3 Ways to use ChatGPT to speed up your work as a church planter or pastor

As a pastor I am always trying to obey two rules when it comes to admin:

1. Be excellent at administrative work.
2. Keep administrative work to a minimum.

The first rule keeps the church running smoothly and ensures that congregants get the information/answers/help they need.

The second rule ensures that administrative work never becomes the “main” thing. The main thing is the gospel of Jesus Christ being worked out in the preaching, the sacraments, prayer, and pastoral care.

So about a year ago I began experimenting with AI. Not to write my sermons, but to help with other tasks that are essential to rule 1 and in keeping with the spirit of rule 2. At the request of a few friends, I am trying to write down how I use AI so that it might help a few of you.

Which AI? I mainly use ChatGPT for these tasks. Apparently others (Claude?) may be better suited, but I’ve gotten used to Chat GPT. It is free, though if you subscribe, you can access a few other features you might find useful. But start on the free plan and see what you think. Make an account and get started here: https://chatgpt.com/

ChatGPT is intimidating when you open it for the first time. A bunch of blankness asking you what you want to do. So, here’s some things I can do:

1. Generate Small Group Questions

I write small group questions for our church groups to use. Normally they are based off the sermon series, but I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do this for any particular text.

What I like about this prompt is that starting is often the most difficult. ChatGPT gets me started, gives me some food for thought and I am usually off to the races.

The easiest way to start is to tell ChatGPT what you want to do. Put the following (or something like it) into the chat box:

I’m trying to create small group discussion questions for [insert your text here]. The group is composed of people who are different ages, men and women, from different cultural backgrounds. We are part of a [denomination/type of church] Can you generate 10 small group questions for me?

This is usually a good starting point but you are going to need to do some editing. Here are a few prompts I use for editing:

1. I didn’t like those questions, can you give me some more?
2. Can you include some questions that have cross references?
3. Can you include more application questions?
4. Can you make a few questions that get a little deeper?
5. Can you include some questions that give the group ideas for prayer?
6. Can you include a quote about one of the topics raised in this text and ask the group to discuss?

As I said above, this is a great way to get started on question writing. Some week are better than others, and it always needs a human touch to tidy up some of the loose ends.

Time saved: 30 minutes

Additional Hack: If you are a manuscript preacher, you can copy and paste your manuscript into ChatGPT and ask it to generate discussion questions off your sermon and the passage.

2. Generate Kids Colouring Sheets

Our church has a kids bulletin each week that follows the sermon schedule. In each kids bulletin are a word search, a place to record the sermon and its main points, a spot to draw a picture and a small colouring page.

We print it on a 8.5X11 and we fold them and clip them to these clipboards. Kids and parents both love them and it is super helpful as kids learn to sit through the service.

But the catch is that the word search and colouring page are custom each week and are related to the sermon. ChatGPT does custom word searches, but I haven’t loved the results so far, so just use this site. It is free and easy.

But the colouring page was trickier. I was sick of the cheesy, round-ish and frankly ugly kids colouring pages that you buy from the big colouring book companies. And there aren’t colouring books that include every Bible passage. So, I started making my own but it took a long time.

So, I asked ChatGPT to help. Here is your first prompt:

Hey! Can you generate a prompt for a kids colouring sheet for the following Bible passage [insert Bible passage].

ChatGPT will spit out a small paragraph of instructions that you can edit. I commonly change a few words, tell it not to include a picture of Jesus (important in our context but you do you) and then copy and paste that paragraph back into ChatGPT.

And then voila! A colouring page.

Careful! ChatGPT has an image limit on the free plan so you only get a few chances. (Edit: this may be changed now or is slowly growing?).

But here are some common edits I use once the first picture comes back:

1. Can you try again?
2. Can you make it simpler?
3. Can you make it more geometric?
4. Can you make it black and white without any shading?
5. Can you make it a line drawing? (forces Chat GPT to only use thin lines)

Time Saved: 30 minutes

3. Strengthen Your Writing

As the pastor of a smaller church, I don’t always have another staff member or pastor to bounce ideas off of. ChatGPT can be a good conversation partner in your writing. Whether you are writing an important email, a short article or an explanation of a theological point, ChatGPT can help in the following ways:

First, if you need help in getting started in the writing process, you can simply ask ChatGPT to generate a draft of whatever you need.

For example, “Can you write me an email to a volunteer in my church who has missed some things they signed up for?”

But I mostly use ChatGPT for editing and strengthening things I have already written.

For example, I wrote a short article for our elders on some ideas for how we should organize our leadership structure. I uploaded the article to ChatGPT and asked the following:

1. Does this article make sense?
2. What could be added to this article to make it stronger?
3. What is extra and could be removed?
4. What are 3 counter arguments to what I have proposed?
5. How could my article be misinterpreted?

If you want some feedback on a sermon manuscript, you can do the exact same thing. Upload your sermon to ChatGPT and ask what you need help with:

1. What are some ways people could apply this sermon to their lives?
2. What are some examples from movie/tv/books/popular culture that illustrate ___________?
3. What are common rebuttals to my teaching? Are there famous quotations that rebut some of my points?

Time Saved: Depends.

I hope you find this helpful! Leave me a comment if you have questions or if you have found other ways to use AI in streamlining your admin work as a pastor.