Kerby Anderson

On my radio program recently, we had a roundtable discussion about AI sermons. What stimulated the discussion was the article, “Majority of Pastors Now Using AI to Prepare Sermons Amid Rapid Embrace of Technology.” Leonardo Blair reports that a majority of pastors are using AI tools, like ChatGPT and Grammarly, to prepare their sermons.

The 2025 State of AI in the Church Survey Report provided the interview data. Nearly two thirds of church leaders surveyed prepare sermons using a wide variety of AI tools. Although some seem to be grabbling with the ethical and practical considerations involved, most believe that AI can be beneficial.

Currently there are a range of AI tools that a pastor or anyone can use to prepare a message. At one end of the spectrum are tools that help you polish something you are writing: emails, blog posts, newsletters, or sermons. Checking spelling, grammar, or historical facts can be done with search engines and software built into word processing. Using these tools doesn’t seem to raise any significant concerns. We would assume that church leaders would use such technologies to improve what they write and speak.

At the other end are AI tools that essentially do all the work. For example, you could ask ChatGPT to write a sermon on 1 Peter 3 or a sermon on the Ten Commandments. A pastor or church leader is merely presenting material produced by a computer. We realized that most would be inclined to modify it somewhat to fit their audience and their own personality, but the essential material came from a computer.

I will leave it to you to evaluate how you would feel about this. We were concerned that the church may be using AI tools too much.