As technology continues to advance, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an increasingly prevalent tool in various fields, including ministry. Many pastors meet the idea of incorporating AI into sermon preparation with skepticism and concern. This article aims to provide a thorough exploration of the pros and cons of using AI in sermon writing, addressing common fears and offering practical insights to help pastors navigate this new terrain.
18 Issues You Must Consider Before Using AI for Sermon Writing
1. Access to a Deeper Shelf of Resources
One of the most significant advantages of using AI in sermon preparation is its ability to access and analyze vast amounts of information quickly. Imagine having a digital assistant that can comb through thousands of theological texts, historical documents, and contemporary writings in a matter of seconds. This capability can be likened to having a team of research assistants at your disposal, each with expertise in different areas of theology and history.
Here’s one example to help illustrate this: If you are preparing a sermon on the parables of Jesus, AI can provide you with insights from various commentaries, scholarly articles, and historical contexts that you might not have had the time to explore on your own. This wealth of information can help you craft a more informed and nuanced message, enriching your congregation’s understanding of the topic.
2. Efficient Data Analysis
AI’s ability to analyze and summarize complex theological arguments can also be incredibly beneficial. With this use case, you can think of AI as a sophisticated librarian who not only finds the books you need but also highlights the most relevant passages and synthesizes the key points. This can save you hours of reading and allow you to focus on the more creative and personal aspects of sermon writing.
For example, if you are tackling a complex theological issue such as the doctrine of the Trinity, AI can help you identify and understand the main arguments from different theological perspectives. This can provide a better and broader foundation for your sermon, ensuring that your message is better understood when you preach it.
Improved Editing and Refinement
3. Grammar and Style Checks
Even the most experienced writers can benefit from a second pair of eyes when it comes to editing. General generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, as well as function-specific tools like Grammarly can serve as that second pair of eyes, helping you refine your language and ensure that your sermons are clear, concise, and free of grammatical errors. Think of AI as a skilled editor who can catch mistakes you might have missed and suggest improvements to enhance the readability and impact of your message.
For instance, AI can help you identify and correct awkward phrasing, run-on sentences, passive voice vs. active voice, and other common writing issues. This can make your sermons clearer and more compelling, making it easier for your congregation to follow and understand your message.
4. Consistency in Tone and Message
Maintaining a consistent tone and message throughout a sermon is crucial for its overall coherence and impact. AI can assist in this area by analyzing your sermon for consistency and suggesting changes to ensure that your message flows smoothly from beginning to end. It’s great at building logic, following logic, and taking unstructured content and forming a logical structure for it. Think of AI as a conductor who ensures that all the different elements of your sermon work together harmoniously.
For example, sometimes after rewriting and revising your sermon what seems like 100 times within a given week, it can end up including multiple anecdotes and illustrations. AI can help you ensure that each and every one that survives all the edits actually supports your main message and fits seamlessly into the overall structure of your sermon. This can help you avoid tangents and keep your congregation engaged on the key points you want to convey.
Creative Brainstorming
5. Idea Generation
One of the most challenging aspects of sermon preparation can be coming up with fresh and engaging ideas. AI can serve as a valuable brainstorming partner, suggesting creative angles, metaphors, and illustrative stories that can help you craft more thought-provoking and memorable sermons. You can ask it to put on the thinking cap from very diverse perspectives to come up with ideas that you would have difficulty in generating consistently. Think of AI as a creative collaborator who can inspire you with new perspectives and ideas.
For instance, if you are preparing a sermon on forgiveness, AI might suggest a variety of metaphors and illustrations, such as comparing forgiveness to a healing balm or a bridge that reconnects broken relationships, etc. You can also ask it to consider the assignment from the perspective of a different generation. Or a person in a different place on their spiritual journey. Or from the perspective of a skeptic vs. a believer. These creative approaches can help you communicate your message in a more vivid and relatable way, making it easier for your congregation to grasp and apply the principles you are teaching.
6. Diverse Perspectives
AI can also introduce you to diverse perspectives and ideas that you might not have considered, broadening the scope of your sermons and enriching your congregation’s understanding of different viewpoints. Think of AI as a global network of thinkers and theologians who can offer insights from various cultural and theological backgrounds.
Just consider the circumstances if you are preaching on social justice. AI can provide you with perspectives from theologians and activists from different parts of the world, helping you to present a more comprehensive and nuanced view of the issue. How long would it take you to research all of this alone? Having access to more POV’s on a given topic can foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of the complexities of social justice, encouraging your congregation to engage with the topic in a more thoughtful and informed way.
