The Life.Church Message Archive: Complete Guide
Life.Church is the most generous publisher in this list, and not only with its own sermons. The church Craig Groeschel started in Oklahoma in 1996 built the YouVersion Bible App and gives it away, and it publishes complete message series, including graphics, scripts and small-group material, free to any church that wants to use them. This guide covers what the Life.Church message archive contains, where to find it, and why its giveaway model is the most directly copyable idea on this site.
Maintained by
Life.Church
Span
1996–present
Scale
Nearly three decades of message series
Formats
Audio · Video · Free downloadable resources
What Is the Life.Church Message Archive?
Craig Groeschel started the church that became Life.Church in the Oklahoma City area in 1996, and it grew into a large multi-site congregation with locations across several states plus a long-running online campus. The teaching is topical and application-driven, published in named series, with the same message delivered across campuses. Groeschel also produces a widely followed leadership podcast, which is a separate output from the Sunday archive.
Two projects made the church known well beyond its own attenders. YouVersion, the Bible App, was built by Life.Church and released as a free product; it has been installed on a very large number of devices worldwide and is for many people their primary way of reading scripture. The Open Network is the church's resource platform, which publishes complete message series, graphics, service plans and small-group material free for other churches to use. Both are unusual: most organisations of this size monetise what Life.Church gives away.
What's Inside the Archive
The archive is organised by named series, published primarily as video, and it is paired with a resource library that most churches never build at all.
- Nearly three decades of message series from Life.Church, filed by series title
- Video as the primary format, with audio and podcast versions of most messages
- The Open Network library of complete series resources, free for other churches to download and use
- The Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, a separate feed of leadership teaching
- Church Online material developed for the church's long-running internet campus
How to Access the Life.Church Archive
Everything the church publishes for listeners is free, and much of what it publishes for other churches is free too, which is the more unusual half.
life.church
The official site, with the message archive by series, campus information and links to the church's other projects.
Open Network
The free resource platform, where complete message series, graphics and group material are published for other churches to use.
YouVersion Bible App
The free Bible app built by Life.Church, which also carries devotional plans tied to the teaching.
Podcast feeds
Audio versions of the messages, plus the separate Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast.
Official site: life.church · Rights: © Life.Church, messages free; series resources shared openly
Want a Transcript of a Sermon from This Archive?
This archive is video-first like Elevation's, but with a difference: the Open Network resources often include scripts, outlines and service plans for a series, which gets you far closer to text than most large-church archives do. Check the Open Network entry for a series before assuming you need to transcribe anything.
For a message with no published script, our free transcription tool turns a recording you have rights to use into searchable, time-stamped text in minutes. Keep transcripts of copyrighted preaching for personal study.
Our Elevation Church archive page covers the closest comparable video-first collection, and the Steven Furtick famous sermons profile covers its preacher.
Transcribe sermon audio freeHow Life.Church's approach can inspire your church's archive
Life.Church has run a decades-long experiment in giving away things other organisations sell, and the results are worth reading closely.
1.Publish your series resources, not just your sermons
Open Network gives other churches the outline, the graphics and the group guide. Most churches could publish an outline per series in an hour and would immediately have a text page worth ranking.
2.Build the tool your audience actually uses
YouVersion serves people who will never attend a Life.Church service. Solving a real problem for a wide audience is a different kind of reach than better preaching alone can buy.
3.Give the leadership content its own front door
Separating the leadership podcast from the Sunday archive means neither audience wades through the other's material, and each collection stays coherent.
For the full step-by-step playbook, read our guides on building searchable sermon archives and publishing a searchable sermon archive in 30 days.
Frequently asked questions
Are Life.Church sermons free?
Yes. Messages are free to watch and stream on life.church and the church's video channels, and audio versions are free through podcast feeds. Beyond that, complete series resources are published free for other churches through the Open Network. The material remains under Life.Church's copyright, with the Open Network setting its own usage terms.
What is YouVersion?
YouVersion is the Bible App built by Life.Church and released free. It offers many translations, reading plans and devotional content, and has been installed on a very large number of devices worldwide, which makes it one of the most widely used pieces of Christian software ever produced. It is developed by the church rather than by an outside company.
Where is Life.Church located?
It began in the Oklahoma City area in 1996 and now operates campuses across several states, alongside a long-running online campus. Current campus listings are published on life.church.
How long are Life.Church sermons?
Typically around thirty to forty minutes for the message itself, with full-service video running longer. Messages are designed as parts of a titled series, so watching a series in order is generally the intended experience.
What is the Open Network?
Life.Church's free resource platform for other churches. It publishes complete message series along with graphics, service plans, scripts and small-group material, at no cost, for churches that want to run the same series themselves. It is the clearest example in this list of a church treating its archive as something to share rather than sell.
Are Life.Church message transcripts available?
There is no complete transcript library, but the Open Network resources for a series often include scripts and outlines that get close. For word-level accuracy on a specific message, transcribe a recording you legitimately have access to.
Your church is building an archive too
Every Sunday recording is a future archive entry. Transcribe it in about five minutes, publish it as searchable text, and your congregation's preaching starts compounding the way these collections did.
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