Stop Starting from Scratch: How AI Is Changing Sermon Prep with Jon-Michael Sherman & Eric Smith

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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Jon-Michael Sherman and Eric Smith, the team behind SermonDone—an AI-powered platform designed specifically to help pastors with sermon preparation, research, and media creation. Their goal is simple: help pastors save time so they can focus more energy on shepherding people, developing leaders, and delivering impactful messages each weekend.

Are you feeling the weekly pressure of sermon preparation? Wondering how new technology like AI could actually support your preaching rather than replace it? In this conversation, Eric and Jon-Michael explain how tools like SermonDone are helping pastors streamline research, develop sermon series, and extend the reach of their messages beyond Sunday morning.

• Building an AI operating system for pastors. // The idea for SermonDone began during a conversation with pastors at a conference about how they were—or weren’t—using AI in ministry. Jon-Michael realized many pastors either didn’t know where to start or were piecing together generic AI tools that weren’t designed for ministry contexts. The team set out to create what they call an “AI operating system for pastors,” built specifically around the real workflow of sermon preparation. From planning long-term preaching calendars to turning sermons into small-group resources, the platform was designed to support the full lifecycle of preaching. Their goal is to eliminate the intimidating blank page pastors often face on Monday mornings and provide tools that help them think, research, and prepare more efficiently.
• Saving pastors time without replacing the pastor. // The purpose of SermonDone is not to replace pastors but to free up their time for the things that matter most. Many pastors spend countless hours gathering research before they ever begin writing. SermonDone accelerates that process by compiling detailed research reports in minutes, allowing pastors to move quickly into prayerful reflection and message development. Eric compares it to meal-prep services that deliver ingredients to your door—you still cook the meal, but you don’t have to spend hours shopping. In the same way, pastors still craft the message, internalize it, and deliver it with passion; the platform simply helps gather the “ingredients” faster.
• Deep research and sermon writing tools. // One of the platform’s most unique features is its deep research capability. SermonDone deploys multiple AI agents to explore various aspects of a biblical passage or theological topic and deliver a comprehensive research report in minutes. The report can include historical background, theological insights, commentary perspectives, and practical applications—equivalent to the work of multiple research assistants. Pastors can then write directly within the platform using an AI assistant that provides feedback, cross-references, and suggestions as they develop their sermon. The goal is not to automate preaching but to equip pastors with better information and more time to internalize and communicate the message effectively.
• Extending the impact of sermons beyond Sunday. // Another major focus for SermonDone is helping churches extend the life of their preaching content. The platform can automatically generate sermon clips for social media from a YouTube link, allowing churches to create multiple short videos that highlight key teaching moments. Upcoming features include adding B-roll footage and music to clips, helping churches produce engaging content that keeps the sermon message circulating online throughout the week. The platform also creates graphics and other media resources so churches of any size can maintain a strong digital presence without needing a large communications team.
• Creating a personalized preaching assistant. // SermonDone includes a feature called “My Library,” where pastors can upload past sermons, documents, or other teaching content. The platform analyzes this material to learn the pastor’s theological framework, communication style, and recurring themes. Over time, the system becomes increasingly personalized, offering suggestions and insights based on the pastor’s own voice and past teaching. It can even identify patterns in a pastor’s preaching—highlighting repeated themes or areas where fresh perspectives might be helpful.
• Addressing concerns about AI in ministry. // Both Eric and Jon-Michael acknowledge that some pastors remain cautious about using AI in sermon preparation. Their response is that technology has always shaped ministry—from printing presses to radio, television, and the internet. AI, they argue, is simply another tool. Used wisely, it can accelerate research, expand creativity, and help pastors spend more time shepherding people rather than staring at a blank document.

To learn more about SermonDone, visit sermondone.com. The team is continually adding new features designed to help pastors research faster, preach better, and extend the reach of their sermons throughout the week.

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. Got some returning friends, returning guests on the podcast, which you know what that means. These are people I like who I think you should be paying attention to. Really excited to have Jon-Michael Sherman and Eric Smith from SermonDone. If you do not know SermonDone, where have you been? You’ve been sleeping under a rock somewhere. It is the premium AI assistant, build just for pastors like you. It’s a tool that helps you with really everything to do a sermon prep from deep sermon research, to planning an entire series, even generating the first draft that’s theologically aligned and sounds just like you. Plus, we’ve got some new stuff that they want to talk about today. But welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today, guys. Welcome.

Eric Smith — Thanks for having us, man. We’re super pumped to be here and thanks for having us back.

Rich Birch — Nice. It’s good. Eric, why don’t you bring us up to speed a little bit on where has SermonDone been since we last talked? You know, what’s been going on these last few months?

