Listening to the needs of churches sparks innovation, using AI
Discover how Sermon Shots, an innovative AI-powered tool, is helping churches share their unique message with more people, both inside and outside the church buildings.
Quick Updates
🏆 Our winners have been drawn
Congrats to Jason and Kieran, the winners of our faith.tools x Tithely #MCL2024 giveaway.
🎊 faith.tools got a sponsor!
Church.tech is officially sponsoring faith.tools for the month of July. They create “AI tools for your church. Save hours on sermon prep, discipleship strategy, church communications, video clips, and more.”
Share your faith story of how God used an app to encourage/equip your faith journey.
And, an exciting update in the works. Stay tuned.
Today, we get to hear from Corey Alderin about a tool him and a wonderful team have been working on called Sermon Shots.
Now, I’d like to comment on the guy. Any time I’ve talked with Corey, I leave feeling refreshed. If you’ve interacted with him, you might know what I’m talking about. Corey is a person who loves the Lord and refreshes others.
What is Sermon Shots?
Sermon Shots transforms sermons into engaging content using AI for efficiency while ensuring churches maintain their unique voice. Our standout feature is the sermon clip tool, but we also convert sermons into discussion guides for small groups, audio for podcasts, blog posts for your website, and more.
— Corey Alderin
“Sermon Shots’ mission is to help Churches share content that reaches more people. More people in your church and outside of your church.”
Here’s an example of the tool:
Tell me the story of Sermon Shots?
How did it come to be?
I've created multiple software products outside of the church space but wanted to take all that I had learned and create something for Churches. My business partner and I are very involved in our churches and are passionate about helping churches. After many discussions with Churches to learn what they needed, it came very clear that Churches were struggling to make sermon clips but knew they should be doing them. After hearing similar stories from so many churches, it was apparent that this is what we should build.
— Corey Alderin
“After many discussions with Churches to learn what they needed… it came very clear that Churches were struggling to make sermon clips but knew they should be doing them.”
If you want to dig deeper into Corey’s story and Sermon Shots, check out this podcast episode from the Modern Church Leader podcast:
Anywhere you recognize God's hand throughout the journey of creating Sermon Shots?
Absolutely. One story stands out the most. In the early days, we faced a major issue when our servers went down. I was traveling for a conference, and our team couldn't resolve the problem. During the conference, I met someone who reminded me of the importance of prayer. Realizing I hadn't prayed about the situation, I took some time to do so. When I returned and checked my phone, the team had messaged me to say it was fixed!
— Corey Alderin
Wow, goes to show the power of prayer! I’m reminded that Jesus is Lord over all, even over software bugs.
If you could give advice to someone who's wanting to build an app or tool for Christians, what advice would you give?
Listen to the "why" behind what churches want. In my experience with building software, you will get all sorts of requests of features. This can take you in all sorts of directions. However if you understand why they need that feature, there may actually be a more focused solution that applies to a lot of churches and helps you focus on the important things.
— Corey Alderin
Amen. I can’t “amen” this enough. To someone building apps or tools, Corey hit the nail on the head. You’ll often get reports and requests to create something in a very specific way. That’s a good time to pause. Then, ask questions.
“Listen to the "why" behind what churches want.”
Then, you might find the deeper issue they’re wanting to solve, and an idea of a more optimal solution may come to mind. Listening mixed with prayer is such a powerful combination to build tools that empower people to live the life of power, love, and self-control, shining a bright light of Jesus to a hurting and broken world.
"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it."
John 1:5 NLT
Shameless plug! What's something cool that's been on your mind that you'd recommend to the faith.tools community?
Try out Sermon Shots for 14 days, for free. It will give you a chance to see all that it can do for you.
— Corey Alderin
Corey, at the beginning of this post, I shared about how you are someone who refreshes others. I think the reason of that is because you listen to people and are present to the moment, like Jesus was. Thank you for listening in order to create products that meet the deeper needs of the people of the church. God bless!
faith.tools is a unifying force, connecting Christians in tech to help advance technology and equip the body of Christ.
Additional Resources:
Inspired by Corey’s story? Share your Behind the Scenes story
Share your faith.tools experience — and add your review to the faith.tools testimonials section.
Help determine the next feature on faith.tools — help me help you.