7 Ingenious Ways Pastors Are Using ChatGPT (Plus 3 Truly Horrifying Use Cases)

1. Write effective meeting agendas
2. Develop clear, accurate meeting summaries
3. Turn recurring tasks into checklists (for delegating!)
4. Define volunteer roles
5. Turn church event ideas into actionable plans
6. Find video illustrations for your sermons
7. Write sermon YouTube & podcast metadata

ChatGPT: It's a Powerful Tool

1. Write effective meeting agendas

Most meetings drift because the purpose wasn't defined before the room filled up. ChatGPT can help you build a clear, focused agenda before anyone shows up. Tell ChatGPT what triggered the meeting, who's attending, and what a good outcome looks like — and it will hand you back a clear objective, a structured agenda with time estimates, key discussion questions, and a short message you can send to attendees ahead of time.

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2. Develop clear, accurate meeting summaries

Pastoral care visits and counseling sessions generate important follow-up — and most of it lives in your head for about 48 hours before fading. ChatGPT can turn a messy brain-dump into a clean, structured record you can actually use. Give it a quick summary of what happened, instruct it to ask you a few clarifying questions, and it will return key themes, action steps, and a draft follow-up message you can send.

Horrific AI Application #1: Pastoral Avatar

Megachurch pastor Ron Carpenter created an AI version of himself — available around the clock for prayer and spiritual conversation, positioned as a “personal pastor” on demand. For $49.

A pastor’s presence isn’t a product to be scaled. The New Testament picture of shepherding is inherently personal, a shepherd who knows his sheep by name, who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one. When pastoral presence gets commodified into a subscription service, it reframes what care means. Congregants who feel supported by an AI avatar may be less likely to reach out to a real person, join a small group, or do the slow work of building genuine Christian community.

3. Turn recurring tasks into checklists for delegating

Recurring ministry tasks — post-service collection, communion prep, welcome team coordination — are undocumented in most churches, which means they live or die with whoever's currently doing them. Using ChatGPT or AI in church management can turn any recurring task into a clear, step-by-step checklist someone else can own. Describe the task, how often it happens, and what done well looks like — and it will produce a checklist with timing, ownership, and a handoff message you can send to a volunteer. Delegation without documentation isn't delegation.

4. Define a volunteer role before you make the ask

The reason many volunteer asks fall flat is that the role itself is vague. ChatGPT can help you define the role clearly before you ever have the conversation. Walk it through what the role needs to accomplish, what tasks it involves, and what kind of person would thrive in it — and it will produce a clear role title, a brief summary, a responsibility list, an estimated time commitment, and a sample invitation message. The ask gets easier when the role is defined.

Horrific AI Application #2: Text With Jesus

Text With Jesus is an app that lets users have real-time conversations with “AI versions of Jesus, the Apostles, and other biblical figures.” It’s been covered by CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Anything that reduces Jesus to merely a helpful, always-on, conversationalist is damaging. Truly vibrant intimacy with Jesus forms over time, through submission, trust, and obedience… not an ai-powered app that boasts “instant, personalized responses”.

5. Turn church event ideas into actionable plans

Church events have a way of expanding to fill every available hour of pastoral time. ChatGPT can take a rough idea and turn it into a structured plan you can hand off the same day. Tell it the purpose, audience, and rough size of your event — and it will return a one-paragraph event summary, a core task checklist with timing, a list of volunteer roles to delegate, and a vision pitch you can use in a meeting or email to get others on board. Lead the vision; let someone else manage the details.

6. Source video illustrations for your sermons

Finding the right film or TV clip for a sermon takes longer than it should — and usually happens late Saturday night. ChatGPT can surface strong options in minutes based on what you're actually preaching. Give it your sermon theme, Scripture, desired tone, the type of media you're open to, and a sense of your congregation — and it will suggest clips that fit, complete with timestamps, a brief description of what happens on screen, and why each one connects to your message.

Horrrific AI Application #3: PocketPastor.ai

PocketPastor.ai markets itself as a biblical, compassionate ministry tool offering automated responses to grief, repentance, spiritual formation, and discipleship conversations. It’s designed to step into the gaps where pastoral care is needed — and present itself as a viable option there.

 

The pastoral call is one of shepherding, of walking closely with your members, being present with them in their most vulnerable moments. Sit with them, pray with them, and walk with them. It demands constant reliance and sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit. When those experiences get routed through an algorithm spiritual care is short-circuited.

7. Write your sermon's YouTube and podcast metadata

Sermon discoverability on YouTube and podcast platforms doesn't happen by accident — and writing good metadata is a skill most pastors never had to develop. ChatGPT can handle it for you in one sitting. Give it your sermon content and it can generate SEO-optimized title options, a primary YouTube description, a keyword and hashtag list, and a podcast episode title and description — all built to reach both your congregation and people searching for exactly what you're preaching.

How to Level Up Your ChatGPT Game

Most people use ChatGPT like a search engine — type a question, get an answer, move on. That approach works for simple lookups, but it severely limits what the tool can do for you.

The best prompts are built on a four-part framework called C.R.I.T., developed by Jeff Woods in his book The AI-Driven Leader:

• Context: Give it the big picture. Who are you? What are you working on? What's the situation? The more relevant background you provide, the more tailored the response will be. A pastor at a 200-person church in a small town gets very different advice than a megachurch executive pastor... but only if ChatGPT knows the difference.
• Role: Instructing ChatGPT to act as a "church operations assistant". This shapes not just the tone of the response but the lens it uses to think through your problem. Without a defined role, ChatGPT defaults to a generic helpful assistant. With one, it becomes something much more useful.
• Interview: instruct ChatGPT to ask you questions before it produces anything. This keeps you in the driver's seat, surfaces details you might have forgotten to include, and ensures the output actually fits your situation rather than a generic version of it.
• Task: Get specific about what you want back. Not just "help me with this" but "give me a five-step checklist, a handoff message, and a timeline." The more precise your task, the more useful the output. Vague tasks produce vague results.

I've found success as I think of ChatGPT like overconfident intern who quickly jumps to conclusions, thrives on clear direction, and benefits from good feedback. Don't trust it's first response. Keep YOU in the driver seat.

Joshua Gordon, community editor, TheLEadpastor.com

Ready to Use These Tools?

The seven ChatGPT tools described above — with full copy-and-paste prompts — are available free in the TLP Community. It's a growing space for lead pastors who want practical, theologically grounded resources without the celebrity culture noise.

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