AI and the Pulpit
A Tool, Not a Teacher
“What hath Silicon Valley to do with Jerusalem?”
As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated and accessible, pastors everywhere are beginning to experiment with it in sermon prep.
Type a passage into the prompt, ask it to draft a sermon, and in seconds, you’ll get something resembling a message. But the results, though grammatically polished, often lack something vital.
The truth is, AI is a poor theologian and an even worse preacher.
It can string together biblical-sounding sentences, but it cannot exposit the Word. It cannot grasp the text. It cannot discern the mind of God.
And it cannot, in any true sense, preach Christ.
Let’s Be Honest About the Dangers
For all its speed and novelty, AI brings with it a set of dangers that demand thoughtful and pastoral attention.
Doctrinal Confusion – AI is trained to pull together sources from across the interwebs, but it doesn’t “believe” anything. It doesn’t know the difference between Athanasius and Arius. It can quote heresy just as quickly as truth. You can accidentally (or purposely) train it to speak heresy to you. If you are confused, don’t look for AI to explain the text in a way that is doctrinally pure.
Theological Shallowness – Because it assembles answers by probability, not conviction, AI has no grasp of redemptive-historical preaching, covenant theology, or law/gospel distinctions. What you get may sound “biblical,” but it often lacks any biblical substance. You may gain something pithy, but it will lack substance.
Loss of Voice – The preacher is not just a conveyor of content. He is a shepherd, called to proclaim God’s Word to a particular people in a particular context. Relying too heavily on AI risks outsourcing your voice, your pastoral instinct, to a machine that knows nothing of your congregation or your God given personality.
Spiritual Laziness – There’s a fine line between using a tool and letting the tool do the work for you. A sermon birthed in five minutes by AI is not a sermon. At best, it’s a speech. At worst, it’s a counterfeit.
Temptation to Plagiarize – Because AI produces polished paragraphs so quickly, the temptation to lift and preach them verbatim is real.
Still, It’s Just a Tool
Used rightly, AI can function like Logos, a concordance, or Bible software. It can assist, but it must never replace. It can summarize, organize, or clarify at times, but only under the discerning eye of a pastor committed to rightly dividing the Word of truth. AI should remain a servant, never a substitute for the preacher.
While the dangers are real and must be acknowledged, we shouldn’t throw out the tool entirely.
Time-Saving Organization – AI can help generate rough outlines, structure sermon flows, or summarize a passage’s main ideas. This can be especially useful when you're trying to get traction early in your study week.
Idea Generation – Sometimes you hit a mental wall. AI can serve as a brainstorming partner, offering illustrations, analogies, or alternate phrasing to sharpen clarity, not replace content.
Again: AI cannot replace the labor of the Word. The moment we ask AI to do the spiritual labor of study and preparation, we’ve already gone too far.
The Preacher's Task Is Too Sacred to Automate
The pastoral call is to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ to sinners who need grace. That’s not a job for a machine.
So if you’re a pastor dabbling in AI, let me encourage you:
Use tools, yes. But don’t confuse them with your task.
Don’t outsource what God has entrusted to you.
Let’s keep our eyes fixed on the goal: Christ preached, the church nourished, and the glory of God magnified—by the foolishness of preaching, not the cleverness of Artificial Intelligence.