Having spent 8 years in pastoral ministry and 6+ years in software development, I've watched AI transform both worlds. Software engineers — arguably the profession most exposed to AI's capabilities — have been on the bleeding edge of figuring out how to work alongside these tools.
What they've learned is directly relevant to sermon preparation.
Here are 13 principles emerging from the AI engineering community that every pastor should understand before opening ChatGPT to work on next Sunday's message.
1. The Mindset Shift: AI as Collaborator, Not Oracle
Software engineers initially approached AI like a search engine — type a question, get an answer. That approach consistently fails.
The shift that changed everything: treating AI as a collaborator rather than an oracle. You don't ask AI to write your code (or sermon) for you. You work with it. You prompt, review, refine, prompt again. It's iterative. It's conversational.
For pastors: Don't type "write me a sermon on John 3:16." Instead, engage in dialogue. Share your initial thoughts, ask the AI to push back on your interpretation, request three possible illustrations for a specific point. Let it challenge and refine your thinking rather than replace it.
2. Context Engineering > Prompt Engineering
You've probably heard about "prompt engineering" — crafting the perfect instruction to get the best output. Engineers have learned that context engineering matters more.
Context engineering means giving the AI everything it needs to understand your situation. Not just "help me with this code," but "here's the full codebase, here's what the user is trying to accomplish, here's the coding style we use."
For pastors: Context is everything. Provide your theological tradition, your church's culture, the series this sermon fits into, what you preached last week, and specific concerns in your congregation.
A prompt like "write me an illustration about grace" gives the AI nothing to work with.
But "I'm preaching on Romans 5:8 to a congregation with many struggling marriages, in week three of a series on hope in hard times, and I need an illustration that connects sacrificial love to daily relationship choices" — that gives AI meaningful context.
3. The 70% Problem
Here's a painful lesson from AI engineering: AI gets you to about 70% quality remarkably fast. That last 30%? That's where the real work lives.
Engineers call this the "70% problem." AI accelerates the easy parts but often makes the hard parts harder, because now you're debugging AI-generated code you don't fully understand.
For pastors: AI can give you a solid first draft of an outline, generate several illustration options, or produce rough application points. But the work that makes a sermon yours — the theological nuance, the pastoral sensitivity, the local application — that last 30% still requires your sweat.
The danger is accepting 70% work because it's "good enough." It's not. Your congregation deserves better than B-minus sermons you didn't write.
4. Plan Before You Prompt
Skilled AI engineers don't jump straight into generating code. They plan first. They map out the architecture, identify the components, understand the dependencies. Only then do they start prompting.
Why? Because AI can't hold your entire mental model. If you don't know where you're going, AI will confidently lead you somewhere — but probably not where you need to be.
For pastors: Before you touch AI, know what you're trying to accomplish. What's your main idea? What's the movement of the sermon? What questions need answering?
5. The Review Bottleneck
AI produces content faster than humans can review it. Engineers discovered that the bottleneck shifted from production to review.
For pastors: Don't assume AI output is ready to preach. Every illustration needs fact-checking. Every theological claim needs scrutiny. Every Scripture reference needs verification.
You'll spend as much time reviewing AI content as you would writing it yourself — sometimes more. That's not a failure of AI; it's the nature of working with a tool that's often confidently wrong.
6. Never Preach What You Can't Explain
Engineering teams have a rule: never ship code you don't understand. If you can't explain why the code works, you can't debug it when it breaks. And it will break.
For pastors: Never preach content you don't understand. If AI generates a theological point you can't unpack when someone asks about it after church, you shouldn't be saying it from the pulpit.
This is about integrity. It's about being able to look someone in the eye during a counseling session and explain what you meant. It's about not being exposed as someone who preached words they didn't really own.
7. Know Where AI Shines — and Where It Struggles
Engineers have learned that AI excels at certain tasks: brainstorming options, synthesizing large documents, identifying patterns, generating first drafts.
