The Art of Engaging Preaching

Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Eric Smith, founder and lead pastor of Hope City Church in Florida and co-creator of SermonDone.

Are you a pastor who’s feeling the pressure of sermon prep each week? Wondering how you can save time on research and content creation without compromising the quality of your messages? Tune in as Eric shares how his experience as a church planter and pastor led him to create a tool that helps pastors streamline the sermon preparation process, saving valuable time while ensuring biblical accuracy.

• Leveraging AI for sermon preparation. // Eric created SermonDone to help pastors simplify the sermon writing process. Recognizing that 83% of people choose a church based on the teaching, he developed a “sermon assistant” that provides biblically sound, personalized content to save pastors time on research without compromising theological accuracy.
• Built to match your own style. // With SermonDone, pastors build a personal profile by uploading 15 of their best sermons. This allows the platform to learn each pastor’s teaching voice, theological background, preferred Bible translation, and style. Then the ideas and outlines generated by SermonDone feel authentic rather than generic.
• Accelerate the research process. // SermonDone wasn’t created to write sermons for pastors but rather to accelerate research and brainstorming. It saves time on the heavy lifting of initial idea gathering and structure, allowing pastors to invest more energy into refining and internalizing their messages.
• Series planning made easy. // The Planning Tab within SermonDone allows pastors to quickly outline sermon series, whether a six-week topical series or a 20-week walk through a book of the Bible. If the initial suggestions don’t fit, pastors can easily generate more options until they find the right fit for their context.
• Designed with pastors in mind. // Unlike general AI tools like ChatGPT, SermonDone has theological guardrails and a pastor-centric design. It prioritizes scriptural integrity and helps pastors create small group questions, discipleship resources, and sermon slides—all from a single sermon upload.
• Focused on better sermon delivery. // Eric’s vision for SermonDone is not just faster sermon preparation but deeper sermon impact. By saving time on early stages of writing, pastors can spend more time letting the message take root in their hearts, leading to more dynamic, engaging preaching.

Access SermonDone at www.sermondone.com and use it for free for five days, or use the code Rich20 to get 20% off the price. Learn more about Hope City Church at www.hopecityflorida.com.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. We have got a repeat guest and you know what that means. We don’t, we rarely have repeat guests. We’re 800 some odd episodes in and it’s only been a handful of people that we’ve had on more than one time. And so you know what that means. You’ve got to lean in today because we’ve got somebody that we want you to hear from.

Rich Birch — We have got Eric Smith with us. He’s a part of an organization called SermonDone that I want to ah introduce you to today, if you’re unaware of them, but he’s also a practitioner. He is leading a church in Florida. He’s the founder and lead pastor of a church called Hope City Church, HopeCityFlorida.com. And he was ah previously a part of a church called Vaughn Forest City. Sorry, Vaughn Forest Church. Excited to have you on the show today, Eric. Welcome.

Eric Smith — Thanks so much for having me back. It’s an honor to be with you and excited for our conversation today.

Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be a good conversation. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit of the Eric Smith story. Tell us little bit about what you’re up to now. What what’s been on what’s been going on in your world since we last connected a few years ago?

Eric Smith — Yeah. So, uh, since we last connected, ah my family and I moved to Southwest Florida, planted a church down here called Hope City. And we launched three and a half years ago. It’s been a wild ride. It’s been amazing.

Eric Smith — And yeah, God’s just been doing incredible stuff, seen a lot of incredible growth numerically, spiritually. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m also in the business world with my wife, in the medical business ah that we have. And then ah about a year ago, started learning more and more about AI and just kind of had this conviction of how can we as the church leverage this tool to serve churches and to serve pastors. And so that’s what led me down this journey of SermonDone.

Rich Birch — Love it. Why tell us a little bit about Hope City? Kind of unpack that story a little bit. It’s been pretty amazing what God’s been up to. You’re a humble guy. So I know you you know you don’t want to brag about it. It’s obviously a whole team of people. God’s at at work there. But tell us a little bit of what’s gone on the last three years, three and a half years.

