Your AI Sermon is Showing

my ministry’s policy on artificial intelligence

Earlier today I met with our marketing director to go over the Bible studies and teaching materials for our ministry’s summer launch. We hand-wrote our notes to be later compiled for the team. Eventually, I’ll take the sketches and scribbles to my office and start outlining each page, each piece, writing them in 20 minute increments (probably with a baby in my lap)¹.

It’s slow work. I’m the bottleneck in our little ministry team of twelve people: I write the content for our verse by verse studies, the curriculum for use in small groups and churches, the contracted books for Harper and Lifeway, and even the card sets for discipling children — church holidays, anxiety, prayer. It would go much faster if we automated my writing process. Artificial intelligence could cut my work down by more than half, speed up my writing and stop the bottleneck.

But I will never use AI for my writing and ministry creation. It is not just against my conscience; I believe using AI for spiritual creation goes against the design of humanity itself.

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In a recent post on Instagram and Facebook, a Christian singer shared a carousel of guidance on “how to pray during times of war”. A timely post — except it appears it wasn’t written by him. All evidence points to ChatGPT, and it goes beyond em dashes.

We find the usual criminals: bolded headings, bulleted lists, verses quoted but not written out (whole verses cannot be quoted by Chat due to copyright laws), quotations around each bullet, a quaint summary of the bullets characterized by Chat’s forced parallelism. Nowhere in his post is the use of AI admitted, despite the signs. He receives applause and credit for this “spiritual guidance”, guidance which likely amounts to no more than entering a prompt into a machine.

Is this the best we can do? Is this the work of worship leaders, the prophets, the evangelists and shepherds? The best we can manage to give to our people, the Christ they are to receive from us, must first be filtered through a machine?

Using AI for sermon and homily development has become such a problem, even the pope addressed it². My direct messages regularly harbor questions from concerned congregants, each wondering how to talk to their pastors about AI usage in sermons. Some say the sermons transformed overnight, such an obvious change from usual preaching the only viable explanations are supernatural empowerment or artificial intelligence.

And this strikes the heart of it: we have traded the empowerment of the Spirit in ministry for the efficiency of AI. We aren’t interested in doing less, better. We want to do more, faster. And the only way to accomplish the latter is to keep pace with the prevailing “tools” offered to us.

Whenever I bring up my hesitations about AI and ministry the response is always: “It’s a tool, like anything, it can be used for good or bad!”³ It’s true, AI is a tool — and as you’ll see in my ministry AI policy below I believe it has some helpful uses, mostly within the realm of data analysis and SEO. I am not opposed to the use of AI for impersonal, administrative tasks. But calling it a “tool” as code for “morally neutral” and “usable in all settings and for all purposes” is undiscerning and irresponsible. It smacks of asking forgiveness instead of permission.

Tools are used to build and create. A hammer in a human hand binds wood into a structure. A nail gun will do this even faster, though it still requires a human hand. It also requires a human mind to know where to place the nails, what boards to nail together, and how the whole structure should be designed for longevity and hopefully, beauty too. This work, when done sincerely and to the glory of the Lord, sets us apart from animals as creatures who image God. The creation of beauty, goodness and truth points to our innate God-likeness.

Work existed before the Fall of humanity. Adam and Eve were called to tend the garden and care for the creatures within it. This is one of the ways they (and we) image God: God spent six days working to create, design, innovate, and make life ex nihilo. Work is good. It existed before sin and it will exist after sin is eradicated. Due to the fallenness of this world, work is now marred with resistance, pain, and struggle. But work, especially creative work, is a partnership with the Lord. We image Him when we do work well.

So using a nail gun rather than a hammer — a matter of efficiency — does not undermine God’s design for human creation. One may wonder how this technology differs from the “tool” of AI. First, the hammer is not discipling souls. It is not exegeting Scripture or telling you how to pray in times of war. Second, the nail gun and hammer still require human effort, human design, human intention, and human creation. If you’re building a quality structure, these cannot be automated. It’s intriguing that the skilled trades — jobs that must be done with human hands — are expanding their needs for human talent because “AI cannot provide in-person troubleshooting, building, or repairs for items that complete those jobs”.⁴

The trades use tools. But these tools do not compromise humanity; they preserve it. Their tools are still dependent on human innovation, human creativity, and human effort. Anyone who has spent a day on a job site knows you’ll save some energy using a nail gun instead of a hammer, but you’ll still end the day tired. Building, especially building well, cannot be shortcut.⁵

When ministers write sermons, they too are building something. We’re building a biblical case for the topic. We’re building a message of truth and grace. Most of all, we are building up our hearers in the Spirit. This is a heavy responsibility. Teachers are accountable for how and what they teach (James 3:1). Preachers of the past reveal how the process of sermon development is vital to both the sermon and the preacher. Shortcutting this process (read: shortcutting study skill, focus, hermeneutics, and the struggle of writing) doesn’t just hollow out the sermon; it hollows out the teacher. John Wesley said this about preaching:

“It is no marvel that the devil does not love field preaching! Neither do I; I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit. But where is my zeal if I do not trample all these underfoot in order to save one more soul?”

