- Starting price
- $19/month after 14-day trial
- Free tier
- No
- Platforms
- Web · Desktop and mobile browsers
- Developer
- NewCulture Consulting / Jon Horton
- Launched
- 2026
- Updated
- Aug 16, 2026
The verdict
Sermons.app is the rare AI sermon product whose restraint is a feature. It invites a pastor to talk through the message, asks questions, helps shape the big idea and outline, and critiques a completed draft for clarity, structure, application, and faithfulness. The pastor can accept or ignore suggestions. Pastor costs $19 monthly and Pro $39, after a fourteen-day card-required trial. Its July 2026 privacy policy names model, transcription, hosting, database, payment, analytics, and advertising providers and says customer content is not used for AI training—better disclosure than most peers. It still cannot determine biblical faithfulness or replace exegesis, peers, prayer, or pastoral knowledge. Remove sensitive stories, verify every suggestion, and judge it by whether it deepens the pastor’s work rather than merely making prose smoother.
Try Sermons.app ↗Opens sermons.app
Sermons.app is an AI sermon-coaching workspace created by pastor Jon Horton and operated by NewCulture Consulting. Its public distinction is explicit: the product is not positioned as a one-click sermon writer. The workflow begins with the pastor’s text, ideas, spoken reflection, manuscript, or imported document and uses questions and feedback to develop what the pastor is actually trying to preach.
Core tools include conversational brainstorming, big-idea and outline development, a calm editor, and a finished-draft review. Users can import Word, PDF, or plain text and export to Word or PDF. A voice profile can be built from approved blogs, podcasts, or YouTube sources, while sermon memory is meant to reduce repetition and recall previous themes.
Pastor is $19 monthly or $190 annually. Pastor Pro is $39 monthly or $390 annually and adds live voice talk-through plus advertised series planning, repurposing, analytics, and future Logos integration. A $99 monthly church tier is labeled coming soon. The trial lasts fourteen days and requires a payment card, so cancellation timing matters.
We reviewed the product, features, pricing, about page, privacy policy, terms, and faith.tools listing without opening a paid account. The policy is unusually detailed: Anthropic Claude handles coaching, OpenAI supports embeddings, Groq or Deepgram supports transcription through Vercel’s AI Gateway, Supabase stores data, Vercel hosts, Stripe bills, and Google Analytics and Meta Pixel measure marketing. The company says sermon content is not used to train AI models.
✓ The good
- Coach-first design - questions and feedback preserve more pastoral agency than instant manuscript generation
- Full workflow - spoken thinking, imports, editing, review, memory, and export can stay in one workspace
- Suggestion control - a pastor can accept, revise, or ignore feedback rather than receiving opaque final copy
- Specific privacy disclosure - the policy names major AI, transcription, storage, hosting, billing, and analytics providers
- No customer-content training claim - uploaded sermons and coaching material are excluded from AI model training
- Reasonable entry price - $19 monthly is accessible relative to many professional sermon platforms
- Founder context - the product is openly tied to a pastor and named operating company
✗ Watch out
- Card-required trial - users must remember to cancel before automatic paid renewal
- Theological limits - AI feedback labeled faithfulness is not exegesis or doctrinal accountability
- Sensitive-source risk - sermons, voice sources, and transcripts can contain congregant or third-party information
- Multiple processors - content moves through different providers depending on coaching, embeddings, transcription, and hosting
- Marketing tracking - Google Analytics and Meta Pixel introduce identifiers and California sharing opt-out considerations
- Pro roadmap overlap - series, repurposing, analytics, church collaboration, and Logos integration require checking for current availability
Best for
- Pastors who want questions and editorial feedback rather than a generated pulpit voice
- Preachers who develop ideas aloud and value voice transcription
- Solo pastors needing a structured second pass before review by trusted humans
- Users willing to redact personal stories and examine every theological and application suggestion
Avoid if
- You want the tool to perform exegesis, determine doctrine, or produce a sermon requiring little pastoral work
- Your organization prohibits manuscript, audio, or voice-profile data from external AI processors
- You need a live multi-seat church workspace that is still labeled coming soon
- You will upload counseling stories, minors, health details, staff issues, or unlicensed third-party content without redaction
What Sermons.app is
Sermons.app is a private drafting and coaching environment that uses generative AI and transcription services. It is not a source of divine authority, a licensed Bible commentary, a fact checker, plagiarism detector, confidential counseling record, denominational approval, or replacement for a preacher’s responsibility to study and speak truthfully.