Eric Smith — Yeah, so we moved here December 19th of 2020. We knew a handful of people…

Rich Birch — Great time to move. Great time to move.

Eric Smith — Great time to move right in the middle of COVID. Yeah, I know. I had a lot of friends that were like, are you stupid, man? What’s wrong with you? You’ve lost your mind. Why are you moving to plant a church?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — And I was like, I don’t know, man. I’m just you know I’ve already planted once in Jackson, Mississippi, the Metro Jackson in ’09. And God did incredible things there with a church called Vertical Church that’s still going and doing great things.

Eric Smith — But anyway, so we, yeah, we moved here and we started ah medical practice that we have. And we started building our launch team. We launched the church 10 months after we moved. We went from 15 people to about 160 on our launch team.

Rich Birch — Amazing.

Eric Smith — Launched the church with over 400 October of ’21. And yeah, it’s just kept growing. Right now we’re seeing over 1,500 people in attendance…

Rich Birch — That’s incredible.

Eric Smith — …each weekend and we’ve launched a second campus back in October of late October of 24. It’s doing really, really well. But we’ve got we’ve got an incredible team. I’m blessed to have guys who’ve worked with me in the past who are part of my team again here.

Rich Birch — So good.

Eric Smith — And so just a lot of comfort familiarity and understanding of what we’re doing. And so, yeah, it’s been a blast. God’s doing some incredible stuff. We’re in a big capital campaign. We’re building a future facility for our Bonita campus, which is the original location. And so it’s just full speed blazing ahead. So we’re having fun.

Rich Birch — Love it. Good. Well, excited to to watch that journey. It’s fun to watch for sure. So want to talk about SermonDone and AI. One of my convictions is there are two kinds of church leaders out there when it comes to AI. There’s those that are attempting to leverage it and figure out how can we use this tool to advance the gospel, to ah you know to lift those things that we do that you know maybe we can get a computer to help us with that. And then there’s those that are being left behind.

Rich Birch — And I want to convince friends that you’re listening in. I want you to take steps towards um learning more about SermonDone, leaning in. But let’s talk about kind of the genesis of this. Where did SermonDone come from? Why you know why why are you investing time, effort, and energy into this? What’s the problem that you’re attempting to solve with SermonDone?

Eric Smith — Yeah. So just a tiny little bit of a backstory. Pretty much my whole ministry career, and I’ve been doing this over 20 years, uh, has, I’ve just had a burning desire to help other churches and pastors. So I’ve, I started a church planting network in Mississippi called 242 that’s still going, helping plant churches. I’m part of Strategic Launch Network here, ah in the US now, and I get to volunteer and help with them. I’ve consulted, done all different types of stuff.

Eric Smith — And so um it was about a year ago as the conversation of AI was continuing to grow and accelerate. I was like, man, I love this tool. And I’ve always been kind of a forward thinking, open to using tools to be better in technology. And so it’s never been something I’ve been scared of. And so I was like, how do we utilize this to really serve pastors? And we all know that the top thing that pastors wrestle with is is delivering the sermon each week.

Eric Smith — 83%, according to studies, 83% of people come to the church based on the sermon. It’s it’s a big deal. And so how can we serve these churches? And so I began to research what’s out there what’s going on?

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — And I’m not being critical of anything else at that time that was out there. I just couldn’t find anything that I felt like this really works for pastors which led me on a journey to connect with John Michael, who’s my business partner in this whole project. And we came together. He’s kind of the marketing/tech side. I’m the pastoral, and he’s been a pastor as well.

Eric Smith — But after writing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sermons, I was like, how do we create something that really comes alongside of a pastor and is the sermon assistant that they’ve always wished they had…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — …that could accelerate and generate content that’s biblically sound, that lines up with their theology, ah that lines up with their unique voice? How do we create something that’s like that? And so that began the journey of developing SermonDone. Our team of developers started working together, and that’s how we developed where we are today.