Eric Smith — Yeah, so the last few months have been incredibly exciting. We have really almost re-envisioned even the original platform, and have expanded it to be so much better than it was before.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — It was great before, and it was a great resource. But just like anything, we continued to dream and stretch ourselves and really push ourselves to expand the platform to offer more resources, to save pastors more time, and to help pastors be more effective.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And so we’re going to talk about a lot of those different features today and super pumped to share those and excited about all that’s happening.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Jon-Michael, why don’t we start with you kind of roll the clock back for people who maybe haven’t been following this story. Friends, I think this is an incredible tool that you should be trying. And actually, you’re going to want to stick around till the end because they’ve got this incredible thing that they’ve just rolled out that you’re going to want to try.

Rich Birch — But Jon-Michael, roll the clock back. Tell us a bit of the founding story. What what are you really trying to solve? What’s the problem that you’re lying awake at night wrestling with, trying to to help so many church leaders with?

Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, first of all, great to be back with you, Rich. And always love listening to the show. Long time listener, happy to be a guest. We started this over a year ago at a pastor’s conference in a breakout session with a bunch of pastors talking about preaching. And we were going around the room saying, how are you using AI? How are you using AI? Another person’s like, I’ve never used it before. I’ve never tried it before.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And so we said to ourselves, what would it look like for us to create really the AI operating system for pastors in every aspect of their process? Everything from research, being able to plan a 12-month or 24-month or 36-month or however many months you want to go preaching calendar, right? What if we could help you with that? What if we could help you with your discipleship resources and turning a sermon into small group curriculum?

Jon-Michael Sherman — And so we started creating and we created without handcuffs. We just said, if we could be maximalist in our approach, and create the most amazing tools, what could we create? And so we went on this journey and we’ve been listening to so many of you that have been listening to this show, giving us feedback. I know many of the listeners on this show have emailed me personally and said, hey, John, could you make this for me? And I said, I’d love to. I love that idea. That’s a great idea.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And so what you’re gonna be seeing now in this latest version is because of the listeners of this show, the feedback that’s come from this show. And pastors, you know, I’ve sat in that seat. I’ve been a lead pastor. Eric’s a lead pastor right now. And so I know the pressure of that Monday morning feeling. What am I going to do? The page is blank again. And I think we can clearly say now as a company, you really never have to start from scratch anymore.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And I don’t know if I ever told you guys this, but you know a year ago when I got to know you a little bit better, you graciously gave me access to the platform and I sent it to some preaching friends of mine. And I said, Hey, like, take a look at this thing. What do you think? And the part that I have found really impressive with what you’ve done is I feel like every time I’m back on the tool, there’s like something new. It keeps growing. It keeps expanding. You’ve, you’ve even from where it was a year ago, it’s like a totally different deal. It’s like, it’s, there’s all kinds of new stuff in there. And I’ve seen you pay close attention. Like you said there, Jon-Michael to, what you’ve heard people say and actually implemented that, which I think is commendable.

Rich Birch — Eric, in your this is a part of what you do. It’s not the only thing that you do in life. As Jon-Michael had talked about there, lead pastor at a fast-growing church in Florida, Hope City. I think you’re three locations, if I’m if i’m correct.

Rich Birch — One of the things I love that I’ve heard you say is, hey, this tool is going to help pastors save some time. That makes me lean forward. Let’s talk about maybe one or two of the new features that you think is going to help save some time particularly, that’s gonna maybe make this process a little more efficient so that we can focus on whether that’s meeting with people or some extra leadership stuff or what what’s a new new feature that kind of is gonna help us save some time.

Eric Smith — Yeah, so everything that we do is all about helping churches grow. We want to help churches grow and we want to help them engage people. And so we believe the way that we do that is by saving pastors time, but not just saving them time, helping them maximize the time that they invest…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Smith — …to create better sermons and better, you know, sermon clips and all the other things that we do. And so a couple of the new features that we’ve come out with since the last time we talked is now we actually have a sermon writer. So you go into the platform and you can actually write your sermon inside the platform. And what’s really cool about it is as you’re writing, you have an AI assistant right there beside you and you can, you know, ask it questions, you can get feedback, you can get cross references, whatever. So imagine you’re going through the process and you’re able to do that.

Eric Smith — But not only that, as you’re building your slides, you can right click on anything that you have and it’ll immediately start building your slides for the weekend. And then on top of that, one of the other amazing features is after you’re done with the sermon, I wanted to create, I was telling Jon-Michael when we were building it, I said, I want to create something that’s going to help a pastor actually memorize and learn the sermon. Because it’s one thing to write a sermon, it’s another thing to internalize the message and then deliver the message in a dynamic and compelling way.

