On July 22 this year, a new Artificial Intelligence application named Pulpit AI was released. Pastor friends Jake Sweetman and Michael Whittle designed it to help busy pastors turn their sermons into content. According to Whittle, the app allows pastors to upload their sermons in any format, such as audio, video, or manuscript. It then automatically turns the sermon into content like discussion questions, group studies, devotionals, social media content, and anything else a pastor would need. The app is being touted primarily as a time saver.

“The reality is that pastors put lots of hours into preparing a sermon,” Sweetman told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview. Sweetman said he spends “anywhere from 10 to 15 hours a week writing a sermon.” Despite all this work, “for most preachers, their sermon doesn’t live on beyond the Sunday,” he said, “except for maybe getting uploaded to a podcast.” While the app was still being designed, Michael Whittle pointed out to American Family News that PulpitAI doesn’t replace the pastor or the sermon itself. Pastors still have to put in the work to write their sermons. The target audience for Pulpit AI is a small- to medium-sized church that wants to create content for social media but doesn’t have the budget, time, and staff to do it.

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The initial couple of reviews by users have been positive, especially since it involves the use of AI on the back end, not for sermon writing, as has been done by some using ChatGPT and by a Lutheran church in Germany that used a chatbot to conduct a whole service, including the sermon. One user points out that you can still edit what the app puts out and cautions that it should be carefully reviewed before being put out in posts, e-mails, studies, etc. While the AI used is based on years of training based on the syndication of Christian podcasts. Discernment is needed, he said, because certain theological concepts like faith can be out of sync with what a church denomination teaches or what a pastor personally believes.

Why should we be concerned?

If, initially, skeptical reviewers were won over by PulpitAI’s ability to create content for busy pastors after a sermon so that it would have a more significant impact and be remembered better, why should we be concerned?

I see at least five reasons:

First and most importantly, we must be careful about anything artificial. God’s desire for His pastors is that they rely on the Holy Spirit for sermon content and any other teaching for the upbuilding of the church. Why rely on Him to give us what He wants us to say in a sermon but not for secondary content associated with it, like devotionals and group studies? And why should we rely on technology for a sermon to be remembered? In stark contrast to reliance on AI, Paul’s ministry philosophy comes to mind:

And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:4-6).

As a pastor, I believe it is critical to fully surrender to the Holy Spirit for the impact and remembrance of our sermons. He is the One Who brings the Word to life, speaks through our words, and uses them to build up our congregations in the faith. Spiritual truths come from the Holy Spirit, not from computers. Relying on AI puts us in danger of undermining God’s all-sufficiency at work in our ministry to the people He has entrusted to us. I fear reliance on AI cuts a pastor off from the Holy Spirit’s work through post-sermon resources.

Secondly, reliance on AI puts congregations at risk of false teaching. AI is not foolproof. What if a busy pastor does not take the time to proofread its output? AI has already been known to start developing its own thought, so what is to say that it wouldn’t veer from biblically sound theology and spiritual things because it is guided by computerized logic? Biblical illiteracy is an epidemic in today’s Church, so many will not be able to notice when AI-generated devotionals or bible studies are off-center from sound biblical doctrine.

(Editor’s note: At IFA, we have had some experience with AI, but it has a pro-LGBT bias and is generally left-leaning. It sometimes adds this bias even when asked to summarize something that does not have this bias. Imagine how this might impact devotional and study materials, even based on a solid sermon.)

Thirdly, AI can promote spiritual isolation. God’s design for His Church is to be a body of believers that builds itself up through relationships. New Testament teaching about church leadership implies that it also happens through relationships. Discussion questions, devotionals, or group studies based on the pastor’s sermon should be seen as an extension of what the pastor received from the Holy Spirit. They lose their power when they are computer-generated. The Holy Spirit inspires people and flows through relationships – not machines. Churches that increasingly rely on technology and programs lose their spiritual power.

Fourthly, the influence of AI can take over. Our dependence on technology began with a slow creep. Little by little, we started using gadgets, gizmos, software, and apps that seemed to make life easier. Then the creep turned into a run, and technology rapidly swallowed our lives to the degree that we can’t do anything without it anymore. Similarly, AI can begin by helping busy pastors, not realizing the dangers of relying on technology rather than the Holy Spirit. Soon, it becomes attractive to turn to AI for other things like sermon preparation that are supposed to be done through personal study and listening to the Holy Spirit. Before you know it, teaching and preaching have become completely devoid of any divine inspiration and have lost the life-changing power for which they were intended.

Fifthly, it enables, rather than solves, the pastor’s bigger problem of being too busy. If a pastor is too busy to pray, listen to the Holy Spirit, and craft sermons and follow-up materials, he is simply too busy. If he thinks AI can replace the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of his congregation, he is operating in the flesh rather than the Spirit.

How To Pray

These concerns fuel our need to pray for the American Church in this age of rapid technological advance. Here are a few pointers:

1. Pray for an awakening to the power of the Holy Spirit and how He wants to work in the Church, in which He sovereignly appoints gifts and works through them to build up believers in their faith.
2. Pray for a growing hunger for God’s Word in the hearts of believers that will give them discernment.
3. Pray for a re-imagining of the pastorate. Pastors should be freed from the tyranny of the urgent by greater congregational ownership of the Church’s ministries so they have ample time and mental bandwidth to listen to the Holy Spirit in all aspects of their teaching ministry.
4. Pray for our technology-dependent younger generations to develop a love for reading and not lose their ability to be quiet and hear from the Holy Spirit as He speaks through the teachings He deposited in pastors’ hearts.
5. Pray for a return to being relationship-driven churches. Technology isolates. The Holy Spirit unites and works from believer to believer. We quench Him by not doing life together and connecting to technology before we connect to each other. Have you ever sat in a restaurant surrounded by people who sat across from each other in silence while staring at their phones? That is where dependence on and addiction to technology can lead us. It must never happen in church.

Father, move in the hearts of pastors and leaders to never forsake their dependence on the Holy Spirit to create spiritual growth content in this technological age. Help them reorder their lives around a prayerful relationship with Him. Open their eyes to see the dangers of relying on AI to develop content meant to come from the Holy Spirit. Ignite in Your Church a hunger for the Holy Spirit, for prayerful reading and meditation on Your Word, and His power at work through the way You have designed Your Church. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Remco Brommet is a pastor, spiritual-growth teacher, and prayer leader with over 40 years of experience in Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the U.S. He was born and raised in the Netherlands and pastored his first church in Amsterdam. He moved to the U.S. in 1986. He and his wife, Jennifer, live north of Atlanta. When not writing books, he blogs at www.deeperlifeblog.com and assists his wife as a content developer and prayer coordinator for True Identity Ministries. Jennifer and Remco are passionate about bringing people into a deeper relationship with Christ.