Rich Birch — Love it. You know, one of the things, so I, you know, most of my career has been in the executive pastor seat, that kind of secondary seat, supporting some incredible communicators. And, you you know, one of the things I’ve seen over time, and you mentioned it, you know, 83% of the reason why people attend a church is because of the teaching.

Rich Birch — And, um I remember, I don’t know, 15 years ago when that really, that light bulb went off inside of me. I’ve been working in church for a long time. I realized, man, we’ve got to organize as an executive pastor, I’ve got to help organize the life of the the rest of the stuff in a senior pastor’s world, a lead pastor’s world, to make it so that they can produce great messages, so that they can do a great job at that piece. It’s critically important.

Rich Birch — And I when I heard about SermonDone, I was excited to learn more about it because I do think that, man, this is a tool. Love that idea of a sermon assistant you’ve always wanted. Tell us more about that. What how are you kind of living out that that dream with this tool?

Eric Smith — Yeah, so we, one of my primary visions and passions in developing this was how do we create something that’s going to be really easy to use, because most pastors are new to new to AI, so that they can easily use that’s very easy to understand and learn, that also would line up with their voice and their unique writing style and come alongside them and give content to accelerate the research side of things. And so when we developed this, we wanted to make sure that there was almost like these guardrails or a fence, a protection ah that the pastor would have ah a confidence and a trust in what it was delivering and the content it was giving them.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — And so we really worked hard on that. And yeah, so it’s it’s got several different elements within the platform. You know, you can sign up for free and use it for five days and use it as much as you want for those five days and play with it. And you’re going to see…

Rich Birch — This weekend’s sermon. You could do this weekend’s sermon. That’s great.

Eric Smith — Yeah, well, and you know, it it has a lot that it offers.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — But I always tell pastors, use each element that it has or each section that it has based on your convictions, right? Everybody’s got different convictions about technology. And what we’re seeing, though, even since we launched SermonDone, is a lot more pastors are now warming up. Because what happened when AI first came out, everybody was like, oh, no, I don’t want the robot to write my sermon. I don’t want the robot to help me. I don’t It’s all going to be, how’s it going to be accurate and sound and all these type things?

Eric Smith — I think some of those fears are starting to come down. And really creating SermonDone was to help pastors have something they could use and have confidence in it rather than just any type of chat that would be available online. This one actually has theological guardrails.

Eric Smith — You build your own personal pastor profile, with your teaching style. You have the ability to upload up to 15 of your own sermons that you’ve written so that it knows your voice. And so when it’s giving you stuff, it’s understanding who you are, your theological heritage, your preaching style, the Bible translation that you prefer to use when you preach. All those type things to really come alongside you and help you and building out, outlines, planning sermon series, doing research.

Eric Smith — I’ll tell you one of the things that’s been so cool to me because sometimes you hear AI and people are like, oh, it’s going to make us all dumb. It’s just going to do all the work for us. Actually, it’s the reverse. I don’t know if you’re experiencing this, Rich, in many ways, but with me, with SermonDone, and I use it constantly, obviously, was the research side of things, it’s connecting dots in scripture that I never saw.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Eric Smith — And I’m not trying to brag, but I’ve got an undergrad degree in biblical studies, two masters, and I have a doctorate.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — Now my doctorate is a DMin. I’m not a PhD. I’m a practitioner.

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.

Eric Smith — But I mean, it’s just connecting dots. And I’m like, oh my goodness, I never saw this. This is amazing. And it’s just bringing things together for me. And I’m learning more than I’ve ever learned before.

Rich Birch — Love it. I want to underline one of the things you said there. One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve done research and worked with very large, fast-growing churches is we often, we get this perception that the teaching, it’s like some lone person, they go into a room and pull all that together and do it themselves and then get up there.

