Support for SermonSpeaker 5.x is in bugfix mode only, the same as it is for Joomla 3.10.
I will not add any new features to this releases.
Please upgrade to SermonSpeaker 6.x and Joomla 4.x, which is better anyway.
You still need the SQL command (it's not a hack).
For new sermons stored on an extern server, you will need to enter the full URL to the file (starting with http://) manually into the sermon form. Or you create a script on the extern server which feeds the needed XML into SermonSpeaker. Then you can add the URL of that script into the SermonSpeaker options.
If you use AmazonS3 for the file storage, then SermonSpeaker can read the directory there as well if proper credentials are stored.