New feature: Sermon Assistant

Mark Barnes (Logos) said:

Got Questions is a website that has spent years optimizing to rank highly in Google searches. As a result, it often ranks highly in Smart Search, too. This shows their team has done great work with their SEO, but it does give the book a higher prominence than some users would like. We've already applied some simple improvements, but ranking algorithms are notoriously difficult to tune. If you're desperate, you can hide the book, and then it won't show up at all.

I hope you can achieve a good middle ground for this resource; I like it a lot but do also understand that others may not appreciate its prominence in the search results.

Mattillo said:

Would prioritizing it make it show more of your fix starts hiding it?

Aside from whether prioritizing has any impact on the smart search, can we prioritize monographs?

I have a use case, but i'm unsure if it is in the scope of what this Ai is seeking to accomplish. OR potentially i am doing it incorrectly. Below is my input, but i got an error message. I work with muslims abroad, and have the privledge of being able to faciliate very open conversation groups and studies about all areas of faith. From Sacrifice to Prayer. I would love for this system to be able to aid me in producing pertinent questions and applications for these groups and our classes. Is this possible, or would i need to structure it like a sermon to recieve a helpful output?

That’s very helpful thank you. This seems like it will be a huge blessing. I really appreciate it!

I finally used this feature today, and I'm amazed at the results.

I wrote my sermon with the general structure that I normally used and then turned to the Sermon AI feature to see what questions it would develop.

At first I used it to generate questions that were Life Application questions for Adults and Teens. I then went through the questions and selected a few of them to be the "Heading" slides that will be displayed as I preach different parts of my sermon. I was also able to revise one of the questions to become my Sermon Title (I have struggled for decades in creating sermon titles.)

Then I used it to generate questions that were Life Application questions for Children. I then selected one question to ask the children who would be part of our Children's Message time. After I added a bit of context before the question, my Children's Message was completed very quickly (I've struggled also in trying to figure out appriate tie-ins between my sermon and the children's message, so this is a great help.)

The fact that this was done based on my already written sermon is so helpful. The questions pick up my themes very well, and I don't feel like I'm presenting someone else's work, or trying to fit my thoughts and someone else's together.

Whoever guided the development of this feature has done a great job.

Thanks!

In short:

Passage : James 1:1-18

Theme: Semantic Grouping for James 1:1-18

run ai and usually get a spot on outline.

I love the sermon assistant !! It really helps me think outside of the box and it expands my view even wider and deeper of the passage I am studying!! thank you for adding this and changing to a subscription setup. I am able to expand my use of logos, and I am learning new ways to expand my use of logos and the AI has helped with all of this!! 

I agree.  I was hoping I might find the same options in Notes.  Then I could copy/paste what I wanted into my sermon.

What about using the questions handout in the sermon builder

Super helpful feature! Thanks for the roll out.

By way of improvement. I find, putting sermon series outlines together to be some of the most time consuming work in my responsiblities. It would be asweome to have a feature to put a 4 week series together on a topic and/or a book series together to exegecitcally preach through a book of the bible.

I've used Chat GPT to help with some of this. Recently I used it as a very starting place to build a 12 week series on the life of Paul, but again, GPT is trained on the logos library. AI will never take the place of study, prayer or Biblical education, but if I'm doing that stuff already it can help speed up a few of the processes. Thanks for the tools you're building to help us more efficiently and effectively preach the word. May God water it and produce fruit through it!

Are there any plans to implement things like "improve," "shorten," "convert to bullet points," or things along the lines of what PulpitAI does? I know there are other external AI tools for this, but having them self-contained within Logos would be nice. Chris

I think this tool got quite some potential, but it is really lacking more comprehensive configuration. Like providing information that shall be considered: Context of church, culture information, focus on exegetical accuracy and hermeneuticts, thematic focus and so on.

Would be great to textually add extra context to requests.

Question on the future development of AI tools in Logos with respect to the sermon editor. I have seen some other tools on the internet that will create an AI chatbot based on your specific sermon. You can ask it questions to help refine your sermon. For example, you can use prompts like: "Does this sermon effectively point people to Jesus and their need for Him to be their Savior?" or "Give me advice for better transitions between my main points."

I think there is a TON of potential here. You could have a small library of categorized prompts to help preachers refine their sermons. You could even have different prompts based on material from great preaching books like "Christ-Centered Preaching" by Bryan Chapell.

One other AI tool I've seen is the ability to generate a complete small-group study guide based on a particular sermon. Again, you could have different prompts available based on the type of study you prefer (OIA, etc.). Many services will also generate a five-day devotional based on the content of your sermon.

I put in a LOT of work each week preparing sermons. Tools like these would greatly help my congregation interact with and apply the Sunday sermon throughout the rest of the week.

Have there been any discussions about incorporating tools like these directly into Logos?

How do I get rid of the annoying Sermon Assistant tab. To me it seems more like a "solution" looking for a problem; unwanted clutter.

I don't use it very much if at all. I did try it out and felt like someone else was doing my thinking for me or trying to lead me in a direction I didn't want to go. So, guess it's not for me. I'm content to build my own. 😎

I appreciate this feature and where it is going. It needs lots of ongoing development (good comments above already- particularly on the need to be able to interact with the AI). One key feature I'd like to see added is the ability to ask the assistant to help with condensing my notes- I tend toward verbosity, and I've found other AI programs helpful in that when ask to reduce length by 25% without losing any content, they provide helpful suggestions which I can think about and integrate.