Rich Birch — Now, that’s actually just not true. Teaching is a team sport in in lots of churches across the country where it’s a group of people behind the scenes. I’m literally talking about researchers, writers, comedians, people who are helping these communicators do what they do. And the part of what I love what you’ve done here is you’ve said, Hey, we want to give that to everybody.

Eric Smith — Yes.

Rich Birch — Like, how do we hand that off to, because if I’m a church of, you know, 200, 500, 2000, I can’t afford to have a bunch of people working on my message, but I can’t afford SermonDone.

Rich Birch — Let’s talk about the pastor profile. Cause this is one of the things when you told me about it, ah that really got me intrigued. You kind of blew up through a bunch there. Talk about the sermon style, the theological kind of tradition background settings. How does all that work?

Eric Smith — Yeah. So just to be you know clear, SermonDone in general has a fence around it.

Rich Birch — Yes. Okay, good.

Eric Smith — And then and then what what brings it in even tighter for you that personalizes it is your profile. And so everything from uploading the 15 sermons, I think that’s maybe the most important element. I have 15 of my sermons and pick your favorite 15 that you’ve written. Oh, this is how I like things. Put those in there. Pick your theological heritage, because there are some nuances that in the sermon builder that it will pick up on on that. And then also what translation you use, right?

Eric Smith — I don’t want it to be giving me ideas and then I’ve got to go in and change…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …the, you it’s like only giving me NIV and I use New American or whatever translation you use. And so that’s, that’s a big part of it. And then your preaching style, right?

Eric Smith — So it’s going to help It’s really, it’s we never created this to like write sermons for you.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — It was created to be a partner and to assist you. And I loved what you said. Some of the greats that we’ve all looked up to, whether there be Charles Spurgeon, ah John Wesley, all these guys had assistants.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Eric Smith — Like they had people that served them. And so this is now available to all of us. And so the technology, it’s a beautiful thing.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — But yeah, so it takes all that information, along with already the fence we’ve built, and it curates that content uniquely to you. So it’s just an idea machine. It’s it’s giving you incredible ideas. I’ve had pastors that are using it and we’ve been trusted by hundreds of pastors now, which is pretty cool to see, even though we’re very early. And yeah, it’s it’s it’s amazing what some of the pastors have told me. Some of them that are like, man, I just, I get stuck on not knowing what to call the points that I have that go back to my main idea. And and they can put that in there and it’s it’s speaking in their language and their voice and it’s giving them those ideas.

Eric Smith — And I know that, yeah, there’s an investment financially. It’s $99 a month. You can get it cheaper if you do a year, but you’re thinking 20 bucks a week. How much is your sermon worth?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Eric Smith — If it’s the key factor that grows your church…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …we I spend more than that every week on coffee creamer in our church.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes.

Eric Smith — And I mean, I listen, I love the coffee. We have really good coffee at our church, like really good coffee.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Right, right.

Eric Smith — But the sermon is a little more important.

Rich Birch — 100%.

Eric Smith — And I can make that investment, even if it just gives me a little bit extra, even if it just helps me a little bit more with my my research. The research is amazing in there as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, the way I think about it when I’ve been in there and messed around with it, I think about it like, you know, it’s a well-educated seminary student who’s doing my initial work. It’s like, hey, I’m going to do a message on this. And can you gather up a bunch of ideas for me? Which which I don’t know that that’s got to save hours, an hour, two hours. It’s the initial kind of, I find the highest value of it is the initial kind of heavy lift part of this, which isn’t, isn’t actually sermon writing. That’s like the, that’s the initial part. It’s like the gathering together, but then I got to get before the Lord wrestle with him.

Eric Smith — Sure.