“Faithfulness” feedback is a model-generated editorial judgment. The system may miss context, flatten doctrinal differences, invent support, recommend a weak application, or reward stylistic clarity while leaving a faulty interpretation untouched. A pastor and accountable human reviewers own the final message.
Why coaching is a healthier AI metaphor than ghostwriting
A coach asks the preacher to articulate the tension, hear the text, name the big idea, consider the congregation, and make choices. A ghostwriter rewards prompt skill and can conceal how little of the reasoning belongs to the speaker. Sermons.app’s design encourages visible participation throughout the draft.
The metaphor only holds when the user resists automation pressure. Begin with independent study, preserve source notes, answer questions in your own language, reject generic transitions, and invite a trusted reader who can disagree with both pastor and model.
Talk-through coaching: useful for verbal processors
Pastor Pro can listen as a preacher speaks through ideas and respond with questions and reflections. Transcription providers convert the audio, and the coaching model helps identify themes, a big idea, and possible structure.
Record in a private environment, avoid real names, check the transcript before analysis, and do not mistake fluent follow-up questions for spiritual wisdom. The value is externalized thinking and structure, not authority.
Draft review: clear feedback the pastor can decline
A completed manuscript can be reviewed for clarity, structure, application, and stated faithfulness, with suggestions presented for acceptance or rejection. Imports and Word or PDF exports reduce format friction.
Review recommendations against the biblical text, cited sources, local tradition, and actual congregation. Keep a change history so a polished sentence does not silently replace a carefully qualified claim.
Voice profile and sermon memory: continuity with privacy costs
Approved blogs, podcast episodes, YouTube material, and prior sermons can help the system model a preacher’s public voice and remember earlier themes, language, and illustrations.
Use only material the pastor owns or may process, remove guest voices and confidential stories, inspect what is embedded, and delete old sources that no longer represent the preacher. Stylistic consistency should not become self-imitation or repeated blind spots.
Pricing
Pastor
$19/month
Unlimited uploads and coaching, sermon review and optimization, voice profile, and sermon memory; $190 annually.
Pastor Pro
$39/month
Adds live voice talk-through plus advanced series, repurposing, analytics, and planned integrations; $390 annually.
Church
$99/month
Advertised future tier for multiple seats, shared archive, illustration library, and calendar; $990 annually when available.
Every paid plan begins with a fourteen-day trial, but a payment card is required and the subscription renews automatically unless canceled.
Pastor costs $19 monthly or $190 annually, effectively providing two months of savings for a full-year commitment.
Pastor Pro costs $39 monthly or $390 annually. Confirm which advanced features are live rather than planned before paying the difference.
The future Church plan is advertised at $99 monthly or $990 annually; do not procure against its multi-seat promises until generally available and contractually documented.
Where Sermons.app falls behind
Publish a live roadmap matrix separating available, beta, and coming-soon features across Pastor, Pro, and Church plans.
Add configurable provider selection, regional processing, zero-retention proof, organization-level retention, export, audit logs, roles, and administrator deletion.
Make biblical sources, extracted claims, and every “faithfulness” suggestion traceable rather than presenting a model judgment without evidence.
Provide automatic redaction, third-party-name detection, voice-source rights checks, sensitive-story warnings, and a private analytics opt-out by default.
Document accessibility, uptime, support response, backup retention, security testing, breach notice, account recovery, and what data remains after cancellation.
