When preachers use AI
Priest and entrepeneur Lisa Cressman on sermons in the machine age
No matter how much LinkedIn posts that are very clearly written by AI annoy me, they're probably not a sin. But I (Eleanor) found myself wondering recently: might there be instances where using AI to write could pose higher ethical stakes?
My question led me to Rev. Lisa Cressman, who has been an Episcopal priest in the US for 30 years. She runs Backstory Preaching, a business that helps preachers struggling with the weekly demands of sermon writing and delivery through education and community, and has seen religious leaders grappling with AI firsthand. Her team plans to release an LLM-based tool — with careful boundaries.
Why it matters: Lisa says that preachers who outsource sermon writing to AI are betraying their congregations and responsibilities, and also risking burnout. Her warning extends far beyond church. When we outsource the core creative work that defines us, we disconnect from what energizes us. To authentically serve others, we must engage deeply first.
Our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity, is below.
EW: Is it a problem if preachers are relying too much on AI or outsourcing the important task of writing sermons to a machine? Are they betraying the trust of their congregations? Are they betraying their responsibilities as a spiritual leader?
LC: Yes to all three questions. The idea that a sermon is just a box on the checklist, something to get done by Sunday, makes it a stressful project. Our approach says the preacher goes first. If we're hoping for transformation in our listeners, the preacher needs to be transformed first.
That means sitting with the text, finding the good news for ourselves, asking for God's help to be transformed. Once we find that Eureka moment, we have something genuine to say because we just experienced it. We get excited, which keeps us energized—because preaching Sunday after Sunday for 40 years, it's hard to stay excited.
That's the biggest problem with AI: it bypasses that entire process. The preacher says, "Great, I've checked this box off my list because I've got too many other things to do." That's what leads to burnout.
“That's the biggest problem with AI…The preacher says “Great, I've checked this box off my list because I've got too many other things to do.”…That's what leads to burnout.”
EW: What about the fact-checking aspect of AI?
LC: Not only does [using AI] bypass the human element, but it just gets its facts wrong. If you don't have enough biblical knowledge or theological background, you might not know that the AI got it wrong.
EW: Do preachers ever get feedback on sermons?
LC: As far as I know, preaching is the only art form that has no systemic capacity for editing. Everybody else has editors. For everybody else, it goes to Off Broadway before it goes to Broadway. Painters get critiqued by their teachers. But there is no profession of editing sermons.
“Preaching is the only art form that has no systemic capacity for editing.”
A 10-minute sermon is roughly 1,000 to 1,200 words, and there are a lot of Protestant denominations where their sermons are 30 minutes. Sunday after Sunday, for funerals, weddings, Holy Week. It’s an insane amount of material to produce, and nobody vets it before it goes public.
EW: What kind of instruction do preachers get in seminary for sermons?
LC: Most of us get one semester of preaching, and then we can take some electives. But it’s too complex an art form to learn in one semester. Let’s say seminary is music school, and that first semester the professor shoves a violin under your chin and puts a bow in your hand. At the end of that semester, you play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. At the end of the second semester, you play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with seven variations, but you’ll still be playing out of tune.
When you graduate from seminary, we're expected, and we expect ourselves, to play beautifully and in tune and be able to play jazz riffs on demand and never have another lesson. But the vast majority of us do not go to seminary with any kind of background that helps us with preaching. I came up with a nursing background; I knew how to take multiple-choice tests, but I didn't know how to write.
EW: The hard part is that preaching is not just writing either. You have to inspire, you have to be pithy, to sell, in a sense.
LC: Another thing that AI is good for is helping generate catchy and pithy sermon titles. In many Protestant denominations, the title of the sermon is on the outdoor kiosk.
But I also think that anybody, any preacher, who is using AI in any capacity, needs to disclose that. We at Backstory Preaching will never use AI to generate a sermon, but we might use it to help us with a title.
EW: We also disclose where we used AI at the bottom of our newsletter, too. Tell me about the AI tool that you’re developing.
LC: We were awarded a grant, and we got connected with a computer science professor who made an undergraduate semester class to create our AI tool. Ours is a closed system; we are not pulling stuff in from the web. We gave a definition of what constitutes an effective sermon, the rubrics behind the definition, and the process of getting into the heads of your listeners, the vision at the end, all of that stuff.
