Should Preachers Use AI To Write Sermons?

Should preachers use artificial intelligence when writing sermons?

Surprise! It’s very likely they already are.

Almost all modern computer-based applications have jumped on the artificial intelligence (AI) wagon—not necessarily to replace core functionality but to enhance it. Better grammar, quicker referencing, complete sentences based on your writing style, and more.

Yet I suspect this question is asking about more than just enhancements. It’s asking about it—the machine—writing entire sermons or at least contributing significantly to them.

But before we get to that, a few reminders for this place in AI time: Most of the previously published text or pictures the machine is using to serve up those amazing compilations were gathered without the original creators’ permission, a violation of copyright law. (The courts are working through this. Slowly.) The computing power needed for AI is incredible. (Hence the renewed interest in nuclear power to supply the juice for these machines.) What we don’t know about how AI works still exceeds what we do know. (Be warned: just because it spits out perfectly composed text does not mean it is accurate or reliable.) We won’t even get into cognitive offloading, a term used to describe what happens to humans when we adopt new technologies. (Think the printing press, calculators, GPS, Google search, and so on.).

Back to your question. While I’ve listened to thousands of sermons, I’m not an expert on writing them so I went to an expert: Scott Hozee. Scott is the director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin University. He’s been thinking about this for a bit but admitted he was thinking out loud when he wrote, “If a sermon is just facts and figures and truths packaged in a certain way, I suppose AI could accomplish that much. If a sermon is just information, AI will do. But if a sermon is also about passion and inspiration and faith and human joy and the personality and gifting of a specific person who has been called to be a preacher, then AI cannot do any of that.”

On a (ReFrame Ministries) Church Juice podcast, ChurchTechToday.com’s Kenny Jahng added a helpful caution about the use of AI: "The way you have to think about these chatbots is as a very very green seminary student."

Writing sermons is a creative endeavor. All the creative people I know need to exercise their creativity to stay sharp, engaged, and, in the end, satisfied with their work. AI can make some things fast and easy, but I fear that if we let the machine have all the fun, it’s going to make what we get to do pretty dull. And our listeners are certainly going to notice the missing Spirit-guided human in our work.