My 25 Favorite AI Prompts for Ministry

There are a lot of “50 prompts for pastors” lists out there. Most of them ask AI to do the pastor’s job: write the sermon, write the prayer, write the illustration.

These are different. They’re the prompts I actually come back to, and almost all of them ask AI to do one of three things: question me, check me, or take busywork off my plate so I have more of me left for people. A few help a sermon keep working after Sunday.

Before you use any of these

Three guardrails first.

Study first, prompt second. For anything touching the Word, do your own work before you open a chatbot. Write your main point in one sentence first. The tool comes after the study, not instead of it. (More on that in Can a Pastor Use AI to Write a Sermon?)

Anonymize everything. No names, no prayer requests, no counseling details, nothing about minors. If a prompt below involves a real situation, strip it down until nobody could recognize it. Here’s why.

Verify what comes back. AI is confident and sometimes wrong. Check cross-references, quotes, and history against your Bible and a real commentary.

One tip that makes every prompt better: give it context. Who you are, who it’s for, how long, what format. Swap in your own details wherever you see brackets.

Sermon prep: let it question you

1. Ask me hard questions

Act as a seminary professor. I’m preaching on [passage]. Ask me ten probing questions about this text, one at a time, to find the gaps in my understanding. Don’t give me answers. Wait for my reply before asking the next one.

This is my favorite. It turns the AI into a sparring partner instead of a ghostwriter.

2. Test my main point

I’m preaching on [passage]. My main point in one sentence is: [your point]. What are the strongest objections a careful reader would raise to this reading? Don’t rewrite my point.

3. Background brief

Give me the historical and cultural background a first-century reader of [passage] would have known. Flag anything scholars dispute, and tell me what I should verify in a commentary.

4. Cross-references I’m missing

Here’s my outline for a sermon on [passage]. List cross-references that support or complicate each point, with one sentence on why each one matters. Use the ESV.

Then look up every one. Don’t trust a reference you haven’t read.

5. Read it through other eyes

How would a [Reformed / Wesleyan / Catholic / Pentecostal] interpreter read [passage] differently from this? Give the strongest version of their view, not a caricature.

It keeps me honest about my own tradition’s blind spots.

6. Sit in the pew

Read this sermon manuscript as [a skeptic in his thirties who grew up in church / a single mom who’s exhausted / a retired farmer]. Where would you tune out? What question would you walk out with that I never answered?

7. The editor

Here’s my manuscript. Point out where I’m wordy, too heady, or repeating myself. Don’t rewrite it in your voice. Just show me where, and why.

Planning and teaching

8. Find the gaps in my preaching

Here are the titles and texts of everything I’ve preached in the last 18 months. What books, genres, or themes have I neglected? Suggest an 8-week series that would fill one of those gaps, with a passage for each week.

9. Small group guide

Turn this sermon into a 45-minute small group guide. Start with an opening question anyone can answer. Then five observation questions on the text and three application questions. Keep the application Christ-centered, not moralizing. Don’t include answers.

10. Explain it to a ten-year-old

Explain [justification by faith / the Trinity / why Jesus died] to a ten-year-old in under 150 words, without losing accuracy.

If I can’t say it simply, I probably don’t understand it well enough yet. This is a good check, and it’s great for kids’ ministry volunteers.

11. A plan for a new believer

Build a 30-day Bible reading plan for an adult who just came to faith and has never read the Bible. Keep each day under 10 minutes. Add one simple question for each day that we could talk about over coffee.

The plan is a starting point. The coffee is the discipleship.

Leadership and care

12. Map a messy situation

Here’s an anonymized situation on a ministry team: [describe it with no names or identifying details]. List the tensions you see, the likely blind spots on each side, and the questions I should ask before I decide anything.

AI can’t know these people. It can help me slow down and see angles I’m missing before I go talk to them.

13. Rehearse a hard conversation

I need to talk with a volunteer leader about [issue, no names]. Play the volunteer and push back the way a real person would. After a few rounds, tell me where I got defensive or unclear.

14. A care plan after a loss

A family in our church just lost [a parent / a child / a spouse]. List practical ways a small church can care for them over the next 90 days, week by week, including the things people usually forget after the funeral.

The list helps us remember. It never replaces showing up.

15. The pre-mortem

We’re about to launch [new ministry]. Imagine it’s one year from now and it failed. List the ten most likely reasons, and for each one, what we could do now to prevent it.

“Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22). This is a cheap way to get an adviser to argue with you before real ones do.

The busywork

16. From messy notes to an agenda

Turn these rough notes into a meeting agenda. Separate decisions we need to make from updates. Suggest a time for each item and who should own it.

17. Announcements that fit in 90 seconds

Rewrite these announcements so our emcee can read all of them aloud in 90 seconds. Warm, plain, no exclamation points. Put the action step last in each one.

18. A volunteer role description

Write a one-page role description for a [greeter / sound tech / small group leader]: what the role is, why it matters, the time commitment, what doing it well looks like, and who they can call with questions.

19. The break-even math

Last year’s [retreat / camp] had [number] people. Here are this year’s quotes: [costs]. Build a fee structure that breaks even, with a lower rate for families and a scholarship fund line.

Helping a sermon live past Sunday

A sermon takes hours to prepare and is heard once, by the people in the room. These prompts help it keep working the rest of the week. Most of them need an AI that can reach your files and apps, like Claude connected to Canva or to the folder where you keep your manuscripts. (I compare the options in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok for Church Work?)

20. Quotes worth sharing

Pull out five quotes from this sermon manuscript that stand on their own, each under 20 words. Then create social media graphics for them in Canva using our brand kit.

Check each one against what you actually said in the room. A quote card should never put words in your mouth.

21. One sermon, three articles

Format this sermon into three blog articles styled like my other articles. Use my words. Don’t add ideas or stories I didn’t preach. Give each one a title and a one-sentence description.

A spoken sermon and a written article aren’t the same thing, but a good sermon usually has two or three articles inside it.

22. What have I said before?

Look through my sermon manuscripts from the past 20 years and tell me what I’ve said about [verse or topic] before. Quote the passages and give the date of each sermon. If I’ve said a lot about it, suggest some potential blog posts on the topic.

This one is research on my own work, not someone else’s, and it’s one of the most useful things AI does for me. It also shows me when I keep preaching the same illustration.

23. A calendar for the week after

Make a social media production and publication calendar for this sermon so it lives beyond the room it was preached in. Plan the next two weeks: which quote, clip, or article goes out each day, on which platform, and what needs to be made first.

24. Don’t miss the people

Make sure I see every comment and question on my social media posts from the past week, with a link to each one, so I can engage the people personally. Don’t reply for me.

Social media is only worth doing if there are people on the other end. AI can find the comments. Answering them is my job.

For you

25. Review my week

Here’s my calendar from last week: [paste, with names removed]. My priorities are [your priorities]. Where did my time actually go? What’s one thing I should protect next week and one thing I should hand off?

For a bi-vocational pastor especially, this one is humbling. The calendar doesn’t lie.

What’s not on this list

You won’t find a prompt here to write my prayers, my sermon, or a personal story to tell from the pulpit. Prayer and counseling are places of presence, and I keep a tool out of the middle of them. (Here’s how I draw those lines.)

Let AI be efficient in the work that just needs to get done. Stay inefficient in the work that forms you.

I help pastors and church teams build AI practices that save time without hollowing out the work only they can do. I’m a pastor with more than twenty years in business and technology. If that would help, here’s how I work.