Spurgeon said something similar:

“A man ought always to be good company for himself, and he ought also to be able to catechise himself; he who is not fit to be his own schoolmaster is not fit to be schoolmaster to other people. If you cannot catechise your own heart, and drill a truth into your own soul, you do not know how to teach other people. I believe the best preaching in the world is that which is done at home.”⁶

This was said about Jonathan Edwards’ preaching process:

“You can only preach what you know, so Edwards worked to know much about God and Scripture. This was not knowledge for its own sake, but to deepen his relationship with God and to share his findings with his flock. That sharing generally took the form of extended sermons, written word-for-word, which he would quote and read to his people. He followed the pattern of preaching in his day: explanation of the text, development of the doctrine there, and an extended application. He usually prepared three, hour-long sermons each week. Around 1,200 of these works have survived.”⁷

The “itinerant” part of my ministry has been spent mostly in evangelicalism, and it is sad to say most American pastors, teachers and leaders aren’t looking to preachers of centuries past as a model for lasting ministry. This is a shame; the work of Wesley, Spurgeon, Edwards, Booth, Allen and Jasper have much to teach us. There is a reason those sermons are still bearing fruit centuries after their speakers lay silent. But to most evangelicals, these works are irrelevant, out of date, and hard to read. Instead, pastors are modeling themselves after Judah Smith, Craig Groeschel, Levi Lusko, Andy Stanley and the like — the gurus of Christian cultural engagement. I’m not saying these pastors are universally flawed; God can and does use all kinds of kinds to bring people to the truth. But I think it’s worth noting that Big Evangelicalism’s obsession with relevance and modernity, its rapacious need for content, was an onramp to its acceptance of AI.

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I’m a Bible teacher. In my field of ministry, it’s normative to have 2-6 “stock sermons” for events. These are messages related to your books (sometimes based on a chapter of said book). If you stay on the circuit long enough, teaching alongside the same leaders, you’ll hear the same message multiple times. In some ways, this makes sense. If you’re not a natural preacher, if you want to stay true to one essential message, if you don’t speak often or are bi-vocational, having stock sermons ready to practice and re-launch may be helpful.

But what many lay Christians don’t know is the price tag attached. For some of the top preachers and teachers in America (female), the going rate for a message they gave at multiple other churches is $3,000 to $7,000 — just to get up there and speak. This does NOT include travel and hotel reimbursement.

Before AI was even on the scene, evangelical preachers (male and female) were already maximizing efficiency in their preaching. It’s not a big jump to have AI help you write, create, and innovate new messages when the accepted attitude among leaders is “efficiency first”. But what if the canned message isn’t what this particular congregation needs? Did you even ask the Lord His opinion? Did you pray for the people about to hear you? Did you ask the ministry team what they’ve been discipling their people into, or what these men and women have gone through in the last year? Ministry coaches will tell you to do what “makes sense” and allows you to do more, faster. Evangelical church culture is painfully corporate in this way. We come to it with good hearts and big dreams and are crushed by the magnitude of work to be done. The answer, we’re told, is to farm out our brains and hands and souls to the machine. It’s just a tool. We’ll reach more people this way.

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Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, knew the temptation of reaching the masses:

“I know your ambition, young man; you want to preach here, to these thousands; be content, and begin with the ones. Your Master was not ashamed to sit on the well and preach to one, and when he had finished his sermon he had really done good to all the city of Samaria, for that one woman became a missionary to her friends. Timidity often prevents our being useful in this direction, but we must not give way to it; it must not be tolerated that Christ should be unknown through our silence, and sinners unwarned through our negligence.”

It is more work, and slower work, to write sermons and messages the old-fashioned way. But it’s work that forms you. It’s partnership with the person of God. There is no greater joy than to struggle and study a message, then to see the uplifted faces of women (in my case) rapt with attention on the Word of God. How could I compromise their trust? How could I let a machine outline a message, then attempt to stamp it with the Spirit? In our quest to make AI morally neutral for creative pursuits, we’ve forgotten that writing and preaching are forming practices. They form our hearers. They form us. Like it or not, using AI to write, outline, and exegete spiritual work is forming us away from the image of God and toward the impersonal. In our quest to reach the many, we’ve forgotten about the one: individual souls who need truth thoughtfully stewarded, and our own soul, whose ability to live the Scriptures written about is directly affected by idolatry of efficiency.

Earlier this year I received a notice in the mail that my first published book, Stop Calling Me Beautiful, was part of a Works List of pirated materials in a class action lawsuit with Anthropic AI. My book, along with thousands of others, was used in alleged violation of copyright to train AI systems. I am currently awaiting recompense from the settlement. Authors, writers, and Christian leaders must be aware that AI is not neutral. People are already being affected — and their work, work of their hands and minds, is already being abused.