It struggles with: precision work, novel situations, complex reasoning chains, and anything requiring real-world verification.
For pastors:
- AI is great for: brainstorming sermon angles, generating illustration ideas, identifying themes across a passage, creating first-draft outlines
- AI struggles with: original theological insight, pastoral sensitivity, accurate historical claims, nuance about your specific congregation
Don't outsource what it can't deliver.
8. Guard Against Skill Erosion
Engineers are worried about skill atrophy. When AI handles the hard problems, engineers don't develop the deep understanding that comes from wrestling with complexity.
For pastors: There's a real risk that relying too heavily on AI erodes your homiletical muscles. If AI always generates your illustrations, you'll never develop the discipline of observation that produces original ones. If AI always outlines your sermons, you may lose the ability to see structure in a text yourself.
This isn't an argument against using AI. It's an argument for intentional use — augmenting your skills rather than replacing them.
9. Build a Learnings File
Many AI-using engineers maintain a "learnings file" — a running log of prompts that worked, outputs that failed, and lessons learned.
For pastors: Keep notes on what works in your AI-assisted prep. Which prompts consistently produce good results? Which areas do you always have to fix? What types of requests should you avoid entirely?
This kind of intentional reflection transforms you from someone using AI to someone who understands AI.
10. Vibe Preaching vs. Managed Homiletics
Engineers talk about "vibe coding" — accepting whatever AI generates because it feels close enough, without truly understanding or verifying it.
For pastors: There's such a thing as "vibe preaching" — letting AI handle so much of the work that you're essentially presenting content you don't fully own. It might sound fine. It might even be theologically accurate. But it's not yours.
Managed homiletics means staying in control. AI assists, but you decide. You review every output. You verify every claim. You rewrite in your voice. The sermon remains yours even when AI contributed.
11. Theological Guardrails Are Your Safety Net
Engineers build guardrails into AI systems — automated checks that catch errors before they reach production.
For pastors: Your theological guardrails include: your systematic theology training, your confessional standards, your accountability to elders and denominational oversight. Use them.
When AI generates something that feels slightly off but you can't articulate why — that's your theological intuition warning you. Don't ignore it. Dig deeper. Better to slow down and get it right than to confidently preach error.
12. Trio Preaching: Human-AI Partnership
The emerging model in software is human-AI-system collaboration: the AI proposes, the human reviews, and the system integrates what passes muster.
For pastors: Healthy AI-assisted sermon prep isn't you writing alone or AI writing for you. It's a structured partnership:
- You bring the calling, the study, the pastoral knowledge
- AI brings the processing power, the brainstorm capability, the first-draft speed
- Your theological framework filters what passes through
This model respects both what humans bring and what AI contributes, while keeping appropriate boundaries in place.
13. The Real Questions
Software engineers are asking hard questions: What does it mean to be a good engineer when AI can write code? What skills matter now? How do we maintain quality when production is essentially free?
Pastors face the same questions: What does faithful preaching look like when AI can generate sermons? What is the actual work of proclamation? How do we maintain integrity when content is cheap?
These questions don't have easy answers. But the pastors who ask them — who approach AI with theological seriousness and professional humility — will use these tools well.
The Bottom Line
AI isn't going away. It's getting better, faster, and more capable by the month. The question isn't whether to use it, but how to use it wisely.
Use AI as a collaborator, not an oracle. Provide rich context. Plan before you prompt. Review everything. Never preach what you can't explain. Guard your skills. Stay in control.
And above all, remember: the calling to preach isn't outsourceable. AI can help you prepare. But when you stand before your congregation, it must still be you — shaped by the Spirit, steeped in the Word, and speaking from a heart formed by years of pastoral ministry.
That's what these tools are for: making that work more effective, not replacing it.
Having navigated both the pulpit and the platform, I'm passionate about helping faith-driven organizations leverage technology wisely. If you're building tools for ministry or need guidance on AI implementation, let's connect.