Ep 9: Don't Let AI Preach

AI can write your sermon in 90 seconds. It cannot tell you if your sermon has a point.

Most pastors are using AI tools in some form now — and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is what happens when a preacher lets AI do the heavy lifting. When the tool that was supposed to assist the process quietly starts replacing it.

In this episode, Jonathan McClintock draws a clear line between what AI can help with and what it cannot touch — and makes the case that there are three places in sermon preparation where no tool can replace the preacher.

The three places AI cannot replace you:

• In the text — The slow work of sitting with a passage is not inefficiency. It is formation. The text does its work on the preacher before the preacher does their work on the text. If you skip that, you will stand in the pulpit with information you did not earn.
• In the thinking — AI gives you content. It will not give you conviction. It generates ideas. It will not tell you which one is true. Determining the central claim of a sermon — the honest, precise Take-Home Truth — is the work of a preacher. A machine cannot do it.
• In knowing your people — AI doesn't know who sat in the third row last Sunday carrying a grief they haven't told anyone about. It doesn't know your community, your congregation, or what the text needs to say to them specifically this week. You do.

And then there's the line no tool can cross: when it comes to learning Scripture, applying Scripture, and listening to the prompting of the Holy Spirit — AI cannot do that.

Use AI. Just don't let it preach for you.