Sermons.app vs. SermonSeeds vs. Sermonly
Sermons.app focuses on developing and reviewing the sermon through questions, voice, memory, and editorial feedback. SermonSeeds specializes in turning a completed message into clips, graphics, slides, devotionals, guides, and public assets. Sermonly provides a broader sermon-writing and organization workspace.
Choose Sermons.app when the central need is a reflective drafting partner that preserves pastoral authorship. Choose SermonSeeds for post-sermon communications scale or Sermonly when manuscript organization and a conventional preparation workspace matter more than voice coaching.
They can occupy different stages, but sending the same sensitive sermon through multiple vendors multiplies exposure and editorial noise. Use the fewest systems necessary, preserve an owned master file, and assign one human accountable for the final message and every derivative.
The bottom line
Sermons.app currently sets a high bar for responsible positioning and disclosure in a difficult category. The coaching model is healthier than instant sermon generation, the price is clear, the user controls suggestions, and the privacy page names the processing chain. None of that makes the AI a theologian or makes a manuscript free of personal data. The best use begins after real study, uses sanitized material, treats feedback as contestable, and ends with human accountability. On those terms, it is one of the stronger AI tools a preacher can evaluate.
Alternatives to Sermons.app
SermonSeedsBest suited to repurposing a finished sermon into media, slides, devotionals, and group content.
SermonlyA sermon writing and organization workspace with broader preparation structure.
SermonSparkIdea and outline support for pastors wanting a lighter brainstorming assistant.
Pastors.aiBroader church and sermon AI functions, including content reuse and assistant workflows.Human preaching groupTrusted peers provide theology, local knowledge, disagreement, prayer, and accountability AI cannot.Frequently asked questions
Does Sermons.app write sermons for pastors?
It positions itself as a coach rather than a ghostwriter, using questions, spoken reflection, editing, and review to develop the pastor’s own work.
How much does Sermons.app cost?
Pastor is $19 monthly or $190 annually. Pastor Pro is $39 monthly or $390 annually. A $99 church plan is marked coming soon.
Is there a free plan?
There is a fourteen-day trial that requires a card, but no permanent free plan is listed.
Does it train AI on my sermons?
The privacy policy says customer content is not used to train AI models.
Which AI providers does it use?
The policy names Anthropic Claude for coaching, OpenAI for embeddings, and Groq or Deepgram for transcription routed through Vercel AI Gateway.
Can it judge whether a sermon is biblically faithful?
It can offer model-generated feedback, but that is not a trustworthy theological verdict. The preacher must verify interpretation, doctrine, evidence, and application.
Can I import and export a manuscript?
The product lists Word, PDF, and plain-text imports and Word or PDF exports; verify formatting with a sample during the trial.
Sources & further reading
More Sermon Prep Apps
AlignedAIAn ambitious, low-cost pastor workspace that adapts outputs to a church’s statement of faith, sermons, documents, voice, and selected tradition—valuable for drafting and retrieval, but doctrine settings cannot verify truth and broad connected-data access deserves far clearer disclosure.
Ministry PassA deep weekly ministry library combining sermon-series scaffolds, illustrations, graphics, video, planning, training, Sermonary, and higher-tier outreach tools—but the advertised monthly payments carry a twelve-month commitment, refunds are unavailable, and every outline still needs a pastor’s own exegesis, theology, and local voice.SermonSeedsAn ambitious post-sermon production studio that accepts almost any manuscript or recording and returns clips, captions, graphics, slides, devotionals, group guides, blogs, social copy, public pages, and analytics—excellent leverage for a small church team when one accountable editor reviews everything.
SermonarySermonary has quietly become the favorite of pastors who want sermon prep to feel less like wrestling with a word processor - and more like building with blocks.
Logos Sermon BuilderThe sermon-prep module that turns the Logos library into a drag-and-drop outline - the natural workflow for any pastor already living inside Logos.
Pulpit AIUpload one sermon and walk away with a month of derivative content - the post-production multiplier built specifically for preachers.