GospelChannel is like "Yelp for churches" but with worship playlists, YouTube links, and a prayer wall.
Why I'm building this
Finding a church shouldn't be hard. But it is. You google "churches near me" and get a mix of outdated directories, broken websites, and listings that tell you almost nothing useful.
I moved cities a few years ago and spent weeks trying to find a church that felt right. Service times were wrong. Websites were down. There was no easy way to get a feel for a place before showing up.
So I started building GospelChannel. Not as a business plan or a startup pitch. Just as something I wished existed.
What the site actually does
Every church on GospelChannel gets a profile page with the stuff that actually matters when you're looking for a place to attend:
Worship playlists from Spotify so you can hear what the music sounds like before you visit. This is a bigger deal than people think. Music sets the tone for an entire service.
YouTube links for each church, so you can watch a service from your couch before deciding to visit.
Service times that are actually current (more on how I keep these updated below).
A prayer wall where people can share and support each other. In all honesty, the prayers on there right now are seeded since the site doesn't have real traffic yet. But the feature is built and ready for when people start showing up.
You can browse by country, city, or denomination. The goal is: land on the site, find a church, and know what to expect before you walk through the door.
The tech behind it
The site runs on Next.js 16 with Tailwind for styling, Supabase as the database and auth layer, and Vercel for hosting. Pretty standard modern stack, nothing fancy.
The interesting part is the data pipeline. Manually researching 2,200+ churches would take forever, so I built an AI pipeline:
- Apify crawls church websites
- Firecrawl extracts structured data from those pages
- Claude enriches and normalizes everything: service times, denominations, locations, descriptions
This pipeline lets me add churches in bulk and keep the data fresh without doing everything by hand. It's not perfect, but it gets me 80% of the way there, and I can review and correct the rest.
The Spotify API handles the playlist integration. Each church gets matched with their official Spotify profile when one exists.
The numbers so far
- 2,200+ churches listed
- 50 countries covered
- Growing steadily through the AI pipeline and community submissions
It's still early and traffic is basically zero. But the data is there, the features work, and now it's time to get it in front of people. That's partly why I'm writing this post.
What's next
A few things on my list:
- Better search and filtering. Right now it's functional but basic. I want filters for language, accessibility, denomination, and service style.
- Church claiming. Let pastors and admins claim their church profile and keep it updated themselves.
- More countries and languages. 50 countries is a start, but there are churches everywhere.
Check it out
If you're curious, the site is live at gospelchannel.com.
I'd love your feedback. Whether it's about the tech, the UX, or churches you think should be listed. Drop a comment here or reach out through the site.
And if you know someone who's looking for a church, maybe send them the link. That's the whole point of this thing.
Thanks for reading.
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