Why Preaching Requires a Human Touch

What is preaching?

A. W. Tozer said “To be effective the preacher’s message must be alive; it must alarm, arouse, challenge; it must be God’s present voice to a particular people.”

John Owen said “The first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the word”

D. L. Moody said “The preaching that this world needs most is the sermons in shoes that are walking with Jesus Christ.”

Charles Spurgeon said “The preaching of Christ is the whip that flogs the devil. The preaching of Christ is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes all hell shake.”

That’s not even to mention the picture the Bible presents of preaching as a proclamation (Mark 16:15), a serious matter (James 3:1), a multifaceted ministry (2 Timothy 4:2) and a necessity for the Lord’s people (Romans 10:9-15).

Fast forward to our current cultural context and it’s a different story. Over the last couple of weeks I have seen a lot of church leaders (people in vocational fill-time ministry) talk about, and promote, their use of AI for sermons. The usage varied from a little illustration here, to a passage summary there, to a full sermon manuscript and an aid to reduce a manuscripts word count.

I’m not a guy who sits in the middle of nowhere wearing a tinfoil hat warning that we’re being taken over by aliens, but I am wondering if in this age of AI some have lost their understanding of the weight and seriousness of preaching God’s Word.

Sure, putting a few prompts into an artifice intelligence programme may come up with a ‘good talk’, maybe even good exegesis and a few jokes here and there, but is that what preaching has now been reduced to?!

When a preacher stands and proclaims the truth from God’s Word to the gathered congregation on a Sunday he isn’t simply reading a text. The preacher isn’t performing. The preacher isn’t rehearsing a pre-prepared spiel. The preacher is taking God’s Word, applying it faithfully and practically to the Lord’s people for their edification, spiritual benefit and to the glory of God. Simply put, that cannot be done through the means of Artificial Intelligence.

AI can give you a manuscript, but it can’t give you a message that has first transformed your own heart. AI can give you some punchy illustrations, but not what the people in your congregation need to hear from a pastor who knows and loves them. AI might even be able to make you seem like a good preacher, but it can’t make you fulfil the qualifications for ministry set out in the New Testament.

Here are some of the reasons that I think AI will have a negative impact on those who use it for their sermons (either to create, shorten or make them more digestible/desirable).

1. Laziness

It is your duty as a pastor to teach God’s Word, to give that responsibility over to a programme might save you time but it will not serve you well in the long run. It has the potential for you to carelessly approach the pulpit, without the weight of understanding what you’re about to do as you preach, because a sermon has simply been given to you. The role of a preacher is much more than the 30 minutes (or however long you preach) on a Sunday morning – it’s the hours of study and prayer, the hours of visiting and speaking with member about what you’re learning and thinking, the time of soul searching as you’re challenged to preach to yourself before you go to others, and that just the start. To turn to AI can produce a laziness whereby preaching is merely a thing to be done rather than a privilege to enjoy, an honour to do in service of God and his people.

2. A hard heart

You can always tell when a preacher is performing rather than preaching. You can tell when a preacher has spent the last week or days wrestling with God’s Word or if they’re simply relaying facts. You can tell when a preacher is preaching from a place of humility and challenge or if they have been unmoved and unchanged by the particular Bible passage. A consistent use of AI to create or modify sermons has the potential to fuel that approach where preaching merely becomes about communication rather than a transformative message, used by God’s Spirit, for God’s people.

3. A lack of understanding

AI may be able to give you something that’s funny and culturally appropriate, but it cannot tell you what the church you serve needs. It cannot tell you the illustrations and application that John (the 40 year old factory worker) needs or the illustration that lands with Jessica (the 23 year old single girl who struggles) or how to connect with Barry (the 70 year old who has just buried his wife of 40 years). Artificial Intelligence will not make you more intelligent about the peoples lives right in front of you week in and week out. AI won’t be able to help you preach a passage to comfort those who need comforting and to convict those who need it. In order to be able to faithfully preach God’s Word a preacher needs to study the Bible and know the people he is preaching to. If preaching if about faithfully applying God’s Word to the lives of his people then you need to know them individually, a computer programme cannot do that.

Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of areas in life where AI is helpful and a tool for good, but the pulpit is not one of them. I would go as far to say that if you use AI to create sermons for you it would be good to consider how fit you are for ministry if you’re so ready to give up one of the primary tasks given to the leaders in the Lord’s church. I have mentioned 3 dangers of using AI in the pulpit, there are more, but this will suffice for now. Please, do not be tricked into giving up the privilege of preaching for the purpose of ease and comfort.

Let me leave you with the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones “You can have knowledge, and you can be meticulous in your preparation; but without the unction of the Holy Spirit you will have no power, and your preaching will not be effective.”