Every Sunday, pastors pour countless hours into crafting messages that proclaim God’s Word and change lives.
But what happens to these powerful sermons after Sunday? In today’s digital world, your sermon’s impact can multiply far beyond your physical congregation—and artificial intelligence (AI) is making this easier than ever. In this first article we want to focus specifically on how AI can leverage the sermons you are already preaching to connect with a wider audience for the glory of God.
As the CEO of Sermon Shots, I (Corey) have witnessed thousands of churches embrace AI to expand their reach. For the past three years, we’ve been at the forefront of using AI in ministry, helping over 6,000 churches multiply their impact. Let me share how pastors are using AI to make their sermons work harder and reach further.
In my (Ed) roles as Dean of Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, Editor in Chief at Outreach, and other arenas, I (Ed) care deeply about assisting pastors. I love the church and those who lead them, including helping pastors communicate of God’s Word. I’m impressed and also use many of the new tools available to us such as AI.
The Hidden Gold in Your Sermons
Let’s face it—it’s not easy being a pastor today. You are a leader, disciple-maker, evangelist, communicator, not to mention spouse, parent, and more. But your sermon offers the most significant time to accomplish more things at once. In a weekly message you lead, cast vision, offer counsel, disciple, encourage, and more.
There are things technology can’t do. YouVersion offers amazing resources for Bible reading, it can’t seek the presence of God for you. Logos provides remarkable resources for sermon study, but it can’t pray and lean on the Holy Spirit on your behalf.
You work hard to build a message that honors the Lord and encourages God’s people. And, if you have prepared well, your sermon is a goldmine of wisdom, practical guidance, and biblical teaching flowing from your walk with God. AI can’t replace the time you spend alone with God studying, praying, and crafting your message. But it can multiply the impact of the sermon you’ve developed through the work of the Holy Spirit in amazing ways. AI is like Home Depot, whose slogan is, “You can do it, we can help.” AI can help!
5 Ways to Multiply Your Sermon’s Reach Through AI
Here are five ways pastors like you can use AI to multiply the ministry impact of your sermons:
1. Social Media Ready Content
Your sermon offers dozens of shareable moments: insights from the Greek text, application for a specific need, or grasping great biblical themes like God’s great grace. AI helps identify the most powerful quotes and moments, turning them into engaging social posts that reach people where they spend their time—on their phones. You don’t have to scour your message or rewatch it to find these key moments and concepts—AI does it for you, pulling pictures, video clips, and quotes to spread God’s truth.
2. Discipleship Resources
In past generations most churches were built corporately on the twin towers of Sunday school and corporate worship. Age-graded curriculum assisted classes provided by denominational entities or parachurch groups helped classes to engage God’s Word in a systematic, methodical manner. Today, increasing numbers of growing churches and church plants opt for sermon-based small groups. That means that someone is often listening to the sermon and making a listening/interaction guide, sometimes on short notice.
Well, AI can help with this.
You can free your small group leaders to invest time in teaching and caring for their groups rather than creating weekly discussion guides and other discipleship content. AI does this for you, transforming your sermon into:
- Five-day devotionals that help people dig deeper
- Discussion guides that spark meaningful conversations
- Summary points for further reflection
Then, that same volunteer can review the discussion guides, rather than starting from scratch.
3. Professional-Quality Visual Content
Your sermon video can be transformed into polished, professional content that looks like it was created by a full production team. AI technology can:
- Extract high-quality photos from your video, turning key moments into professional-looking images
- Automatically track and frame you as you speak, creating perfectly centered shots that look like they were captured by an expert camera operator
- Generate smooth, stable footage that appears professionally filmed
- Identify the most engaging moments for social sharing
The best part? This professional-looking content is created automatically – without the need for expensive camera equipment or a dedicated production team.
I (Ed) serve as a teaching pastor at Mariner’s Church in Irvine, California, where we have found that excellence in images and videos plays a crucial role in our outreach. As I travel and preach in many contexts it is quickly apparent when a church leverages such content to reach their community. Your church, no matter the size, can do this with resources like Sermon Shots.
4. Streamlined Content Delivery
As AI transforms one sermon into dozens of valuable resources—from video clips to devotionals to study guides – churches face a new challenge: how to deliver all this content effectively. The traditional method of sending multiple emails or posting across different platforms isn’t just time-consuming. Great content can get lost in the shuffle.
Platforms like Sermon Send automatically organizes all your AI-generated content into a single, intuitive page. Imagine your AI-created devotionals, discussion guides, social media clips, and translated content – all beautifully organized and easily accessible to your congregation. AI doesn’t just create the content; it helps structure and present it in a clear way for your audience.
This solution turns content overload into content opportunity. Your AI-generated resources work together to create a rich, engaging experience for your congregation all week long.
5. Breaking Down Language Barriers
AI has revolutionized how churches can reach across language barriers. The days of slow, expensive translation services or limiting your message to a single language are gone. Today’s AI translation capabilities revolutionize how multilingual ministry happens:
- Live Text Translation: Your sermon can be instantly converted into over 100 languages as you speak
- Real-Time Audio: AI can transform your voice into different languages in near real-time
- Natural-Sounding Voices: Unlike robotic translations of the past, AI generates natural, fluent translations
- Accessible Anywhere: Anyone with a smartphone can access these translations during the live service
This means the family that just moved from Korea can follow along in their native language while sitting in your service. The grandmother visiting from Mexico can hear the sermon in Spanish while her grandchildren listen in English. A missionary partner in Thailand can share your sermon with their local community.
The impact is profound: your Sunday message can simultaneously reach people in hundreds of languages, creating truly inclusive worship experiences that bring diverse communities together under one roof.
The Future Is Here
When Sermon Shots began leveraging AI three years ago, we saw its potential to revolutionize ministry before it became a household term. Today, churches are reaching more people, creating more discipleship opportunities, and multiplying their impact—all while saving time and resources.
Technology is not new, but it is changing rapidly. The advanced Roman roads helped the gospel to spread across the Empire in the first century. In the Middle Ages, stained glass windows in churches taught biblical stories. Bells were used by churches to call people to worship. The printing press revolutionized the ability to get the Bible into the hands of multitudes. John Wesley utilized printed sermons and pamphlets in his ministry, while Charles Fuller leveraged the new technology of radio to teach the Bible. AI is the latest trend in the technological revolution.
It’s important to remember that AI cannot replace the human touch in ministry—it multiplies and amplifies it. It helps pastors take the valuable content they’re already creating and multiply its impact across their community and beyond.
Your sermon is valuable. The time you put into it is valuable. With AI, you can now make that value go further than ever before. In the next article in this series you will see ways pastors are already leveraging AI effectively.