Constructive Feedback
7. Strengthening Your Argument
Building strong, persuasive arguments is a crucial aspect of effective preaching. AI can provide constructive feedback on the homiletical structure of your sermons, helping you to identify and address potential weaknesses in your arguments. Think of AI as a critical friend who can challenge you to think more deeply and refine your reasoning.
For instance, if your sermon includes a complex theological argument, AI can help you ensure that your reasoning is sound and that your points are clearly and logically presented, especially for an audience that is generally not seminary-trained. Stress-testing if a general audience follows your logic that develops your thesis is a great use of AI chatbots. This can help you build stronger, more persuasive arguments that resonate with your congregation and encourage them to reflect on and apply your message.
8. Gaining the Skeptics’ POV
Anticipating and addressing potential objections is another important aspect of effective preaching. AI can simulate responses from skeptics, allowing you to anticipate and address potential objections and strengthen your message. Hopefully every sermon you preach is received by a segment of the audience who is attending because they are questioning how Christianity and Jesus might fit into their lives. Think of AI as a debate partner who can help you prepare for difficult questions and challenges. And also surface questions you might not have even considered yet.
For example, if you are preaching on the resurrection of Jesus, AI can help you anticipate common objections and provide you with responses that address these objections in a thoughtful and respectful manner. This can help you build a more robust and convincing message, encouraging your congregation to engage with the topic in a deeper and more meaningful way.
Potential Loss of Authenticity
9. Personal Connection
One of the most significant concerns about using AI in sermon preparation is the potential loss of authenticity and personal connection. Sermons should not be just about conveying information, right? Relying too heavily on AI might result in sermons that lack the personal anecdotes and emotional depth that come from your own experiences and reflections.
If you think of a sermon as a conversation with a close friend, while AI can provide valuable information and insights, it cannot replicate the personal touch and emotional connection that come from sharing your own stories and experiences. To maintain this personal connection, it is important to use AI as a tool to support and enhance your sermon preparation, rather than as a replacement for your own voice and perspective.
10. Generic Content
A related concern is that AI-generated content could feel generic or impersonal, diminishing the unique voice and style of you as the specific pastor shepherding your specific community. This is why you always want to “keep a human in the loop.”
One way to think of AI is as if it is a sous-chef in a kitchen. While the sous-chef can be the best assistant and support staff, the head chef is ultimately responsible for orchestrating and creating the final dish. Similarly, while AI can provide academically helpful suggestions and insights, it is important to ensure that your sermons reflect your own unique voice and perspective.
Ethical and Trust Issues
11. Transparency
Transparency is crucial in maintaining trust with your congregation. Depending on the culture of your congregation, if people discover that AI was heavily involved in your sermon preparation, they might initially feel deceived.
It’s crucial to be transparent about the role of AI in your sermon preparation and to ensure that your congregation understands that AI is a tool to support and enhance your work, rather than a replacement for your own voice and perspective. Using AI should not undermine the trust your congregation has in your leadership of the church.
This is part of the reason why I believe every church should have an AI policy in place so that it’s transparent and gets people on the same page.
12. Integrity
The use of AI also can raise questions about the authenticity and integrity of your work as a pastor (and employee of the church). It is important to ensure that your sermons reflect your own theological convictions and spiritual insights. Just like the case where some pastors will copy manuscripts wholesale from sermon resources, it is probably a golden rule to say you never want to just copy/paste and use as-is. Especially without full explanation or attribution of what created your message.
It is important to facilitate conversations about the role of AI in ministry work. Much of the work involves educating and transparently demonstrating how practical of a tool AI can be, setting boundaries on what is not appropriate to cross, and dispelling misconceptions about AI replacing one’s work and promoting laziness.
Emotional Resonance
13. Empathy and Compassion
Of course it is essential to infuse sermons with your own empathy and compassion, rather than relying solely on AI-generated content, as AI lacks the ability to convey genuine empathy and compassion. Your personal connection and understanding are crucial for delivering impactful and meaningful sermons.
How might AI help in this area? You could use AI as a conversation partner, and ask it how various segments of your community respond to various illustrations and approaches to messaging that you are considering. You could ask for feedback on which parts of your messaging could use more empathy and compassion based on specific felt needs.
Deeper Theological Insights
14. Spiritual Insight
Pastors bring irreplaceable value to sermon preparation through lived faith experience, congregational connections, and divine inspiration. This “incarnational approach” addresses both spoken and unspoken community needs, creating authentic preaching that algorithms can’t replicate.
You must maintain a “human-first” approach in sermon preparation. Start with personal study and prayer, then use AI to challenge assumptions and prompt fresh insights. I believe it is alway a good idea to test AI-generated ideas against scripture and trusted traditions. Ideally, you want to take advantage of AI’s analytical power while preserving your pastoral voice and spiritual discernment, enhancing sermons without compromising the humanity you bring to the message.