Rich Birch — Hey, what is it that you want to, what is it that I should be saying? How do I um you know, how do I, whats what’s the kind of unique thing that I want to say? What is he wanting me to say to my people this weekend? But like, all let’s pull together all those initial ideas. Let’s get AI to do that initial work so that I can actually have more time and more energy to focus on the part that actually has got more, I would say, it’s more important to the overall kind of delivery ah you know of the message itself.

Rich Birch — I love, I don’t want to go over. You talked about this, but I want to underline it for us. I love this idea of uploading your sermons. I, I think that’s super unique because it’s not just generic ideas. It’s like, here are some messages that when I think about what are kind of my core messages, I upload those and then your engine will will kind of take that into consideration as it’s producing.

Rich Birch — Can you give me a sense of how that’s modifying? Not the backend, the technology side of it, but what’s it doing to kind of modify or you know influence messages going forward? What’s that look like?

Eric Smith — Yeah, so if it’s giving you ideas of, like, say say you’ve got your sermon, and you’re looking for, like, a big idea.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Or you know some people call it a big truth or or big idea…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — …whatever your your main statement, ah just as this one simple example, right? It’s going to give you ideas that are in your, the way you would talk…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …not just generically…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — …where it’s like, that doesn’t sound anything like me.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Because it’s got 15 of your sermons where it’s already studied you and understands uniquely how you communicate your unique voice, um your style, how you write. And so, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s super helpful in that way, how it can help develop that content for you that’s unique and that fits your unique voice.

Rich Birch — Love it. There’s a ton we could talk about here. I want to jump to the planning the planning area. To me, as somebody who’s you know involved in worship planning, but not necessarily speaking, you know, I’m in the room when we’re talking about, hey, we need a six-week series on, we’re thinking about three weeks on that. I’m in that conversation pretty consistently. Talk to us about the planning tab. What how does that work? what give Give us some examples of what that looks like.

Eric Smith — Yeah, so you just go into that tab and you put in, I want to a five-week sermon series on fear or whatever your topic is, and it’s going to give that to you. Or you could say, want to do a 20-week series through the book of Acts, and it’s going to give that to you. And if you don’t like what it gives you, just ask it to give you another option.

Rich Birch — Give some other options. Yep.

Eric Smith — And it’s just going to keep giving it to you until you get what you want.

Eric Smith — But yeah, that’s that’s a really powerful tool. I’ll give you ah a real practical story.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Last last year, during the summer, I try to back off my preaching schedule a little bit like most leads pastors do. And so me and our campus pastor for our Alico campus, we were working and we spent like a day and a half, two days going through the Psalms. And we were like, we don’t want any Psalm to have the same theme. And and and and every different pastors are going to preach different things. And so literally we spent like two days just working on that.

Eric Smith — And it was like, it was meaningless. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but it was, it was work it really didn’t, I mean, it just was organizational work.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — After I created SermonDone, it hit me one day and I put the same thing in and I was like, I did that in two minutes and it took me two days.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Smith — So that’s, that’s, that’s the kind of stuff where it’s like, man, that just saved me an insane amount of time.

Eric Smith — And just just to be clear, the vision behind why I wanted to create this was I wanted to help pastors save time on the research and create an idea machine that would accelerate the writing process. Because I’m convinced that most pastors spend the vast majority of their time writing their sermon. They run out of time to work on the prep of delivering the sermon. And the result is sermons that are not that engaging.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Eric Smith — What if we could create a different reality? What if we could cut the sermon prep in half and then they could take that time and really focus on the delivery? There’s a there’s a option there’s a section in our website on SermonDone where I’ve created a masterclass on delivering sermon content. It’s completely free. It’s just part of the platform. And so that was the reason I created that masterclass.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — I created that masterclass because the heart behind this is not to just write people’s sermons. I don’t want a robot writing my sermon. I want as much assistance as I can get to write better sermons faster so that I can allow that sermon to take root in my soul.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Because what makes a great sermon is not what’s on the paper. It’s what’s in the pastor’s heart.

Rich Birch — Oh, amen. Amen.