Eric Smith — I think I said this the last time I was on the podcast with you. The way we deliver the sermon is actually just as important or more important than, than writing it. And so we created a feature in there where helps you memorize the sermon and walk through it. It also has a feature where you can preach straight from the platform where, you know, right there from your iPad or from your computer or however you preach.

Eric Smith — I’m still old school. I preach on paper, but that’s just me. Uh, but yeah, but that’s one of the features. Another exciting feature is to help pastors, you know, really take the the research to a whole nother level. And so we developed something called deep research. There is nothing like this out there. You can’t do this with generic AI. It’s impossible.

Eric Smith — And so I was telling Jon-Michael as we were brainstorming this idea, I want to create something for pastors that will help them get so deep and further ahead that when they sit down to craft the sermon, they have all the research they need. It’s kind of like this: you know, we go to the grocery store, we buy all the ingredients, we bring the ingredients home and we we cook the meal, we prep the meal.

Eric Smith — What we’ve done is we’ve said, hey, just like there’s their services now that you can buy and all the ingredients come in a box and all you have to do is unbox it. You still have to cook the meal. Well, that’s the way this is. Deep research is we’re giving you all the ingredients in a research report that’s over 20,000 words. When Jon-Michael and I were building it, we wanted to wrestle with what would the average pastor who’s bivocational want to know, but what would also the PhD want to know?

Eric Smith — And so the research, we have 23 AI agents that go out. They have four to 500 words of prompting that we wrote. It does deep research in 23 specific areas, every area you could want to know about a specific section of the Bible or a theological topic. And then it delivers in five minutes, it delivers a report back with all that information. I mean, it’s it’s absolutely amazing. That feature alone would cost you a ton of money. I mean, it’s imagine having 23 master level or doctorate level assistants that are going out and researching these different areas for and then delivering the report back. And now when you sit down, you’ve got all this amazing research to go through as you get ready to to prepare yourself to preach.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that feature. That’s incredible. I multiple times with, so I’ve been in the executive pastor seat, this you know, supporting some great, incredible communicators and multiple communicators, we have explored And ultimately never pulled the trigger on a research assistant or there’s organizations out there that will do this, that will put together a research brief and they’ll they’ll get a PhD student. And you’ll you’ll pay ah you know thousands of dollars a month for that kind of service.

Rich Birch — When I first used your research tool, I was like, oh my goodness, this is exactly like that thing that we were looking at, that that, man, but it’s ah you’re making it available for every pastor, which is incredible. I’ve said in other contexts, preaching is a team sport. Although one person has to get up and do it, I get it. Ultimately, one person’s going to stand up this. What you’re helping do is is bring all that other um support from, other like you say, these 23 other agents.

Rich Birch — Jon-Michael, a part of what I love is the partnership between the two of you guys and your whole team. When you’re thinking about the the features that you’ve been adding, one of the things you talked about was like you’ve been listening to people and saying, hey, here’s a change. Are there any of these new features particularly that you’re like, you know, the people are demanding. And so we added this, you know, what was one of those features or a couple of those features that really people have been excited about that you’re looking forward to releasing or maybe are just around the corner to releasing?

Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, well, we’re really excited about having sermon clips as one of our latest features.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jon-Michael Sherman — People are absolutely loving it. It’s this immediate way for you to be able to put your YouTube link in and have incredible viral clips ready for social media. So I’ve led a church marketing agency in the in the church industry for 10 years. And I know the value of vertical video. It’s so important to let your sermon keep preaching beyond Sunday. However, ah you know, right now, you know, a clip alone can be somewhat engaging, but adding B-roll footage really helps it take it to another level. And so we’ll be releasing that here very soon right around the corner. So you’re going to have the ability to do even better edits than ever before.

Jon-Michael Sherman — So imagine having 10, 20 clips to look through and then choosing the one that you love and then being able to add B-roll with high level stock footage and engage people in a big way. So people have been asking for it. We said, yes, we’re bringing it. It’s costing us a lot of money and we’re spending it for you guys. So we want you to have it and it’s important to us.

Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s amazing. I loved when I saw that you guys added that to the suite. One of the, a part of the work I do in the coaching/consulting with my churches is around invite culture. And, you know, one of the things we’ll often do is look at their social channels and give them some feedback, really benchmark against what the fastest growing churches are doing. And you would not believe how many times I’ve said to churches, how come you’re not doing sermon clips like that? That is like low hanging fruit. Three quarters of the reason why people attend your church is because of the teaching. And you know, being able to do a clip or two a day you know in the week following is a great way to keep that in front of people. I love that you’ve added that.

