Steal my AI Church Communications Prompts + Strategy

As the communications director of a large church, I send a weekly email across three campuses to just under 15,000 people. I have a consistent open rate of 50-65%. But my time (like yours!) is limited, so I want to make the most of every minute.

That’s where AI comes in. This powerful tool can save time and help share compelling content that inspires your church and community. You are likely passionate about reaching your city with the gospel, but you may juggle multiple roles and responsibilities and need to write great content as quickly as possible.

Here is exactly how I write my prompts (and you can write yours) so that you can steal my strategy.

My Weekly Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is one great way to stay connected with your congregation. One key lesson we’ve learned about maintaining high open and click-through rates is the importance of setting a standard expectation and consistently delivering helpful information.

We send weekly emails on Fridays to get people excited for the weekend. While research can be helpful, I believe it’s more about the consistency of your messaging than the specific timing.

Our emails are structured into three strategic sections:

1. Top Section: A sermon recap, promotional content, or heartfelt announcements.
2. Middle Section: Our featured event.
3. Bottom Section: An upcoming events list.

Many people confess that they scan for relatable content and head straight to the calendar section. I totally understand! Our lives are busy, and everyone’s time is valuable.

Recently, I decided to enhance our sermon recaps using AI. I’ve received 4-5 emails telling me these recaps feel like great discipleship tools. So, this isn’t just a way to save time; it’s also about inspiring and equipping our congregation.

My AI Prompt Formula

Here’s the formula I use to create effective prompts:

• Define AI’s Job: Think like a ______ (content marketer, email marketer, kids pastor, lead pastor, etc.).
• Define Your Organization or Client: For ____ (organization or client – then link to the website).
• Define the Organization/Client’s Vision or Objective: We are a (denomination/size) church in (region/city) that wants to (vision).
• Feed It Examples of Your Tone: Send 1-5 items of your current writing, ideally from the same platform, to help it learn your style, tone, and format.
• Define the Task: Specify what you want AI to do. What’s the word count? What’s the objective of this content?
• Define the Target Audience: Who is reading this, and what do they care about?
• Elaborate on Your Tone: Use your writing brand standards to convey the desired style/tone, or provide a few (3-5) adjectives that define you (e.g., empathetic, professional, inspirational).
• Clarify Any Additional Requirements: Do you need specific keywords? Should certain words be avoided? What Bible translation do you use?

When in doubt, write a prompt and then ask AI what you could do to write a better prompt. This has been one of the ways I’ve developed this formula!

My Exact Email Prompt

Here’s the exact prompt I provided to ChatGPT. I also uploaded our last week’s email and this week’s sermon transcript.

Think like a content marketer for Mission Hills Church (https://www.missionhills.org), a large evangelical Christian church in Colorado that wants to help real people with messy lives discover new faith, hope, and purpose in Jesus. Our mission is to help people become like Jesus and join him on mission.

Read the past email to learn the style, tone, and format of Mission Hills Church.

Write a 300 word email. Make it feel like we want to help people in their walk with Jesus. Recap the sermon below, make the overall CTA catch up on the podcast or YouTube, and come to church this coming weekend for the next message in this series about speech.

Target Audience: this is for people who call Mission Hills their church home. Generally, our readers are women between the ages of 25 and 65 who value education and a faith-based life. They are usually well-educated in the middle class and grew up in Christian homes.

Tone: Warm, encouraging, and inspirational with practical advice. Bible verses (if needed) should be in the NIV translation.

Additional Requirements: Insert links to each piece of content.

And here is the email that I received:

Have you ever found yourself hesitating to take that next step in your faith journey? Last weekend, we kicked off our series, The Gift of Weakness, and explored how God calls us to take courageous steps, just like Gideon did in Judges 6:25-32.

Gideon faced a daunting challenge: God asked him to tear down his family’s altar to Baal. This was no small task! It reminds us that trusting God often means removing the distractions that pull us away from Him. We learned that public faith can inspire others and that our actions can reflect our trust in God.

🔑 Key Takeaways:
• Spiritual inertia can keep us stuck. If you’ve made progress in your faith, now is the perfect time to take your next step.
• It’s natural to feel fear, but we can’t let it dictate our actions. When we act in faith, we allow God to fight for us.