You upload a manuscript and use it as an editing tool. It shows you what's not effective, like pointing out if you have multiple messages when you intended one. It doesn't say "Here's what you should do"—it tells you how to make it better. Like a personal tutor.
We are still beta testing it. Once we feel confident, and we can give more instruction about how to use it — because our population is largely like me, with gray hair, so they're not educated in having a conversation with an AI tool — we can teach people.
EW: What is the definition of an effective sermon that the tool is based on?
LC: Our definition is that an effective sermon offers a clear message of good news that is authentic to the preacher, relevant to the listener, holds their attention and invites transformation.
EW: How will you offer it to your community?
LC: Our plan is that [the AI tool] will be made available in our year-round subscription community, and then we are probably going to sell it as a standalone subscription too. Once we feel confident and our members have used it, then we'll start putting it out to the public.
EW: What are some of the stresses and pain points of your users?
LC: Preachers don't know how to structure their time during the work week, so they write sermons late Saturday nights, stressed because it's not done for Sunday. The household stress is sky high—your spouse is free, but you're stuck writing. We've literally saved marriages with our [education and community] program.
Also, clergy can be friendly with congregations but not friends. Most found friends at church before seminary, so it's isolating. Many hold more liberal views than their congregations, creating theological isolation.
It's extremely stressful being clergy right now because people are so reactive. Even when the Beatitudes come up in our scheduled lectionary cycle, parishioners accuse us of having ulterior motives because it sounds political. More clergy retired during and after COVID than ever—mask requirements became the pastor's fault.
EW: That stress sounds like a recipe for writer’s block.
LC: It used to be just turning to the internet for a sermon, but AI is the same thing. Because when any of us are super stressed, it’s harder to make decisions. Being creative when you’re under that much stress makes AI look like the perfect solution.
EW: What’s the vision for Backstory Preaching, your business?
LC: The vision is that preachers will give their last sermon with as much joy as they do their first, that they feel like, “I'm not done, because I'm still encountering the good news for myself, and I want to be able to share that.” They've got more to say, and they feel confident in how to say it, connected to God, connected to community.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity…
OMG! Eleanor is muscling in on my (Kenn’s) action. I’m the AI-and-religion guy, prattling at DLD, among theologians, even at the UN. It’s a burgeoning area. Suhair Khan, who we profiled in July, just published a paper on Islamic ethics and AI.
Let’s loop back to Eleanor’s initial question: are AI sermons sacrilege? At first blush, it feels so. The ideas are meant to be intimate — when religious tenets are applied to questions of the day. Think of fiery sermons during the civil rights era in the US. Some traditions believe vocal ministry is God speaking through the person: doing it by chatbot isn’t just cheating, it’s betrayal. But I’m not so sure.
You can imagine a priest who’s great at the hundreds of things that make a priest great, but not a born sermon writer. Why deny them the tool? The tension is between authenticity and efficiency. A sermon is meant to convey a truth born of spirituality, lived experiences and understanding the congregation’s needs. Surely GenAI can be a research and writing aid, much like commentaries and concordances have for centuries.
I admire Rev. Cressman’s ethic of using AI for titles, guidance and editing but not the text itself. I’d be more permissive. Just as delivering someone else’s sermon would be questionable but borrowing from Timothy Keller’s to produce one’s own would be fine, so too taking the output of GenAI wholesale would be improper but adapting it to produce a better sermon could be welcomed. As a roughh rule, I’d suggest more than half the sermon should be written or heavily edited by the priest. And note that the preacher is prompting: AI isn’t framing the issues itself.
As Proverbs 15:22 instructs: “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” GenAI can advise, not replace. But it will require divine strength to resist the temptation to just go with the output—for sermons or anything else.
Reading this week
😆 Drew Breunig shared his thoughts about our recent interview with comedy writer Madeleine Brettingham.
💸 AI is coming for writers’ jobs; some writers are fighting back. This story is WILD.
💖 Should you say ‘thank you’ to ChatGPT?
✍️ Everyone lost it this week about OpenAI hiring a localization manager in SF, but AI is still killing translation (h/t Brian Merchant).
AI was used in last week’s missive for interview transcription. Kenn added one deliberate typo into this week’s edition to place a glorious human smudge on the material.
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