Rich Birch — Tell me a little bit more about the B-roll, though. That’s kind of interesting. That that feels like that’s going to really punch it up, take it to a whole new level.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, I think, you know, if I were talking to you 10 years ago, the hot thing to do was have a virtual visit video on your website. Remember those days where you would show people a look of, you know, here’s what it looks like in the outside. And this is what kids check looks that like and different things. Well, the beauty with B-roll is you can still put in that stock footage of your church, and clip that in with your sermon.

Jon-Michael Sherman — So as you’re preaching, now here’s some B-roll of worship. As you’re preaching, now here’s some B-roll of kids check. As you’re preaching, now here’s some B-roll of the lobby. You can show off your church experience a little bit more and upload your own custom B-roll.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Or you can use the stock B-roll that we have. So maybe you’re talking about a specifically emotive subject. You can then clip into some a stock footage that illustrates that emotion or that story that you’re communicating.

Jon-Michael Sherman — So it just takes it to a whole nother level. Obviously, like the clips alone, the way they are right now are great. But just having those different tools that you’re able to add on to it. We’ll also be releasing some audio too. So along with that, if you want to choose or use from our our library of of audio, you can use that too. So songs, different things you want to add to your clips, you can really do it all within our within our new release.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing. You know, this is the thing that’s incredible about your tool. Really, the suite of tools put together in in one ah you know one environment is, you know, you just keep adding new things. Eric, when you think, though, back to the core of SermonDone, when you think about the the thing that’s kind of getting used the most, what what what is the part of it? Like these, I’m assuming that these new tools, it’s like additive to a core experience. What part of it at its core are you kind of the most happy with or the most proud of? Okay, we keep working on this part of it because this is the piece that is so important to the overall ah kind of SermonDone experience.

Eric Smith — Well, I think there’s, um it’s hard to pick one…

Rich Birch — Or a couple, a couple.

Eric Smith — …but I will we’ll say the unique thing about our platform, unlike anything else that’s out there, is ours has a media component. You know, we have sermon clips. We also do graphics. And so our heart is for, there’s so many pastors out there that that are all alone. They’re by themselves. They’re fighting the fight. And man, we are with you. We built this honestly for you.

Eric Smith — And to have a pastor be able to, you know, even if their church is small or they’re a new plant and they’re just getting started to be able to do clips, but then also to be able to create graphics for events, graphics for their sermons. So literally in five seconds, you can have a graphic. And we give even just on our $99 a month lowest version, you get 100 graphics a month. Nobody’s going to probably use that many, but if you don’t like the way it was, you can tweak it, you can modify it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — And so um on the media side, I love all that. For me personally, using the product, developing the product, I love the ability, even with our sermon builder, to just when I’m sitting, you know, waiting for somebody at a coffee shop to meet and I have a thought or an idea and I type it into my notes on my phone about a specific, you know, devotion I was doing or a text I’ve been thinking about or a topic. And then I’m able to take those notes and throw those into my sermon builder. What that does is it just organizes those and begins to outline that for me.

Eric Smith — It’s my words. It’s just helping organize it. And here’s the other thing, because our platform, unlike any other platform, has your personal pastor profile—When you set the product up, you build your pastor profile. You talk about your theological heritage. You talk about Bible translation. news You talk about your your preaching style and you upload sermons if you’d like to do that. And what happens is our AI begins to understand you more. And as does that, it’s going to deliver that content in a way that aligns with you and your theology. And in your delivery.

Eric Smith — And so that’s really, really important. But I just I can’t get past the deep research. I mean…

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.

Eric Smith — …I was pastoring. I’ve I’ve been blessed to pastor for a long time now, and I’ve been blessed to pastor three different churches that grew incredibly fast. All glory to God. And I was in a church I was pastoring in Alabama. I was it I planted two and I pastored and revitalized one. So I’m a weirdo, I guess, in that way. When we did revitalization, it was it was a large church and I’m there and I almost hired a company to do research for me.

Eric Smith — And I got the quotes back, I got the demo the the sample report. And I was like, oh man, this would be amazing.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — It was just it was just so much money, even at a large church.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Eric Smith — I cannot pull the trigger on this.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — I can’t do it. Just imagine now, in our product, you get 10 deep researches for $99 a month.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Eric Smith — To get one deep research with one of those companies would cost you hundreds of dollars and it would take hours and hours and hours for someone to do.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Well, now we’re able to deliver that and it aligns with your theological framework. It is absolutely amazing. And so we literally are delivering delivering the ingredients to you. You still got to cook the meal, but we’re delivering it to you.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — So I love that. That’s amazing.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s so good. And I know um it’s been fun to watch your journey as an organization. And early on, one of the questions that people would ask is like, how is this any different than just a generic AI tool? And and I always from the beginning, I was like, no, it’s so different than just you know going on and having some you know chatbot conversation.