Transcript

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Well, AI is here to stay. And AI is not really the problem for the preacher. AI tools are useful. And most preachers are already using them in some form. And that's fine to an extent. But the problem is what happens when a preacher lets AI do the heavy lifting, lets AI do just about everything for them. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Clear Preaching Podcast. My name is Jonathan McClintock, and today we're going to talk about AI preaching for us and why that's not a good thing. When preachers begin letting AI do all the heavy lifting, when the tool that is really supposed to assist in processes quietly starts replacing the entire process. Now, we got to draw a clear line with some of these tools. In the same way, we've had to draw a clear line when it comes to other resources that we try to pass off as our own work. We have to make sure that we are fulfilling the calling God's place in our lives, and we're doing it with integrity, and we're doing it the right way. God never called us to dump everything into a machine and then just present it as if it was ours. You don't need prayer to dump it into a machine. You don't need the Holy Spirit to dump it into a machine. You don't need anything. You can do it all on your own with a machine helping you. A line's got to be drawn somewhere. And I'm going to propose what that line should look like in this episode. Can AI assist a preacher? Can AI assist a communicator of God's Word? I do believe so. But the preacher must never surrender to AI. When AI replaces the preacher, the congregation feels it. They feel the difference. They may just not be able to put their finger on it. There's at least three ways. I'm starting with these three. I might do some follow-up podcasts on this, but there's at least three places AI cannot replace you. It can't replace you in the text, it can't replace you in the thinking, and that can't replace you in knowing who your people are. So number one, preachers, you have to study the text yourself. Don't shortcut it by letting something, some machine, some algorithm, some scour and summarize for you. I don't think it's right to say, hey, I'm preaching on this. Give me all the information you can give me on this. There's something we miss if you do that. That slow work of sitting with the scriptures, sitting with the text. That slow work of doing that, that's not inefficiency. It's formation. When we sit with the text and we meditate on the text and we mull over the text, we wrestle with the text, we are being formed by the word. When we pass that off and surrender that to AI, we are not formed. We become formless preachers. We become preachers who are preaching from somebody else's manuscript. When we sit with the text, we study the text, the text does its work on the preacher before the preacher does its work on, but does his or her work on the text. The text is able to do the work inside the preacher before the preacher ever takes the text and works with it. So study the text for yourself. What gets lost when you skip that? When you hand that off to somebody or something else, you know, AI can scour a passage in seconds, AI can look over that in seconds, AI can summarize commentaries, AI can pull cross-references, AI can generate observations. I have seen several posts on social media over the last week or so on programs people are putting out there, inviting you to pay $39.99 and you can get these, all these prompts to put into AI, all these prompts to give it to help you scour the internet and scour the commentaries and draw conclusions from it. Don't do it. Something happens, something gets lost when you skip the process of studying the text yourself. AI cannot sit with a word until it opens up something. AI does not notice what doesn't fit. AI doesn't let the text form the preacher. AI does not encounter the passage. We can't hand this stuff off to AI. I believe in using tools. I use AI every day. Okay? In all facets of my life, I use it. I use AI. I am not an anti-AI guy. Yes, does part of it scare me? Yes, it scares me. But I would rather learn it and know it and understand it so I can control what I can control. But what I'm trying to say today is the preacher cannot surrender the process to AI. He can't do it. You've got to sit with the passage, you've got to sit with the text. Your congregation can tell the difference between a preacher who encountered the text and one who read a summary of it. Your people will see it. Your people will sense it. They will know if that really changed you or if you just grab something that will spit out to you and you begin to pass it off as something that was not yours in the first place. So sit with the text. Study the text yourself. Secondly, do your own deep thinking. Don't surrender truth to a machine. AI will give you content, and sometimes it'll be great content. AI will generate ideas, and sometimes they will be great ideas. AI can produce even a take-home truth. It can. But though it gives you content, it will not give you conviction. Though it generates ideas, it will not tell you which one is true. And though it produces a take-home truth, it cannot know if that truth is what the text is actually saying. It takes more than that. It takes doing your own deep thinking. The last podcast we did last week, we talked about this clear preaching framework and how it simplifies things. But I was clear to tell you, it might simplify the process, but it doesn't make the process any easier because you still got to do the hard work. You still got to sit with that text and think about that text and grapple and wrestle with that text and wrestle with what God's wanting you to speak from that text and wrestle with the idea and make that idea into something that can be preached. I believe AI can help clarify. If you've got an idea, you've got a sentence, you're trying to really clarify and make it come across cleaner. I think you can throw that into AI, that sentence, and say, how could I say this differently? And let it spit out a couple different ideas to you. But you do that in portion. You don't throw your whole message in there. You don't throw a bunch of commentaries in there and say, build me a message. You don't throw the text in there and say, build me a message. Do not shortcut the process of being formed by the word. Do your own deep thinking. When the deep thinking gets skipped, the deep thinking work, sitting with that text until you know what it's about, writing and rewriting the central claim, until it's honest, until it's precise. That's the work of the preacher. But when a preacher skips it, the congregation gets a sermon that sounds confident but really has no depth. Hey, I've worked with AI enough to know when it spits out something, it might sound good on the surface and then realize that's as deep as it goes. There's nothing beneath the surface. It's shallow. The word of God is not shallow. Sit with that word, think on that word. Ask yourself before you finalize your sermon: did I determine this take-home truth or did I accept the one a machine handed me? Do the deep thinking yourself. Study the text yourself. Do the deep thinking yourself. Number three, wrestle with what it means for your people. Wrestle with what it means for your people. Hear me. AI does not know your congregation. AI does not know your people. They do not know these, the intricate parts of their lives that you have invested in. AI does not know your people, you know your people. And the application of a sermon is not a generic exercise. It's not something that can just be spit out. It's the work, application is the work of a shepherd. So wrestle with what it means for your people. AI, there's some things AI doesn't know about your church. AI doesn't know who sat in the third row last Sunday carrying a grief they haven't told anyone about. AI does not know which family's hanging on by a thread in your congregation. AI does not know what your community's been through this week. AI does not know what they're afraid or afraid of or what they're hoping for. And AI does not know what the text needs to say to them specifically this week. AI might be an amazing tool that's been created, but it is limited. It is limited. It cannot take the place of the preacher, and it cannot take the place of the work you as the preacher gotta do. AI can generate application points. It cannot generate the specific pastoral word your congregation needs from that person they trust the most. So wrestle with what it means for your people. Don't surrender everything to AI. Again, I'm pro-AI for a lot of things. And some of you might be upset that I'm pro-AI about some things. I am. I say let's learn it. I say let's become good at it. I say let's learn how to control it and take advantage of it so we know what to, we know what to see. We can recognize it. We know what to prepare for. But as a preacher, you cannot surrender to AI, what God has called you to do. When it comes to learning scripture, applying scripture, and listening to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, AI cannot do that. No tool can. A commentary can't do that. Somebody else's sermon can't do that. A book can't do that. Your peer can't do that. This is the work of a preacher who shows up, who opens the word, and does the slow and sacred work of preparation. Learning scripture, applying scripture, and hearing from the Holy Spirit. AI, there's there's as I said, continually help in some areas. Forming, brainstorming an illustration, cleaning up a language, like I said, uh a statement that you want to make. But use it. Just don't let it preach for you. Use it for the right things. But study the text yourself. Do your own deep thinking. Wrestle with what the truth means for your people. Your congregation needs you in the pulpit. They don't need AI. They don't need an AI pastor. They need you. They don't need a summary of what a machine spit out. They need you. They need your heart that sat with that text. They need your spirit, your ears that listened to the spirit speak. They need you. They need you. So don't let AI preach for you. Do the hard work. Study the text. Sit with it. Commune with the spirit. And let God use you and do the work through you. Thanks for joining us on the Clear Preaching podcast this week. God bless you and all that you do for His coming.