Eric Smith — And when it gets into your soul, you’ve heard the analogy. We don’t want to microwave our sermons. We want them in a smoker or a crock pot.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s true. Yep.

Eric Smith — You know, we we those sermons that get in the crockpot, that get in the smoker, man, when those are delivered, they’re fire. I’m convinced that most pastors are not engaging in their preaching, not because of what’s written on the paper.

Eric Smith — If you took… Pastor A and Pastor B, and one of the sermons was super engaging and amazing, and Pastor, the other one was not. You could look at their notes and go, wow, those are pretty much the same. Like they had the same points for the most part, scripture, all that. What is it that sets them apart? It’s the pastor who’s willing to spend the time in prayer and preparation…

Rich Birch — Amen, amen.

Eric Smith — …not just what’s written, but for what’s written to get into their soul, to get into their heart. And so if we can accelerate that, that’s the vision behind SermonDone, right? Let’s accelerate that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And help a guy curate that information, help the the person curate that information faster so that they can really spend the time that they’re not getting now in the actual study of the sermon, getting it into their hearts so that when they deliver it, it is dynamic, it’s authentic as it should be. And it’s, it’s truly connecting with the hearer.

Rich Birch — Amen. That’s so good. I love that. One of my, um I worked for Tim Lucas at Liquid Church, fantastic leader. I, you know, I put him up against, he’s like top five in the country in my mind. This guy’s a monster communicator. He is so good. And had the privilege of years of, you know, journeying pretty close with him on the sermon side of things. And I know still to this day, um I really am convinced a part of why he is such a good communicator is exactly what you’re talking about. They he does um out loud practicing of the message. Still, he’s you know almost 30 years in on this, you know church of 5,000 people, master communicator and he still stands in front of virtually empty room and is like I’m going to redo this and then gets feedback on that.

Rich Birch — Man, if we could get people to to let’s get the boring, and again this this is my words not Eric’s words, don’t don’t send him emails, don’t send hate emails to him, send them me. If we can get the boring heavy lift part of it, the research part of it, the early steps…

Eric Smith — Yeah.

Rich Birch — If we can pull that off and give pastors more time on the the part that I agree is the part that actually connects with our people, man, we’re going to drive up engagement in in in churches all across the country, which is just incredible. I think that’s that’s amazing.

Eric Smith — Well, and and I don’t want to sound like a heretic, but somebody may say that I am. I don’t know. But I’ve studied the Bible and I haven’t found a scripture yet that actually tells me to write a sermon.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Eric Smith — I’ve actually found a lot that say to preach the word.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — And so now I’m not saying don’t write your sermon. I write sermons.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yes.

Eric Smith — I’ve written hundreds of them. I’m just saying, if you really want to get technical about it, our calling is to preach God’s word…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Eric Smith — …to preach the Bible in an engaging and dynamic way that in the art, the art. And I have what you just said about preaching out loud. I have all that in the in the free masterclass.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And I talk about the art of preaching. The art of preaching is really, man delivering the message contextually where you are to connect with the people that you’re talking to in a way that makes sense.

Rich Birch — It’s so good.

Eric Smith — And a lot of guys, I’m not being mean, but they’re just not making sense.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Eric Smith — And I really believe it’s because they’re spending all this time writing and they’re getting bogged down in the writing and they’ve written it and they think, oh, I know it. And then they step on stage and they really don’t know it.

Eric Smith — And what Tim has done, I’ve done as well. I mean, I’ve preached my, I used to preach my sermon to my dog when I didn’t have anybody but me. And we started the church in Mississippi.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Eric Smith — My dog heard every sermon.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — That dog was, that that that dog was a strong Christian, man.

Rich Birch — Sanctified, that’s a sanctified dog

Eric Smith — That’s a sanctified dog. He got saved and born again so many times, man. It was wild.

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.

Rich Birch — Absolutely. Love it. Yeah. Well, Mark, Mark Clark, we had Mark Clark from ah Bayside on early in this year.