Rich Birch — But to me, that question just isn’t even in the orbit anymore. It’s like, there’s so much of this, you know, you could not replicate. The amount of time it would take for you to build all these individual apps and all that just would be insane.

Rich Birch — Jon-Michael, could you talk to us about the “My Library”? That’s been up and running now for maybe six or eight months. Maybe it’s longer than that now. What have you seen as users have used that to kind of help your tool be more custom? Because I think that’s one of the advantages that you’ve built in is, hey, this isn’t sounding like some generic, somebody else. It is giving me feedback that is related to things that I’ve preached in the past. How is how is that tool being used?

Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, it’s really quite remarkable because it really serves as an external brain for those of us who can’t remember what we said 10 seconds ago. And it seems to be that lead pastors all have that same personality.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Do we agree, guys? Yeah. No, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s it’s true. And I mean, and listen, like no one in the world has the job that lead pastors have to go and have create 40 plus unique sermons a year and then somehow try not to repeat yourself. Right?

Rich Birch — So true.

Jon-Michael Sherman — So obviously the memorization of saying, have I said that before? When did I say that? But the beauty of being able to build on what you’ve already said and be able to remember yourself and pull up all the the past content that you’ve said in the past is remarkable. Again, we may write 3000 words of notes, but we’re going to speak 6000 words on the mic. And so being able to have all of those words as well captured within the platform is remarkable.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Another really great one, I was working with a pastor in in Phoenix area. We uploaded his sermon library over the past couple of years, and we just said, hey, analyze me, you know, like, what are my, what are my themes? What am I repeating too much? What am I you know, am am I, am I, am I being diverse enough in my communication? You know, and it, it gave a deeply accurate profile of these are things you repeat. These are themes that are, ah that you, that you repeat. And it was just spot on. It was wild. It acted like a doctorate level, homiletics coach in a sense.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And so we’re going to be doing some cool upgrades to My Library. Stay tuned.

Eric Smith — Oh yeah.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Right right now, you’ve got to be a little bit smart in the sense of like thinking about what to say. We’re going to make that a little bit more, click and go moving forward. But I’m telling you, if you upload your sermons in there, there’s a lot of amazing questions you can ask and you can get some honest feedback, maybe more honest feedback than your teaching team gives you. Who knows? So, the most honest one is our wife, right? Anyone else?

Rich Birch — Yeah, true.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Exactly. Yeah, she’ll tell you, but the AI will tell you too. you’ll They’ll tell you. So it’s great. We love it.

Rich Birch — And that in My Librar…oh, sorry, Eric, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Eric Smith — Well, no, I was just going to say, I just want say this so I don’t forget. Maybe if you’ve heard about our product before, and this platform, and you tried it out months ago or a year ago, it’s so much better and so different. So I would just encourage you to jump back in and give it another go because the new features that are available are just absolutely phenomenal. And the reality that you can do the media and the research and the writing, is it’s it’s it’s just so robust in what it can do.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s a good, that’s a good word. you know if I know there’s people that have tried it and maybe for one reason or another, maybe you you know you took ah took the summer off, you weren’t preaching for a few weeks and so you canceled. Hey, now’s a good time to re-up and you’ll be amazed all the different features that have been added and improved.

Rich Birch — On the My Library, I just want to there’s a detail there I want to make sure we capture. You can upload. It’s a multimedia upload. You can upload audio, video. What’s that whole list of things that you can upload to that?

Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, everything from you know your files that you’ve written, your your sermons you’ve written. You can use Google Drive to link in. YouTube link is very popular, being able to you know upload your sermons via YouTube link.

Jon-Michael Sherman — So it’s always better if you have the version where the the worship isn’t playing, but just just your sermon, that part, that’d be the good one to use when you upload it.

Jon-Michael Sherman — But it is smart enough to know the difference. It’s, it’s wild. But it’s, it’s really amazing. So again, it’s not just every word that you’ve written. It’s every word you’ve, you’ve actually preached from the mic. You know, cause I’ve never written out my full stories. I don’t know about you guys, when you’re doing a sermon, I just say, tell this story, right.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jon-Michael Sherman — [Inaudible] my notes. But the actual story I spoke through the mic. So it’s going to capture all of that when you’re in My Library.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true.

Eric Smith — Well, one of the things on My Library is if you have other theological documents. For example, if it were you, Rich, you could take all your podcast and put there, right? All the scripts from your podcast, you could load up in there.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Eric Smith — And so think outside the box. Don’t just think: sermons I’ve written or even sermons I’ve preached. Maybe it’s theological papers, maybe it’s blogs, maybe it’s podcasts. There’s other things that you can put in there as well.