💪 Live on Mission Exercise: This week, consider what “altars” you might need to tear down in your own life. What fears are holding you back from fully trusting God? Remember, surrendering our weaknesses opens the door for His strength to shine through.

If you missed the message, you can catch up on the podcast or watch it on YouTube. We also invite you to join us this weekend for the next installment of our series on speech—let’s learn together how to speak life into our world!

No matter where you are in your faith journey, we’re here to support you. Let’s continue to grow in faith and community together!

My 20-minute 4-step Editing Process

Here are the four steps I take each week to edit my emails:

1. Read the Content: I read the email to see how I like it and how much work it’ll need. I make a first pass at changes, especially removing sections I don’t like or adding new information.
2. Re-Prompt AI: I spend 5-10 minutes re-prompting AI to clarify ideas and messages. For example, I might say, “more conversational, like Craig Smith (our lead pastor)” or “more practical,” or I can ask, “Can you elaborate on point two?” Sometimes, I ask, “What else would make this more interesting or creative?”
3. Edit for Content: For me, AI-generated text is a great rough draft. I read the content carefully to decide what feels finalized and what still needs to be changed. Sometimes, I ask AI for input on my edits; other times, I feel good about what I have.
4. Final Check with Grammarly: I run my content through Grammarly for a final check. They also have an integrated AI tool, whose suggestions sometimes help clarify ideas further. (But beware: never “accept all,” as some suggestions may make thoughts less clear. Also, Grammarly doesn’t recognize Bible verses, so it’ll suggest edits for those that we obviously don’t want to use!)

After that 20-minute process, here is this week’s email content:

We all experience moments when taking the next step in our faith journey feels daunting. Maybe shame hinders you from embracing Jesus’ gift of salvation, fear of judgment stops you from going public with your faith through baptism, or your busy schedule has become an excuse for not serving or joining a group.

Last weekend, in our series, The Gift of Weakness, Craig explored how God calls us to courageous steps. (Missed the message? Catch up on the podcast or watch it on YouTube.)

Gideon faced his daunting challenge, reminding us that trusting God often means removing the distractions that pull us away from Him. We learned that public faith can inspire others, and our actions can reflect our trust in God.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Spiritual inertia can keep us stuck. If you’ve made progress in your faith, now is the perfect time to take your next step. Learn more about baptism, groups, and serving here.
• It’s natural to feel fear, but we must not let it dictate our actions. When we act in faith, we allow God to fight for us.

💪 Live on Mission Exercise: Consider what “altars” you need to tear down this week. What fears are holding you back from fully trusting God? Remember, surrendering our weaknesses allows His strength to shine through.

This weekend, we’ll discuss how to bring life to our world. Grab a friend, and we’ll see you soon.

Finalized Your Subject Line and Preview Text

Once I determine my final email, I will send this to ChatGPT:

After editing, here is my final email. Can you give me 5 subject lines and preview text combinations to encourage a higher open rate?

As a side note, we have run an A/B test and learned that the same subject line (What’s Coming up at Mission Hills Church) outperforms new/creative subject lines. However, this prompt allows me to see more preview text options quickly.

I didn’t love my initial results, so I clarified to ChaptGPT:

Those are too generic. Can you give me something that feels like it meets a need?

Then, I used the elements of two different suggestions to land on our subject line and preview text:

Subject Line: What’s Coming at Mission Hills Church
Preview Text: break free from fear and embrace courageous faith.

Other Ways to Use AI to Generate Sermon-Based Content

Once you get the hang of the process, here are a few other ways to consider using AI with your sermon content. Use the same basic AI prompt but adjust the task section:

Generate a weekly communications calendar.
Task Prompt: Give me a one-week communications calendar to reiterate this sermon. Once you have the calendar, write the appropriate content for each channel.

Generate small group questions.
Task Prompt: give me 15 small group discussion questions based on this sermon. Make 5 about understanding the content, 5 about applying this generically, and 5 big-picture theological ideas.

Generate new blog ideas:
Task Prompt: Give me 15 ideas of felt needs mentioned in this sermon that could make great follow-up blogs. Then, give me a 300-word explanation of what can be included in that blog and why it would be helpful for my target audience.

As you explore how AI can enhance your church communications, remember to keep experimenting with prompts that resonate with your mission.