Can AI Preach My Sermon?

We have crossed a strange and significant line. For centuries, those who gathered to hear the preaching of God’s Word could safely assume that the messages they heard were prayerfully prepared by a human pastor. That pastor was someone called by God, shaped by Scripture, and burdened with the task of proclaiming it. In 2026, that assumption can no longer be made.

Recent polling confirms it. A study by Exponential titled The 2025 State of AI in the Church surveyed 594 pastors and church staff members across denominational lines. Nearly two-thirds admitted they are using AI tools like ChatGPT in sermon preparation. That is a stunning admission, though perhaps not a surprising one. We have been moving in this direction for some time.

Websites like ai-pastor.com openly advertise tailored sermons, devotionals, Scripture analyses, and even prayer support from chatbot “pastors.” Platforms such as SermonDone encourage ministers to copy, paste, and preach AI-generated messages. Even Barna reports that while pastors differ on the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence, 77 percent of U.S. pastors agree that God can work through AI.

That statement deserves careful thought.

Yes, God can work through anything He chooses. That truth, however, does not remove the responsibility pastors have to exercise discernment or to establish biblical and ethical boundaries. As AI unlocks new possibilities, it also raises serious questions, especially when it comes to preaching.

What follows are several reasons I believe using AI in sermon preparation is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.

1. The Role of the Holy Spirit in Sermon Preparation

This past week I was blessed to attend a conference on expository preaching. One message that stood out was given by Dr. Mark Minnick on the role of the Holy Spirit in preaching.

At one point, Dr. Minnick referenced the classic model of sermon preparation taught by G. Campbell Morgan. Morgan challenged preachers to begin by reading the preaching text one hundred times before ever putting pen to paper. He encouraged pastors not to consult commentaries until they had thoroughly immersed themselves in the passage. I remember receiving the same challenge during my own training.

That approach assumes something vital: God meets His servants in the slow, prayerful, and often difficult work of meditation on Scripture.

The temptation today is to bypass that process entirely. AI can instantly tell you what a passage “means,” how it has been outlined, illustrated, and applied elsewhere. From a technological perspective, this is efficiency at its peak. You get the destination without the journey. But the journey matters.

AI offers answers without requiring wrestling, prayer, waiting, or dependence on the Holy Spirit. Over time, that shortcut produces atrophy. A pastor who regularly relies on AI to exegete, illustrate, or apply Scripture will slowly lose the ability to do that work himself. Dependence on AI can replace dependence on God.

2. Atrophy and the Cost of Efficiency

Another issue is AI’s inability to distinguish between productive and unproductive work.

Exegeting and meditating on Scripture is not merely about producing a sermon manuscript. It is about spiritual formation. That formation shapes not only the congregation but also the pastor himself. In pastoral ministry, both the process and the result matter. The process forms our knowledge, affections, and character. It is often painful work, but it is productive and necessary work.

AI may save time, but it costs something far more valuable. It diminishes a pastor’s ability to be the shepherd his people need. AI can make a pastor more efficient. It cannot make him more godly.

Scripture consistently presents preaching as a primary responsibility of shepherds. Paul emphasizes teaching sound doctrine repeatedly in passages such as 1 Timothy 4:13, 2 Timothy 2:15 and 4:1–2, and Titus 2:1. In both the Old and New Testaments, preaching involves God’s human messenger proclaiming and explaining God’s Word to God’s people in a specific time and place. Nehemiah 8:8 and 1 Timothy 4:13 illustrate this pattern clearly.

Preaching is meant to shape the preacher before it ever instructs the hearer. Skipping the necessary hard work of sermon prep will never result in better sermons even if they sound more polished because AI helped you get there.

3. Authentic Preaching Requires Personality

We do not deliver God’s Word like a mailman delivering a package. We deliver it as appointed messengers who show up in person, in the flesh.

God did not erase the personalities of the prophets through whom He spoke. He spoke through them. Their messages reflected their backgrounds, experiences, and character traits. The truth they proclaimed was fully divine and genuinely human.

The authority of the message came from God. The delivery came through a person.

Word ministry is a joint presentation. The message is assimilated before it is proclaimed. The prophet was intellectually and verbally committed to what he preached.

AI can replicate tone, structure, and style. It cannot replicate embodied conviction or personal surrender to the truth being proclaimed.

4. AI Cannot Do Application Justice

Application is not merely the final portion of a sermon. The entire sermon is application. True application flows from a preacher who has personally engaged the text. He does not speak by hearsay. He speaks out of deep impression, conviction, and experience.

In my own sermon preparation, roughly 30 percent of the time is spent understanding the text. The remaining 70 percent is spent digesting it. That includes wrestling with it, feeling its weight, seeking to explain it clearly and correctly, discerning its significance for my life, and then applying it faithfully to the lives of first myself and then my people. That is the hardest work of preaching.

AI cannot apply Scripture to itself. It has no conscience to confront, no heart to examine, and no life to align with the Word. God created humans as relational beings for fellowship with Himself and with others. Technology cannot replace that design.

5. AI Is Not Always Right

AI models learn from the information they are fed. They generate responses based on probability, not truth. As a result, they can fabricate information. (Ed. Note: a little work with AI will show that this is far more often the case than not — use with care!)

Pastors who rely on AI to write sermons place themselves and their congregations in a dangerous position. Not only are they bypassing the formative disciplines of study and meditation, but they also risk teaching things that are simply incorrect. Do you really think that the bulk of the information AI is drawing from that’s available online is correct? I certainly don’t.

Handling God’s Word carelessly is no small matter. Using AI to help you interpret and then preach a text is, in my estimation, a careless act.

A Necessary Word of Balance

None of this is to say that AI has no legitimate uses.

Like other technologies, it can be helpful when used wisely and sparingly. AI can assist with what some people refer to as “non-content-producing” tasks such as checking grammar, organizing schedules, generating checklists, or reading aloud human-authored material. Our own church uses some of this technology to help with the translation of our services into multiple languages. I’ve used AI to help formulate calendar planning or to help generate tasks specific to certain needs. I’ve even found it to be a more helpful tool than Google in discovering proper sourcing for where quotations may have come from in books.

There are many proper uses of AI but even then, caution is necessary. AI’s tendency to fabricate requires careful verification. Technology is a gift, but it makes a terrible master.

Silicon Valley insists that we must jump on the AI bus or be left behind. Pastors should resist that pressure. Our task has not changed.

Be thankful for technology, but do not believe it can fundamentally improve your calling.

Pastors do not need to lead the charge in technological advancement. We need to give ourselves to the Word. We must study it until we know it, know it until we love it, and then preach it for the spiritual good of God’s people.

A Final Word to Brother Pastors

AI cannot address humanity’s greatest problem. People are still sinners. The world is still under God’s wrath. AI may improve convenience, but it cannot change hearts.

God changes hearts through His Word. And He has entrusted that proclamation to us. Do not let AI replace you, pastor. You are the appointed messenger of God’s Word to your people.

---

Caleb Phelps is the pastor of Faith Baptist Church, Taylors, SC. This article first appeared in the Echoes of Faith newsletter. We republish it here with permission.

[Editor’s note: Caleb wrote this article himself, but we relied on AI to generate the image for the article. So far as we know, no robot has really occupied a pulpit, and we are pretty sure that day is a long way away.]