Rich Birch — Eric, I want to play the devil’s advocate here for a minute. Because I know there’s people that are probably thinking this. We’re 20 minutes in. They’re maybe interested but a little suspicious of just the use of AI in sermon prep in any way. They’re like, I just don’t know. This is this is this is a bridge too far. I’m just not sure we should be doing that. I’m you know, I’m I’m concerned. I’m nervous. I think you know this is going to be really negative for me. What would you say, not necessarily somebody who’s being combative, but is honestly asking you, is picking up with the phone and saying, Eric, I trust you. But talk to me about that.

Eric Smith — Yeah, so I think everybody has to operate in the different convictions they have. Our belief is that we highly trust pastors.

Eric Smith — Rich, you know thousands of pastors. We know thousands of pastors. Yeah, there’s a few out there that may not be the greatest, but pastors are amazing and they’re high integrity people. And so we trust you. You you operate with your conviction, number one.

Eric Smith — Number two, I would just say this. You were already using it and you didn’t know it. We’ve been using AI for a long time. Google is AI.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true

Eric Smith — What’s happened is it’s just gone from you know slow speed to super fast. And so really there is no difference in what we’re doing. It’s just delivering content faster. And people say stuff like AI is the devil or whatever. It’s just pulling data. It’s just pulling data.

Eric Smith — I mean…So all it’s doing is the computers are so good and so smart that they can ah research and pull data faster than ever before. And so why would we not want to speed up that process? All of us are using Amazon because it sped up the process for me to get the thing delivered to my door. Is that a bad thing?

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — No.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — I will say no pastor that we know of that’s ever used our product is just, you know, using AI and then stepping up on the platform and then using it to preach. They’re using it to research. They’re using it to to refine things. They’re using it to wrestle with, I have this statement. How can I say this better? They’re using it for things like sermon clips, and and or uploading your sermon in our discipleship area that we have on our platform, you can upload it. It’ll turn your sermon into kids curriculum. It’ll turn your sermon into small group curriculum. It’ll turn your sermon into small group questions. It does all that as well.

Eric Smith — And so it’s taking your content and reorganizing it in a different way. Why would we not use? We’ve done this throughout history where we’ve used things to advance the speed of something. Of course, none of us ever want to get away from praying, seeking the Lord, asking the Holy Spirit to guide us and lead us. This is just allowing us to get the ingredients together faster…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …so that we can actually spend time on what makes a sermon great. What is it that makes a sermon great? It’s not what’s on the paper. I can preach the same sermon as someone else on Sunday and you could look at our paper and go, wow, that looks just the same. But one of our sermons might be a lot better because, number one, we allowed it to really take root in our heart. We allowed it to simmer in our soul.

Eric Smith — And so if I can help pastors move faster through the researching and gathering of the material, so that they can put the sermon together and it really take root in their soul. And then second prep on the actual delivery of the sermon. In the platform we have a masterclass that I put together on, really, sermon delivery. If I can help pastors do that, what’s going to happen is it’s going to save them time, but not only is it going to save them time, it’s going to help them preach better sermons. And as said before, our focus, our heartbeat is to grow the church and to engage believers in the body of Christ.

Rich Birch — It’s good.

Eric Smith — And so for us, we can help pastors preach better, churches grow. Why? 82% of people choose their church based on the quality—it’s either 82 or 83. I could be off 1%—the quality of the sermon.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — And so, pastor, you should do everything you can to preach better sermons. And this is a tool that we want to come alongside you and serve you. We are here to serve and make your sermons better. And that’s our heart. So that’s what I would say.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. You know, I know that people have a concern anytime there’s new technology, but I love how you frame that, Eric, that it’s, in you know, it’s, We’re already using parts of this. It’s a part of all of our everyday lives. And how can we use it in a way to really accelerate the mission to try to get, you know. And I think that if I would say the only thing I would add, if I was listening in today and I had that hesitation, I would just take a step towards it and to learn about it, to actually try a tool like or try SermonDone specifically, ah you know, like and and see, hey, maybe there’s a way that this could help.

Rich Birch — And I would agree with you. It’s not, you know, it’s not a, you don’t go in there and be like, hey, give me a great three-part sermon on John 3:16. You know, that’s not what this is. It’s, hey, I’m working on this. It’s a bunch of tools to help you think through and to process all of this and then to ultimately give you the the time to to prepare it.

Rich Birch — Jon-Michael, what anything you’d add to that kind of the, maybe the hesitant pastor who’s who’s a little bit worried about this and is, you know, yeah doesn’t want to go left behind, but is also concerned about it?

Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, you know you know me, I’m probably going to be a little bit not as nice as Eric. would I’ll try to but i’ll try to be nice, but I’ll just put it this way. You know, look, it’s just the way it goes. When new tech comes into the church world, we go through five phases. The first phase is it’s demonic.

Jon-Michael Sherman — You know, ah the Nephilim came down into spacecraft and and handed AI to, you know, Peter Thiel and he’s bringing the Antichrist and it’s over…

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Jon-Michael Sherman — …you know, the the military is going to listen to me through SermonDone.com.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jon-Michael Sherman — You know, like that’s, what’s I’ve had, I’ve talked to guys on the phone that have thought that, okay, that’s real life.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Even it’s funny, but it’s true. It’s demonic.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And then it goes, well, that evil mega church down the road is doing it, but I would never. I would never we grab our pearls and we clutch up.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And then it goes to, well, I’m using it secretly, but I can’t tell my pastor. I can’t tell anybody you know I’m using it secretly.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And then it goes to, well, of course we’re using it. And why isn’t everyone on staff using it? If you don’t use it the next 30 days, you’re getting fired. And then it goes from that to like, hey, welcome my breakout session here at Exponential. I’m going to be teaching you how I use AI. Well, 10 minutes ago, you thought it came off a spaceship, you know. But this is how we are, okay?

Rich Birch — Right, right, right.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Like this is just how we are. So we’re somewhere in the mix right now, depending on who’s listening. Okay, you know, it’s fun. But here’s the real issue is this. It truly is this. It It depends on which tribe you’re coming from. But there we, all of us, as lead pastors, guys that get in the pulpit, we all have one sin that we struggle with, and it’s pride. And we have to realize that we have this treasure, the gospel, it’s in a jar of clay. And you know what? Like we are broken vessels and we ah we we are a broken you know medium and the message is pure. The message is the gospel. The message has to go out.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And so whether we’re using radio, television, artificial intelligence, you know, we’re streaming online right now using ah the Internet. The medium is is is not the thing that I’m worried about. It’s the message, is the gospel. And so whatever a tool the Lord gives us, let’s use it for his glory and our good. But let’s not let pride get in the way.

Jon-Michael Sherman — So I’m going to speak into the Pentecostals because I grew up hanging from a chandelier. OK, I had a binky in one hand and a chandelier in the other. OK, I grew up Pentecostal holy roller.

Jon-Michael Sherman — We have man-of-God complex. And this is what we do. Saturday night, the Lord speaks okay to pastor. And then he comes down from the mountain of God and he delivers the tablets, you know. Common phrase growing up was, I got woken up two in the morning. The Lord, the lord changed it up.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Dude, you didn’t have a sermon until two in the morning last night. I know you’re you’re golfing all week.

Rich Birch — Right, right. It’s called pressure. Last minute pressure. Yes.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Exactly. Okay. And and it’s We struggle with that because we want to be the man of faith and power for the hour, Pentecostals.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jon-Michael Sherman — We do. And so like all of a sudden AI can help me do this faster and better. And what will my congregation think, led by the holy demon in Silicon Valley, you know, whatever. I’ve heard, I’ve seen the comments, right? It’s, but that’s, you know, it’s about humility. Like we have no new truth here. This is the truth that God gave us.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And we have to be faithful stewards of that truth. So we we can have nice outfits, but we better be true to the gospel. That’s my Pentecostal friends.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Now to my Reformed friends, who I’m very close with. I had a very long conversation with a friend who’s deeply Reformed about our product. There’s a different pride issue because knowledge puffs up. And a lot of us in the Reformed world, man, we have gotten these badges of check out my master’s, check out my doctorate, check out my library. And, you know, and no one can orate or exegete the way I can.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Well, hold up. AI can exegete pretty well, actually. And so there’s a pride issue there. And so I’ve seen that tribe having pride problems, too. But if we can make it not about the medium or the messenger, but make it about the message, it’s about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jon-Michael Sherman — And so, unfortunately, I’ve just seen AI bring out a little bit of pride in every tribe. And I think we all just need to humble ourselves and say, this is just a tool. We are just messengers and ambassadors of Christ. Right. You know, like we have this message of reconciliation. And so the message is still the same. The messengers were still full of pride and we need to be humble before the Lord every Sunday.

Jon-Michael Sherman — You know, there’s nothing more humbling than preaching, I would like to hope, but sometimes we get it twisted. So that’s my fun anecdote on that one for those are that are struggling in the midst of it. And and for those of that are still struggling, I did write a book for you. It’s called Pastoral Intelligence. It’s a book to help you figure out some of these big questions like, what is AI? How does it work? How do I make it work in my team?

