around too…

Risen

Risen is a responsive and retina-ready WordPress theme designed with mobile device use in mind, and featuring an array of premium features to meet the needs of modern churches and religious organisations.

Designed to make it easy to customize your website to match your church branding from within the WordPress admin area, Risen features light and dark theme appearance options, main color and link color options, 200+ preloaded Google Web Fonts, 19 preset backgrounds, and custom logo upload – none of which requires code editing. Additional features include:

• Sermons and podcasts
• Photo and video gallery
• Staff profiles
• Church news or blog
• Events
• Comprehensive instructions and documentation

Risen has been purchased by more than 6,500 users and has an average user rating of 4.69/5 stars. It is available for $48 (regular license) via Theme Forest.

Dunamis

Looking for a modern and bold theme for your church or religious organization, club or group that offers additional advanced functionality? Dunamis is a beautifully designed and visually-striking responsive theme that has been optimised for viewing on all devices. Features include:

• Calendars and podcasts
• Parallax builder
• Ability to accept donations
• Blog
• Mega menu creator
• Drag and drop interface
• Translation ready

Designed to empower people with no coding knowledge, the builders of this theme have included 50+ tutorial videos to walk you through the build process step-by-step and assist with troubleshooting.

Dunamis has been purchased by more than 1,500 users and has an average user rating of 4.74/ 5 stars. It is available for $58 (regular license) via Theme Forest.

Parallax Pro Theme

Though not specifically designed for churches and religious organizations, Parallax Pro Theme is designed to help organizations tell their stories.

Parallax keeps your page content in proper narrative order, giving you a simple vertical design for easy visual eye movement and flow. It divides your content into parts, with a clear connection between them. This allows your visitors to read it like a real story, with no pause or break, and leads them right to your call to action.

This theme features 5 color styles, custom background and header options, HTML5 markup, footer widegts, parallax scrolling, access to comprehensive tutorials, and much more.

Parallax Pro Theme is available via StudioPress for $99.95 including theme and framework.

Free WordPress Church Themes

If you are on a super tight budget (and who isn’t), you might prefer to consider these free WordPress church themes. They are not as fully featured as the paid options, but they are attractive and responsive so would make a fine choice. We think these two are the best free church themes out there…

Church

Looking for a free, responsive theme with tons of scope for customization? Church offers a built-in WordPress customizer, with options for custom:

• logo upload
• header
• background
• footer
• menu
• widgets
• CSS live

Church also features woocommerce compatibility for ecommerce, and is translation-ready.

Downloaded more than 89,000 times, Church has an average user rating of 5/5 and is free via the WordPress theme directory.

Charitas Lite

Another great free option for your church is Charitas Lite, which has been designed with churches, foundations and non-profit organizations in mind. Featuring a simple and clean motif and an eye-catching central hero image, this theme also offers some of the best opportunities for customization, responsive design, and is translation-ready.

Charitas Lite has been downloaded almost 3,000 times and has an average user rating of 5/5 stars. It is available free via the WordPress theme directory.