Some Cons And Areas Where AI May Not Be Advisable
15. Over-Reliance on Technology
One of the potential pitfalls of using AI in sermon preparation is the risk of becoming overly reliant on technology. This can lead to a reduced role for personal study, prayer, and reflection, which are essential components of effective sermon preparation. It is important to strike a balance between leveraging AI for its strengths and maintaining a strong foundation of personal spiritual practices.
Think of AI as a powerful tool, but not a substitute for an expert craftsman’s technical skill and intuition. For example, a successful carpenter relies on both modern tech tools and gadgets but is deeply reliant on traditional manual techniques of working with wood. It’s easy to be enamored with shiny objects of tech. This is one place you really want to guard against it.
16. Loss of Spontaneity
AI-generated content is inherently pre-written and lacks the spontaneity that can make sermons more dynamic and engaging. One risk is sticking to the manuscript because of your confidence in what you have produced with AI. But don’t ever forget the value of adding spontaneous remarks or changing the tone in real-time to better connect with your audience. AI cannot replicate this level of adaptability, which is crucial for maintaining a lively and responsive preaching style.
The best metaphor I could think of is a jazz performance, where improvisation and real-time interaction with the audience are not just key elements, but really the art itself. The live delivery of a successful message requires your pastor’s intuition and ability to respond to the moment. Don’t forget that!
17. Ethical Concerns
The use of AI in sermon preparation raises ethical questions about authorship and originality. Congregants expect their pastors to deliver messages that are the result of personal study and reflection. If AI-generated content is used extensively without proper stewardship, it will lead to questions about the authenticity and integrity of the sermons.
If you were writing a book as a collaborative project but really only ended up contributing 5 percent or less of the manuscript, would you go to print and put your own name on the cover? One of the questions you must consider is when any co-author needs to be acknowledged. Transparency about the role of AI in sermon preparation can help maintain trust and integrity in the pastoral relationship.
One note on this is that it doesn’t necessarily need to look like attribution in the actual sermon every single time a passage of the manuscript is written with AI’s assistance. But as a whole, are you hiding that you use AI tools at work or are you transparent about your discovery journey with AI?
The aim is that when someone hears any content you have produced involving AI, it doesn’t come as a big surprise. Are you sharing your excitement for how AI tools are contributing to your productivity gains, allowing you to do more, meet with more people, and study/pray more? Are you showing others examples of what you are doing with new AI tools as you discover them yourself?
For example, this article was written using ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude together, and I was involved in brainstorming, outlining, research, soundboard, editing, etc. Out of a list of 50 potential issues I generated in a back-and-forth conversation with AI chatbots, I was able to choose 13, of which I revised four and added five more of my own. Attribution doesn’t take away from the effectiveness of the message.
18. Potential for Bias
As you know, AI systems are trained on extensive amounts of existing data, which can include biases present in the source material. This means that AI-generated content might inadvertently reflect these biases, leading to sermons that perpetuate stereotypes or overlook important perspectives. This is a real concern, but really falls back to the quality of the prompting and conversations you are having with the AI chatbots. Pastors need to critically review and engage in redirecting AI-generated content to ensure it aligns with their theological convictions and the values of their congregation.
Here, AI is basically a mirror that reflects existing knowledge and biases. It is the pastor’s responsibility to discern and filter this content to ensure it aligns with their ministry’s goals and values.
Basically, AI is not ready to become a replacement for the humanity that you bring to the keyboard. You’re not going to be replaced anytime soon because you really do need to keep a human in the loop.
Final Thoughts
Using AI as a tool in the sermon-writing process offers numerous advantages for what is usually a solo activity done in a vacuum. However, at the same time, before you rush to use AI for every sermon you write, it also presents significant challenges if not stewarded properly.
Here’s the critical key insight: Only actual usage and experimentation over time will help you as a pastor refine how you can best use it in your own workflows for writing.
To navigate all of the challenges listed above, one perspective or approach is needed: It is important to use AI as a tool to support and enhance your sermon preparation, rather than try to figure out how to use it as a replacement for your own voice and perspective. Sorry, but you really cannot be lazy with your own work in the end.
How do you get up to speed efficiently? One of the best ways to maintain the integrity and emotional impact of your sermons, while also benefiting from the valuable support that AI can provide, is to have conversation partners who are also using AI in their work. Fortunately, there are communities of church leaders trading notes generously as they learn AI together. And resources such as the Exponential AI NEXT initiative are focused on helping pastors learn how to embrace AI for church work.
By approaching AI with an open mind and a thoughtful, balanced perspective, you can really benefit from its potential to support and enhance your ministry, while also maintaining authenticity and integrity. What is keeping you from getting started?