Jon-Michael Sherman — And maybe you don’t want to read the book because you don’t like reading because you have ADHD like me. I have memes in here. I’ll just teach you through memes. So you can use a meme and it’ll tell you what you need to know about AI.

Rich Birch — Yes, that’s hilarious.

Jon-Michael Sherman — But I want to encourage you to get that you if you’re struggling through it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. And I would say, you know, my heart similarly, you know, I’ve spent, like I said this earlier in the podcast, I’ve spent most of my career in the second seat supporting incredible communicators who spend a lot of time, effort, energy, blood, sweat, tears on this. And I saw that my job, a part of my job was to remove barriers from that person’s life to try to make that part of what they do easier or so they could focus on that more. One of the lead pastors I worked to, incredible guy, His process, his sermon process, he would read about a thousand pages a week. That was pretty typical for him. And he would start writing after dinner on Saturday night.

Rich Birch — He would write all Saturday night, finish his slides at two or three in the morning, email them to our team. We’d get the slides made up early morning. And we tried to change this process. I’m like, I’m not sure that this is super healthy for you. He had been doing it for 20 years or 15 years by the time I had got and interacted with him. And I’ve often thought about Sermon Don. I thought, man, if we had this tool back then, we could have saved a lot of you know blood, sweat, and tears. There’s you know there’s a part of that research that we just didn’t need to be doing.

Rich Birch — So anyways, I’m glad, heartily endorsed, excited that you guys are are doing what you’re doing. As we come to to land the plane, Eric, any kind of final words from you that you would say to a pastor who’s listening in today? I want to make sure pastors actually go to sermondone.com and actually try it out. Anything else we want to be saying to people as we land the plane today?

Eric Smith — Yeah, you can tell Jon-Michael’s, the one that’s the most fun in the group, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah!

Eric Smith — Now, I would just say, you know, you should give it a shot. And it’s it’s it’s not even doing, you still have to read the research it gives you. It’s just gathering the content for you. And for me, I’m like, I don’t I don’t really let the noise bother me of the culture or what this person or that person is saying, I’m trying to serve the people that God has has called me to serve. And so if I can more effectively do that in a way that honors the Lord and reaches people…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Eric Smith — …that’s, that’s my heart. And I know that’s every pastor that’s on here. That’s what they’re doing too. And so, uh, yeah, I would just invite you to give it a shot. Doesn’t hurt. Uh, when you sign up too, I think we have a code RICH20 to give 20% off because we love Rich Birch and the unSeminary podcast.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Eric Smith — I guess Rich brings so much amazing content to the church world and God has used him in such a just a special way helping churches think through growth and strategy and systems and how to scale and you know the right things to do and so we’d love for you to try that out. And thanks, Rich, for all your time and what you meant to us.

Rich Birch — No, I appreciate that, Eric. And we we keep saying this. We’ve got to have you on to just talk about the church side of your world at some point. We’re always like, well, we could get to that, but there’s always so much good stuff to talk about on SermonDone. We’ll have to have you back just on that. Jon-Michael, any any final words from you?

Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, you know, I think it’s aptly put right now that no one here is is going to be replaced by AI, but maybe, you know, you might be replaced by someone who knows some of you as AI well. And I think it’s it’s a it’s a skill and a tool that you have to be embracing right now. And I think everyone needs to do that.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Now, in three years, there’s a very good chance you know we’ll be back on the podcast and we’ll be talking about you know how to replace a staff member with an optimist robot, you know. I can imagine you know, I like you know youth pastors, optimist robot. You know, youth leader at camp, optimist robot. No one wants to be with a fourteen year old bunch of 14-year-olds at youth camp, you know optimist robot. With security at church, optimist robot with a gun. There’s a lot of great opportunities here in the future.

Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness.

Jon-Michael Sherman — But I will say this, I’m just teasing, but like AI is so great. It’s a wonderful tool for God’s glory and our good. Let’s embrace it. Let’s like shake off the naysayers, enjoy it, love it. And we’re so glad we built this. We made this for you and we want you to have it and try it. And we’d love to have you jump on.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. So again, that’s just SermonDone.com. You can use that code RICH20. I really would encourage you to, to try it friends. I think it’s a great tool. It can save you so much time. And so that you can focus either on, you know, working on that delivery piece of the puzzle or more time leading your teams, more time connecting with people, you know, counseling folks, whatever, you know, there, I just think it’s a huge tool for you. So yeah again, that’s just SermonDone.com. Thanks so much. Really appreciate you guys being here today.

Eric Smith — Thanks.

Jon-Michael Sherman — Thanks, Rich.