Should Pastors Use AI While Writing Sermons?

Published: July 30, 2025

Church-roof — Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash

By India McCarty

As people around the world grow used to the presence of AI in almost every part of their lives, what about in the church?

“Why not, why can’t, and why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit work through AI?” Naomi Sease Carriker, a pastor at Messiah of the Mountains, a Lutheran church in Burnsville, North Carolina, told the Religion News Service.

Carriker related when she used ChaptGPT to write a 900-word sermon but admitted it felt wrong. She didn’t use the sermon in a service but has turned to AI to help her research and edit — and she’s not the only one wondering what AI’s place in the church should be.

“When you look at the history of all religions, they’ve always engaged with different forms of automation, different forms of technological advancement,” Beth Singler, an anthropologist who studies religion and AI and assistant professor in digital religion(s) at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said. “The printing press was put to work, first of all, for religious texts, in the European context.”

Plenty of people agree with Carriker and Singler. A recent survey from the Barna Group found that 12% of pastors are comfortable using the technology to write a sermon, while 43% see the practical uses of AI when it comes to preparation and research.

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While many point to the ease AI brings to tasks like researching and writing a sermon, others have said that the work you put into it is valuable.

“To me, the drudgery is part of the point,” Brad East, who teaches theology at Abilene Christian University in West Texas, said. “I do not want pastors preaching sermons out of Scripture who themselves do not read or study Scripture. I just don’t. It is missing the point of what we are trying to do there.”

East also argued against the use of AI in the church in an op-ed for Christianity Today, titled, “AI Has No Place In The Pulpit.”

“A preacher who wants to be liberated from preparing to preach sounds like someone who wants to quit altogether,” he wrote. “There may be good reasons to quit, but AI isn’t an acceptable workaround. The pastoral vocation is what it is.”

Paul Hoffman, pastor of Evangelical Friends Church in Middletown, Rhode Island, agreed, explaining that AI does not have the personal relationships church leaders have with their congregations.

“Does AI know the stories of your people? Do they know about the miscarriage? Do they know about the divorce? Do they know about the abuse? How can an algorithm comprehend lived human experience?” Hoffman asked.

The church is hardly the only organization grappling with the moral questions that come with AI, but for now, it seems that most Christians would prefer to keep the technology out of the church as much as possible.

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