Using AI in Sermon Prep

“I have a wife, three little kids, a full-time job, and a sermon to write for this Sunday. How do I balance my Sunday deadline without sacrificing the integrity of the pulpit?” – Imaginary Reader

Great question! AI is a great new tool but it is mysterious. This article will help technologically illiterate Pastors achieve a basic understanding of AI and some applications for Sermon Preparation.

What is AI?

AI is a very broad topic ranging from enemies in video games to self-driving cars to ChatGPT. For the sake of this article, we will be focusing on LLMs (Large Language Models). These are AI specifically designed to mimic human speech and what powers tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, etc.

How are LLM’s created?

LLM’s use a mathematical process to synthesize inconceivable amounts of human language into a math formula that will predict the best response. When you ask ChatGPT (or any other LLM) “Where does the Bible discuss throwing your pearls before swine?”. ChatGPT is predicting that the response would be “Jesus discusses don’t throw your pearls before swine in verse Matthew 7:6 during his Sermon on the Mount”. ChatGPT doesn’t actually understand the answer but has noticed a pattern.

There is a parable that explains how this works. This is based on John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment.

Imagine you are stuck inside a jail cell forced to help a foreign government. Every day, scraps of paper with the foreign language are sent in and your task is to respond appropriately. You don’t speak or read their language but you are given an instruction manual to help decipher.

Reading this instruction manual, you learn that certain groups of symbols require a different group of symbols to respond with. Every day, you get better and better and matching up output symbols with the given scraps of paper with the instruction manual. However, you never understand the context of the language you are reading nor writing.

The LLMs are you in the room. The computer doesn’t know anything about the context but only understands that certain groups of symbols require a different group of symbols to respond. This is important to help decipher what to do and not to do.

If you want an in-depth technical understanding (without math involved), here is a great article written by Miguel Grinberg

Using AI as a Sniper Rifle Search Engine

Using AI is like using a sniper rifle, with enough aiming you can answer your very specific questions. Provide the AI with the details of your sermon (passages, main points you plan to bring up, etc) and your notes/rough draft and then ask your question. The more information you provide the AIs, the better the response will be.

Comparatively, Google Search is like a shotgun, it answers broadly but doesn’t require a lot of aiming to hit your target. This broadness is very useful for following rabbit trails and learning information you wouldn’t know to ask. AI will only give the information you asked for.

Here are some example questions that you could ask the AI.

• What are all the references to money in Proverbs?
• I am writing a sermon series on the book of Hosea, can you find 10 exegesis sermons from Biblical Pastors on the book of Hosea? Please include links to these sermons.
• Who were the Canaanites and what were some common religious practices by them? I want to respond to criticism that God promotes genocide in the Bible while ordering the Isrealites to wipe out the Canaanites. Please include 3 sources that discuss the Canaanites.

Don’t Trust the AI

Remember how LLM’s are created? They don’t actually understand the material it is talking about. AI has the tendency to hallucinate answers because it provides the response it thinks should be given. Ask the AI for sources and then go look at the sources yourself.

Additionally, AI tends to be biased towards prompts that it thinks you will like. This can lead to confirmation bias from the AI. Avoid asking leading questions that encourage the AI to be a yes-man to you.

Context to Include

LLM usually needs some hand-holding to be useful. Here is some context to help the AI find and recognize sources to use.

• Timeframe (13th century bc) and geographical location (ancient Egypt)
• Relevant places, locations, events, etc.
• Purpose of question.
• Potential audience.

Canaanites Example

Here is an example prompt and response from the AI. Notice the level of context in this prompt.

Question
Who were the Canaanites and what were some common religious practices by them? I want to respond to criticism that God promotes genocide in the Bible while ordering the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites. Please include 3 sources that discuss the Canaanites.

Google Gemini Response (3.1 Pro model)

“The Canaanites were a group of Semitic-speaking people who inhabited the Levant—modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan—during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Rather than a single unified empire, >they were a collection of independent city-states (like Ugarit, Jericho, and Hazor) sharing a common language and culture.

Addressing the "genocide" critique requires looking at both the historical context of their religious practices and the specific literary style of the biblical accounts…”

Google Gemini goes on to list three bullet points of arguments supporting God’s call to eliminate the Canaanites.

1. Ancient Near East (ANE) Hyperbole – Complete destruction was common wartime hyperbole.
2. God’s judgement on Canaanites for child sacrifice.
3. God’s purpose of removing the idol worship of Canaanites vs eliminating the people.
4. Google Gemini notes Rahab, a Canaanite, being saved a few chapters later.

Then Google Gemini produces 3 sources to read more, as well as a list of sources used to generate the content.

AI Privacy Concerns

Anything you send the AI will be recorded and used by the technology companies. Don’t send anything to the AI that you wouldn’t put in the church bulletin. As a pastor, you will have access to a lot of confidential information. Assume anything you type into the AI is publicly available.

Bad Examples

• The Doe’s are fighting constantly and thinking about divorcing. What...
• John Doe is struggling with alcohol addiction. What...
• Jane Doe is struggling with gossip. What...

Fixed Examples

• Imagine you are helping a married couple through marital issues. What...
• Imagine you are helping a man with alcohol addiction. What…
• Imagine you are helping a woman with gossip. What…

Don’t Overly Rely on AI.

God designed our brains to be hyper efficient.

Our brains have a “use it or lose it” mentality. Any skill if not maintained will eventually be lost. Anything you outsource to AI, you will lose your ability to use it. In the world of computer programmers, many are saying that they have lost the ability to code due to AI outsourcing[1][2]. Pastors are not going to be exceptions.

Proverbs 22:29

[29] Do you see a man skillful in his work?
He will stand before kings;
he will not stand before obscure men. (ESV)

While the AI summary of topics is a great place to start and ask specific questions. This is not a substitute for deeply understanding a topic. A part of your duty of teaching is to deeply understand a topic. You have a high level of responsibility that the AI does not.

Don’t use AI to write Sermons

Again, AI summary is not a substitute for deep knowledge. While AI can be a short cut for this upcoming Sunday, it will hinder you in the long term. Using AI to write sermons will lead you to lose your ability to write sermons. Every Sunday is a chance for your sermon writing and knowledge of God to deepen. Don’t sacrifice that depth on the altar of convenience.

Additionally, God wants to work alongside you. While AI is a useful tool and I believe God can still work through AI sermons, this isn’t God’s design. In the Garden, God worked alongside Adam and one day, we will be back to paradise, working alongside God. Short changing sermon preparation is short changing time spent with God.

If everything is a nail, you might be a hammer.

AI is a very useful tool. However, it is still just a tool. AI can be great at answering specific questions and a starting point for research but it isn’t a substitution for digging into source material. Be weary that you don’t turn AI into a hammer and turn everything into a nail.

Sources

[1] Wiggers, S.-J. (2026, February 23). Anthropic study: AI coding assistance reduces developer skill mastery by 17%. InfoQ. https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/02/ai-coding-skill-formation/

[2] Shen, J. H., & Tamkin, A. (2026, January 29). How AI impacts skill formation (arXiv:2601.20245). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.20245

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license.

Release Date: March 24, 2026, noon

Last Updated: March 24, 2026, 11:34 a.m.