AI and Preaching
Here’s How I’m Actually Using It, and a policy you can use in your church.
Hey, it’s been a while. Sorry about that.
Between coaching pastors, working with churches, serving on the team at LIFE here in NZ, chipping away at my Masters, Katie stepping into a campus pastor role, and all our kids being home together for the first time in years, the online world quietly dropped off my radar. I’ve been off social media for most of the year, and honestly, it’s been good for my soul.
But the AI conversation keeps coming up. In almost every coaching conversation I have with pastors, someone asks about it. And we’re just updating our policies at LIFE, so I figured it was time to put my thinking on paper.
Here’s where I’ve landed, and I’ll give you something practical you can take back to your team at the end.
The real issue isn’t AI. It’s attachment.
We don’t want pastors who are attached to AI.
We want pastors who are attached to the Word, the Spirit, and the people they serve.
That’s the frame I keep coming back to. Because the question isn’t really can we use AI- it’s what are we becoming dependent on? And when the answer to that question starts drifting toward a tool instead of toward God and community, we’ve got a problem worth naming.
Here’s what that can look like in practice - and none of these are hypothetical. I’ve seen versions of all three.
Staff dependency. A pastor who processes sermon anxiety or leadership pressure primarily with AI slowly loses the reflex to bring those things to the community. Vulnerability atrophies. Accountability goes with it.
Congregant counselling displacement. People arrive at pastoral appointments having already “talked it out” with AI, conclusions drawn, emotions managed, decisions half-made, without a real relationship doing any of the work. The AI becomes the de facto counsellor, with zero accountability and no skin in the game.
Discernment flattening. When AI becomes the primary thinking partner for major decisions, it’s easy to mistake a fluent, confident, validating response for genuine confirmation. The slower, messier work of prayer, elders, and waiting gets quietly bypassed.
AI can support tasks. It shouldn’t form persons.
That’s the line I keep drawing.
I’m discouraging AI use for younger preachers entirely
Confession: I’m tempted to short-cut the process myself. I’m a seasoned preacher and teacher, and I still feel the pull. So how much more so the younger ones coming through?
I started preaching at Bible college. I’d been following Jesus for less than a year. I’d essentially shipped myself off because I figured, if this really is the story of the salvation of the world, I better learn about it. I had a lifetime of Sunday school to catch up on.
As students, we were sent out to preach in small churches within a few hours’ drive. I don’t have my notes from back then, but I can tell you: those messages were average at best, probably awful. But doing the work, the study, the preparation, the refinement, the sweaty terror of standing up and saying something, set me on a learning curve I couldn’t have bought or shortcut.
Fast forward a few years, and I’m becoming a senior pastor at twenty-five, transitioning from preaching once a quarter to almost every week overnight. That’s when I found my process. That’s when the discipline got built in.
The secret isn’t the product at the end. It’s the process.
And AI, used too early, robs young preachers of the very thing that forms them.
Why this matters beyond just skill development
Here’s the thing I keep saying to pastors: it’s not information that changes people. It’s revelation - with the anointing of God on it.
And AI cannot give you that.
When we use AI to skip the wrestling, we’re skipping the parts where God has time to work on us, to wrestle with us, speak to us, expose us, and form us, before we stand up in front of his people. The formation of the preacher before the sermon is part of the sermon.
That’s not something you can outsource.
Here’s how I actually use it — my five-stage process
I’m not a slow adopter. I’m just trying to find the right balance between efficiency and serving a meal with actual substance and nutrients in it.
Here’s my process, and exactly where AI comes in, and where it doesn’t.
Stage 1 — Sitting with the passage in prayer (No AI) I aim for an hour. Just a Bible, a notebook, and whatever I notice. Thoughts, stories, connections, questions. I want to see what I can see before I hit the books.
Stage 2 — Research and reading (AI: yes, with guardrails). This is where I work through commentaries and relevant books, brainstorming everything interesting into a document. I use Claude to help consolidate information and surface source ideas, but I point it at the authors and sources I already trust, and I make sure it shows its work. The key: I don’t only use AI here. There’s something irreplaceable about reading and processing yourself. Slowing down if your friend.
Stage 3 — Brainstorming (No AI) Stories, angles, approaches, openings, closings. I’m answering: What am I actually saying? Why does it matter? What do I want people to do? How does this point to the gospel? How does it speak to where people actually live, the pulls of the heart and assumptions of culture?
Stage 4 — Message draft (No AI) I take my brainstorm and run it through the filter of those questions. Hook, key passage, points, gospel moment, close. This is mine.
Stage 5 — Refinement and feedback (AI: yes, carefully) Once I have a draft I’d be willing to preach, I put it into AI for feedback. It might find language I hadn’t landed on, flag something that doesn’t quite land, or notice a structural issue. I prayerfully consider what to take on board. Normally, less than 10% makes it in. The integrity of the message stays mine.
Three questions worth sitting with
Before I give you the policy, here are the questions I’d encourage you to take to your team, or just to yourself:
What are you becoming dependent on in your preparation process?
Are you still doing the slow work, the sitting, the wrestling, the waiting?
And is your preaching still yours, formed in you before it’s formed for them?
A policy you can adapt for your church or team
What follows is a policy you can use, Take it, adapt it, make it yours.
AI USE IN PASTORAL MINISTRY Protecting Pastoral Integrity
Guiding Principle
In preaching, teaching, platform ministry, pastoral leadership, and content creation, revelation must be received through Scripture and prayer. AI may assist with research and refinement, but it cannot replace discernment, and it cannot do the work of formation in you. That’s your responsibility. Do the study. Hear from God. Mine for revelation. Let it form you before you serve God’s people.
What you may use AI for
Accelerate research. Surface commentaries, cross-references, historical context, theological perspectives, then do your own evaluation and study.
Refine and edit your work. After you’ve done your own writing, AI can help sharpen clarity, grammar, structure, or flow.
Compare outlines after your own study is complete. The same way you’d consult a commentary. Never let an AI outline shape how you see a passage before you’ve sat with it yourself.
Administrative and logistical content. Announcements, event descriptions, follow-up emails, and appropriate uses that don’t involve pastoral revelation.
Disclose AI-assisted work appropriately. When AI has played a meaningful role in content creation, be transparent with your team or leadership.
What you must not use AI for
Let AI be the source of your sermon or teaching. Revelation comes through Scripture, prayer, and your personal encounter with God. You cannot outsource that.
Use AI-generated content from the platform without doing the work yourself. If you haven’t studied it, prayed through it, and let it form you, it’s not yours to preach. Your congregation deserves your genuine encounter with God’s Word.
Use AI to replace your time in Scripture. Speed is not the goal of sermon prep. The wrestling is part of how God forms the pastor before the pastor forms the people.
Present AI-generated insights as your own spiritual revelation. There’s a difference between researching a passage and receiving from it. AI can do the former. Only you, in communion with the Holy Spirit, can do the latter.
Turn to AI for advice on a pastoral situation. AI has no relationship, no accountability, and no spiritual discernment. Bring complex pastoral matters to a more senior member of your team, that’s what they’re there for.
That’s where I’ve landed. I hope it gives you something to work with and something to talk about with your team.
If you found this helpful, pass it on to another pastor who’s wrestling with the same questions. We’re all figuring this out together.
