Churches are encountering artificial intelligence in ways that feel sudden and awkward, and a recent survey shows clergy are split on how far to let it in. Some pastors are open to using AI as a research tool while far fewer trust it to craft sermons, and a prominent commentator warned that outsourcing spiritual work carries real risks. The debate raises questions about authenticity, pastoral formation, and how congregations should respond when technology touches the pulpit.
A Barna study captures the tension plainly: only 12% of pastors said they were comfortable using AI to write sermons, while 43% felt it was acceptable to use AI for researching and preparing a sermon. The same survey reported that 77% of U.S. pastors agreed that “God can work through AI,” and 58% said they “are comfortable using AI to assist in some form of communication.” Those numbers show curiosity and caution side by side, with many leaders drawing a line between background help and front-facing authorship.
BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is horrified. Her reaction centers on the fear that a computer-produced message can look like a pastor’s own spiritual labor when it is not, and that congregations expect the pulpit to reflect prayerful engagement rather than a polished algorithmic summary.
“Spiritual maturity is not going to happen through telling ChatGPT, ‘Write me a three-part sermon on gratitude,’ and then reading that off to the congregation,” she comments. “Plus, using ChatGPT or any AI to write your sermon is dishonest because everyone is assuming that that’s something that you wrote that God revealed to you through his word and through prayer,” she says. Those lines point to two separate worries: that growth requires personal shepherding and that honesty about origins matters for trust.
“But it’s not. It’s not revelation from God, a special revelation that we find in Scripture.” “It is something that was summarized by a computer, and it is also taking someone else’s work. Again, all of these artificial intelligence machines are just taking ideas that have already been iterated by someone else,” she continues. The emphasis here is on the difference between inspiration tied to Scripture and mechanically derived summaries that stitch together existing human output.
“It also bypasses the pastor’s own engagement with Scripture and the work of preparing the sermon himself. You want your pastor to be sanctified and washed in the word. You want him to be engaging with Scripture. … You want him to be further ahead spiritually than you are,” she adds. “And that cannot happen if he is outsourcing that sanctifying act to AI.” Those words frame sermon preparation as a formative discipline, not merely a content-production task, and they underline the pastoral role in modeling spiritual growth.
The practical reality is messy: AI tools can speed research, provide outlines, and suggest illustrations, and many ministers will experiment with those efficiencies. At the same time, the Barna numbers and the sharp critique from commentators make clear that congregations and clergy must make intentional choices about boundaries, transparency, and the place of prayerful study in ministry. Asking whether a sermon came from a human heart shaped by Scripture or a machine that repackages others’ work is a question that will only grow in importance as technology becomes more common in church life.
