CP Sermon Library 1.6.2 is a focused release with one job: make sure every sermon you publish actually shows up where it should. We’re fixing a frustrating bug from 1.6.0, giving SermonAudio churches some serious new control over their imports, and cleaning up a handful of mobile and display issues along the way.
If you’re on 1.6.0 or 1.6.1, this is the upgrade you’ve been waiting for.
The Big Fix: Imported Sermons No Longer Disappear
Here’s what happened in 1.6.0: when you imported sermons—whether from a CSV file or directly from SermonAudio—they were silently being marked as hidden. They’d land in your library, but they wouldn’t show up on your main sermon list. For churches with active import workflows, this could mean dozens or even hundreds of “missing” sermons piling up unnoticed.
We’ve fixed the root cause and given you two tools to recover anything that’s already affected:
- Tools → Migrate Visibility Settings carries over any sermons you’d intentionally hidden in earlier versions, so legacy preferences aren’t lost in the upgrade.
- Tools → Reset All Sermons to Visible is the one-click recovery button. It un-hides everything that was bulk-hidden by the bug, and it’s smart about inheritance—sermons that belong to a hidden Series or Service Type stay correctly hidden.
We also renamed the per-sermon visibility checkbox from “Show in Main List” (which defaulted to checked) to “Exclude from Main List” (which defaults to unchecked). That matches how the Series and Service Type metaboxes already work, and it means a freshly created or imported sermon defaults to visible—the way you’d intuitively expect.
Note: as always, please make sure you have a backup of your site before running any migrations
SermonAudio Gets Serious Power Tools
If your church uses SermonAudio, you’re going to love these.
Import from the Command Line
We’ve added a brand new WP-CLI command: wp cp sermonaudio import. This is the same import that runs from your admin UI, but now you can run it from the terminal—or, more importantly, from a cron job or deploy script.
wp cp sermonaudio import # full sync
wp cp sermonaudio import --recent # just pull what's new
wp cp sermonaudio import --recent=20 # last 20 sermons
wp cp sermonaudio import --dry-run # preview without writing
wp cp sermonaudio import --max-batches=2 # smoke testThe --dry-run flag is especially handy: it fetches from the SermonAudio API and tells you exactly what it would create or update, without touching your database. Perfect for verifying things look right before a big sync, or for debugging without commitment.
For developers and IT folks managing larger ministries, this means you can finally script your sermon imports the same way you script everything else.
Skip the Short Stuff
Tired of intro clips, announcement videos, and one-minute snippets cluttering your sermon library? The SermonAudio adapter now respects a minimum audio duration setting. Set it to your preferred threshold (say, 10 minutes), and short audio gets filtered out at import time. Your library stays clean without manual cleanup after every sync.
Mobile and Playback Fixes
We chipped away at a few specific frustrations:
- Vimeo videos now reliably unmute on iOS. This was a tricky one—iOS has strict autoplay/audio policies, and our previous fix didn’t handle every case. The new implementation uses a shared helper with chained promises that walks through the unmute steps in the right order, so what works for YouTube now works for Vimeo too.
- All scripture references now display on sermon detail views. Some layouts were only showing the first reference when a sermon covered multiple passages. If you preach from Romans 8 and John 14, both now show up.
- Sermon sort order is correct on speaker pages and taxonomy archives. Sermons now sort by date the way you’d expect across all archive views.
Should You Upgrade?
Yes. If you’ve been on 1.6.0 or 1.6.1 and you import sermons, run, don’t walk. The visibility tools will quickly tell you whether anything got lost, and recovery is a one-click affair.
If you don’t import sermons, this release is still a worthwhile upgrade for the SermonAudio improvements (if you use it), the Vimeo iOS fix, and the scripture display and sort order fixes.
After updating, head to Messages → Tools to run the visibility migration if you’re coming from an older version. It’s quick, it’s safe, and it’ll give you peace of mind.
Have questions or need help? Visit churchplugins.com/support or check our documentation at docs.churchplugins.com.
