The reports of preaching’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

One of the conversations churning recently is that preaching is dead, or perhaps should be. There are folks online and in church and para-church leadership who wake up each morning with an insatiable itch to denigrate the preaching act and complain that preaching doesn’t do whatever they want it to. Instead, they argue churches and Christians should read their books and participate in their retreats and programs. Preaching, in the eyes of some, should get its affairs in order and invite the priest over to offer Last Rites.

The reasons for the sounding the death knell of preaching are myriad, but the most recent is the advent of and widespread adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI). While AI is not new, the general public has not had easy access to AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Bing. Those who love thrusting their daggers into preaching—giddy as school children on a field trip to an ice cream factory—jump to say, “AI is going to end the need for preaching.”

The argument goes like this: Since anyone can ask AI to complete word based tasks, like “write a 1,000 word essay about Acts 10,” then why would we need preachers to articulate the wisdom of the text? For them, we can reroute whatever resources a church allocates for kerygma to other outlets. But after spending a good part of the last year asking AI to complete word based tasks, even asking it to write a sermon, you can consider me unbothered by the risk of AI replacing preaching.

I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be worried either.

Preaching Is About Humanity

Why am I unbothered? Because preaching is not about content or questions. Preaching is about humanity. AI cannot, as of today, be human, and I’m unsure that AI can even mimic humanity. Only humans can be human.

This year the oldest tennis tournament in the world, Wimbledon, tried something new. On their website, wimbledon.com, they offered match highlights with AI commentary. No humans needed. I’m not a huge tennis fan, but I tend to watch Wimbledon and the U.S. Open each year. I know some of the storylines and who and what to watch for. I also know the commentary crew. I know that John McEnroe, forever argumentative as a player, is actually irenic and kind. The ESPN crew are real people offering genuine commentary on players who are people and their commentary is intensely human. I know Chris Evert will offer unflinching, cold opinions. Evert has even called players out for not looking or being “fit.”

Even if Wimbledon’s AI were intelligent, it was also painfully artificial. It cannot do what McEnroe, Evert, and others do. The Wimbledon AI delivered facts about the match. It also mispronounced players’ names and reported the score, but there were times when the AI simply went silent for long stretches of time. The worst thing that can happen in a broadcast is “dead air.” At one point, because the AI was commenting on re-played highlights rather than live play, it reported the events of the match before the highlight itself. AI is like the friend who burps out the joke's punchline before the set-up.

Preaching Is Proclamation

What’s undeniable in the sermons of the New Testament is that each is more than information. I agree with those who criticize contemporary preaching, suggesting that it has been reduced to information transfer, alliterated points, and didacticism. Of course, AI can blurt out information, but so could Wikipedia before that, and the Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia before that. Accessible information is not new. No information delivery system that came before AI killed preaching, because preaching is more than information.

The sermons of the New Testament contain information, yes, but they are each about human engagement and interaction with God. In fact, all the scriptures are about human responses to God. Too often preaching has condensed this grand narrative to abstractions or paint-by-numbers topical advice.

Perhaps the advent of AI offers preachers an opportunity to revisit our own practice of our vocation. Perhaps now is the time to become less like professors and reclaim proclamation. In fact, if proclamation is anything, it is the announcement of what is real.

Churches are populated with real people facing real issues in a real world and those issues need to be addressed by real women and men engaged with the real God and that real God’s story with humans. It’s not just that AI lacks comedic timing and doesn’t know how to deliver a punchline, it also lacks the experience of choosing life with a God who has chosen us.

AI doesn’t know tears, joy, or disappointment. AI doesn’t know what it is to face death or to sit with others as they face it. There is no way to artificially engage hurt, disappointment, grief, loss, or the birth of a newborn. Good preachers, those living authentically and walking alongside neighbors, friends, and communities, have had front row seats to actual life, the life that strips away our false shelves and our own attempts to live artificially. Preachers merge the horizons of the text, the God of the text, and the lived experiences of flesh and blood.

These, more than exegesis and exposition, are the true furnishings of our preaching. Life on life. Trusted guides. Real people. There may not be many things AI cannot do, but there is at least still one. AI cannot breathe. And where there is no breath, there is no life.

Sean Palmer is the Teaching Pastor at Ecclesia Houston, speaker and speaking coach, and author of several books including--Speaking by the Numbers: Ennegram Wisdom for Teachers, Pastors, and Communicators.