Eric Smith — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And I I dove in with him around teaching and same thing. I was like, hey well, let’s let’s pull the lid off. Tell me about your actual process. And he talked about the same thing. He’s like, listen, Saturday morning, I’m out in a shed in my backyard and I’m, and I am preaching. And again, giant church, hugely influential communicator working on the delivery part of it. Man, if we could get more churches working on that.

Rich Birch — Now, I I would be remiss if I don’t ask. I know there’s people that are listening in and they’re thinking, like, wait a second. Why don’t I just use ChatGPT for this? Why don’t I why don’t I just use Llama or you know some other AI model that’s out there? Um, why why invest with you guys? Why spend the money to do that? Uh, playing a bit of a devil’s advocate, help us understand that.

Eric Smith — Sure. Yeah, no, that’s that’s a great question. I use Chat for a lot of things um that are, you know, outside of my my Bible, biblical research, sermon research stuff. But one of the things that’s unique about Sermon Done is it’s built with those biblical guardrails. And so it’s going to deliver content to you that you can be confident in.

Eric Smith — Where Chat, you know, it’s it’s it’s kind of more open, where this is going to prioritize the answers to be scripture driven. It’s designed to reflect that that biblically grounded response, the scripture rooted responses. It’s also understands that you’re a pastor because of your profile, it knows your voice, all those unique things.

Eric Smith — And so it’s delivering that content uniquely to you. And so I think those are the big things. And then the other thing too is we’ve spent, I don’t know, I can’t even tell you how many hours…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …building out these prompts on the backend that you can’t see as the user…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Eric Smith — …that are helping, you know, even on the research, when you go in there, all the different prompts that are prebuilt to help you. And so it’s a great, great tool, especially for those who are just getting into AI for sermon writing. And so those are some of the other, some of the things, obviously.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

Eric Smith — You know, that’s that’s the big thing, right? Is the theological framework, your sermons, all those type things compared to using ah any other source.

Eric Smith — And you know every pastor that would watch this, and I know there’s a lot of XP, so make sure to share with your pastor on this one, if he whoever preaches at your at your place. But I would say that we all, most pastors have a budget for research and books.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — This is only $100 a month.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Eric Smith — And actually, I think people can use RICH20 and get 20% off.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s great.

Eric Smith — And so, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a small investment. Give it a shot. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it, at least download and use it for five days for free…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — …and go watch the sermon masterclass that’s on there for free. And then you can, you know, you can cancel your membership if you don’t like it. But at least do that because I’m telling you truly my heart and desires to just help pastors to be more successful, to build the kingdom, to reach more people.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And I believe the greatest way we reach more people is by writing sermons that connect and preaching sermons that connect. At least that’s what the stats tell me.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Listen, friends, I want a hearty endorsement. I really do want you to try sermondone.com. Drop by there. Like you say, try the five, five day trial, use that code rich done. You’ll, get you’ll save some there. The amount of money we’re talking about is small in comparison to the value of the importance of the teaching. Even if you try it for a couple months, I’ll push back on Eric a little bit and say, I would try it for a couple months.

Rich Birch — Like, you know, there are going to be, there are going to be a time, use it week in, week out, and you’re going to, you’re going to hit on a week where you’re like, man, things are extra busy this week. There’s a crazy thing going on. The fact that I was able to jumpstart into my process, still do all the stuff I need to do to make it deliver. Man, you’ll see you’ll see huge value you know throughout your time with it.

Rich Birch — So again, just drop by SermonDone. I would strongly encourage you to do this. There’s a bunch of stuff in here we haven’t talked about. There is kind of post-sermon resources, discipleship resources. You can upload upload your sermon and it’ll generate for you. Talk us through what does what is that part of it as well.