Below you will find the AI policy of Every Woman a Theologian. It outlines the ways we use it for administration and the ways we don’t use it for creation and exegesis. I recognize that some of you will disagree with my thoughts and conclusions here, but I hope what I’ve shared has given you some things to consider in the world of Christian creativity and AI.

Similar thoughts, from a lay perspective, can be found here by Leah | Blessed Endurance .

Laura Wifler also did a series on AI that may be helpful.

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Every Woman a Theologian

Artificial Intelligence Policy

Effective: March 1, 2026

With the increased use of artificial intelligence (ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Gemini, etc.) in creative and spiritual spaces, Every Woman a Theologian leadership finds it necessary to articulate a company policy on the usage of AI for our products, studies, marketing, and website. As a Christian company, stewarding the hearts and minds of our readers is of utmost importance. Their trust in us is our highest priority. AI is controversial, with some believers abstaining from it completely and others using it to develop sermons, studies, and video content. There are many perspectives on when and how to use AI in spiritual spaces. This policy will outline the standards of Every Woman a Theologian for all employees and contractors working on our products.

The following policy is based on several truths I (Phylicia) find essential to Christian creation:

• Human beings are made in the image of God, and this image-bearing includes the use of our minds, wills, and emotions. The mind, will and emotions are expressed through language. The written word is powerful, even more when it is the Word of God. We should treat the ability to articulate His truths as a gift deserving of reverence, not a tool to be made more efficient.

• As heirs with Christ and the crowning glory of God’s creation, our image-bearing capacity includes the ability to create. One might say we co-create with God. When we delegate spiritual & artistic creation to a machine, we subvert, and invert, God’s design for humanity.

• The work of ministry is meant to be Spirit-led. Artificial intelligence can gather and summarize facts, but it is not led by the Spirit. Copying verbiage from AI sources not only atrophies the ability to study, it circumvents the vital process of listening to the Spirit of God in our work.

• Writing from AI, or posting prompted content as if it was written by a human, is deceptive to audiences and congregations who trust the author wrote it themselves. No AI-developed spiritual work should be published without admission of AI usage.

• Our blanket endorsement of and participation in artificial intelligence encourages other Christians to follow suit, often without discernment or caution. We simply do not know what AI will be capable of in the future, and godly wisdom requires sensitivity to our witness.

Employees and contractors may use AI for:

• Grammatical checks during proofing

• Searching for the classic art pieces and songs for Not So Quiet Time Guides

• Pulling quotes from podcast transcripts and videos

• Developing questions from an existing, human-written project

• Automatic replies to DMs (ManyChat)

• Critiquing and comparing titles, CTAs, and SEO-optimized marketing copy

• Transcribing audio

• Cleaning up audio files

• Sourcing quotes that are missing references

• Thesaurus and dictionary usage

• Developing YouTube descriptions and titles with SEO

• Google-like searching for articles on specific topics

• Brainstorming topics based on data from our audience

Employees and contractors may not use AI for:

• Writing devotionals, Bible studies, curriculum, or speaking outlines

• Developing biblical content for use in courses

• Exegeting biblical passages: asking what they mean, asking for context, etc.

• Creating videos for social media (use stock photography and video instead)

• Writing biblical content with AI the source, even if it is rephrased. You may use it to brainstorm ideas or gather articles, but content for studies and materials must be sourced from the articles themselves, not an AI summary of them.

• Creating art and music for card sets, studies, book covers, trailers and social media

Some software programs (e.g. Logos) and websites (e.g. BlueLetterBible) employ AI as part of their system. As long as the artificial intelligence is not being used to circumvent the study process, and responses are not being directly copied into EWAT materials, use of these programs is permissible for employees and contractors.

Past usage of AI at EWAT:

In the early days of the ministry I (Phylicia) was unaware of what AI was. I gave the creative department freedom to develop products with very little oversight. This resulted in three card sets (Sibling Relationship Cards, Teach Me the Gospel, Teach Me to Pray) and two audiobooks developed with artificial intelligence. Within the next two years, these will undergo a redesign to put these products in alignment with policy.

1. I’m writing this essay on my phone as the baby sleeps in my lap. She blinks drowsily to Paul Kingsnorth’s voice, adjusting in her sleep as I switch to a podcast interview instead of her usual Gregorian chants.

2. Not to rag on my own tradition… but if the Catholics are struggling with it, I’m sure evangelicals were doing it long before they were.

3. I wager this will be the line quoted back to us when AI takes over the world, it’s been repeated to me so many times.

4. In n Ai World, The Skilled Trades are Increasingly Alluring: Forbes

5. I have spent many days on a job site as the daughter of third-generation craftsman homebuilder. To my father, building is art. He’d often end the day standing back to stare at the work of his hands, enjoying the satisfaction of his creation.

6. 12 Spurgeon Quotes on Preaching: Spurgeon.org

7. Preaching with Jonathan Edwards: NAFWB