Eric Smith — Yeah. So it does small group curriculum, does small group questions. You can upload your sermon and it’ll extract and create a TXT file that you send to your production director for your sermon slides.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — It really has a lot.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — And we’ve got some other amazing features. I don’t know when this ah podcast is going to air…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — …but we’ve got one that being developed right now when you upload your sermon, it’s going to help curate develop a children’s curriculum that goes along with the sermon.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — Now, in your Sermon Builder, you can actually write youth sermons. You can pick your audience when you get into the Sermon Builder. But this is going to be a little different where you upload the completed sermon and it creates that content. So we’ve got pre-sermon research. We’ve got outline ideas. We’ve got sermon planning, series planning. We’ve got the discipleship side of things. There’s so many different features that are in there. It’s really… a one-stop shop for all sermon content development. And we’re continuing to improve and make it better every day.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s two things to to underline there that I want people to hear. This is just at the front end. You guys are working on new stuff that’s going to make this even better down the road. At some point, I’ve told them, I think 100 bucks is too cheap. I think they should charge more, but that’s just me.

Rich Birch — And you eventually they’re going to say, hey, we’ve added all this other stuff on. I would get in now. Now’s a good time to jump on board – SermonDone. And the other thing, i I had sent this tool to a number of teaching pastor friends of mine. I said, hey, can you mess around with this? And one guy came back and said, Dude, the resource, the discipleship resource tab alone is worth $100. Like ah coming up with those questions at once the thing is done is painful. So, you know, ah just doing that alone um is is worth the, you know, the price of admission.

Rich Birch — So ah friends, I would, ah you really should pick this up and, and you know, get this ball rolling again, sermondone.com. Just as we as we come to land, I’m sure we’ll have you on in the future, there’s going to be new stuff that’s going to come out. I want to make sure people try this. Anything else you want to say eric just as we wrap up today’s episode?

Eric Smith — Yeah, just thanks so much for taking the time to hear about what’s going on. And, you know, I’m just I’m thankful to have the time together and excited to see how the Lord’s going to use this to serve pastors, to help you get better to develop content faster. And I was joking about just cancel. I agree with Rich. Give it given a couple months.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — Give it a couple months. And once this becomes part of your process, and I just want to say one last thing. When we created SermonDone, a lot of the sermon writing assistant type things that are out there, they want you to change your process and fit into their box.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Smith — One of the things I did not want, I’ve been preaching for over 20 years, and a lot of the listeners on here have been preaching for many years. They’ve got a system. And once a pastor finds a routine and a system, they like it.

Rich Birch — Oh, 100%. Yes.

Eric Smith — Right? This is a tool to improve and speed up your process, not change your process.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Smith — I think that’s a… when I, when I built the way it works and I saw it in my mind, I wanted it to fit. And this is created by pastors for you as a pastor to preach and to create content.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And even for XPs that preach, you know, just a few times a year, it would be well worth your investment.

Rich Birch — Absolutely. For sure.

Eric Smith — And you can get even a bigger discount with the annual membership. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Great. This has been so good. So we’ll send people to sermondone.com. If people want to track with you, ah Eric, or at the churches, where do we want to send them on online if they’re interested in kind of tracking along with you?

Eric Smith — Man, I have to confess, I’m pretty terrible when it comes to building a brand. I’m like…

Rich Birch — All good. All good.

Eric Smith — …just Hope City, hopecityflorida. Florida is spelled out dot com.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great.

Eric Smith — And then, you know, my name is so generic. You can find me on Facebook, though. I think I need to open some other social media accounts, but I’m I’m not good at that. So maybe I’ll have my team focus on that.

Rich Birch — It’s all good. Yeah, that’s great.

Eric Smith — Thanks so much, though.

Rich Birch — This has been great. Thanks for being here today, friends. Again, heartily endorse SermonDone. I really would encourage you to to try to check it out. It really is a great way to get the the kickstart to your sermon process. Thanks so much for being here, Eric. Appreciate you being here today.

Eric Smith — Thanks.