5 free AI tools a small church can use this Sunday

For small churches with no budget, no designer, and a Sunday that is coming whether the slides are ready or not. Reading time: about 6 minutes. Trying one: about 10.

You do not need five new accounts. You need one job that is eating your Saturday, and one free tool that does the first draft of it. Pick one item from this list, try it on something real for this Sunday, and leave the rest for another week.

One rule covers all five: use only public, non-private material — notices, service orders, sermon titles, welcome text. No prayer requests, pastoral details, giving records, or children's information goes into a free public tool. Our Responsible AI guide explains why in five minutes. Free plans change, so check each tool's own site for its current free plan before you build a routine around it.

1. A general AI assistant — for the notice you keep rewriting

Try: ChatGPT or Claude, free tier. Job for this Sunday: turn your rough notes into a tidy newsletter item, a rota reminder, or a social post about a public event.

Give it the facts, the audience, and the length — for example: “Write a 60-word notice for our church newsletter inviting families to a community lunch after the service on Sunday. Warm tone, no charge, children welcome.” Then edit it like a draft from a helpful volunteer: shorter, warmer, in your church's voice.

Watch out for: it invents plausible details. Check every date, name, and Bible reference yourself before anything is printed or posted.

2. Canva — for slides and social graphics without a designer

Try: Canva's free tier, with its templates and AI-assisted design. Job for this Sunday: turn the sermon title and verse into a social graphic, or build one reusable slide template so whoever is on the rota produces clear, readable slides in minutes.

Start from a template in your church's colours rather than a blank page, and keep the text short — one idea per slide, large enough to read from the back row.

Watch out for: check song lyrics against your licensed source (and your licence terms, e.g. CCLI where applicable) — AI and templates both get lyrics wrong. And get consent before using photos of real people, especially children. Note that several of Canva's headline AI features, including background removal and one-click resizing, are Pro-only, and free accounts get only a small monthly allowance of AI uses.

3. A translation tool — for a welcome that reaches everyone in the room

Try: Google Translate or DeepL, free tier. Job for this Sunday: a first draft of the welcome leaflet, the order of service, or a short plain-language summary of the sermon for guests who speak another language.

Machine translation is a starting point, not a finished product. It is at its best on short, simple sentences and at its worst on idiom and theology.

Watch out for: always ask a fluent speaker in the congregation to check it before printing, and be upfront that a translation is machine-assisted. On DeepL's free plan, your text may be used to train its models — another reason to keep anything private out of it.

4. Auto-captions — for a sermon video everyone can actually follow

Try: YouTube's automatic captions on a video you already publish. Job for this Sunday: auto-caption last Sunday's sermon, spend ten minutes fixing names and Bible references, then publish with captions on.

Captions help Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, and everyone watching on mute — which, in practice, is a lot of people.

Watch out for: auto-captions regularly mangle names, places, and scripture references. Review before publishing: wrong captions are worse than a short delay. CapCut also offers auto-captions, but caption generation on its free plan is limited — YouTube's is the reliable free route.

5. The same assistant, used differently — for a plain-language version

Try: ChatGPT or Claude again — no new account needed. Job for this Sunday: ask for a simpler, plain-language version of a dense notice or announcement, or a short summary of a long public document.

For example: “Rewrite this notice in plain, simple language for someone reading English as a second language, keeping all the dates and times exactly the same.” Then format the result in large print (18pt+) in your usual document app.

Watch out for: simplification can quietly drop or change meaning. Have someone who knows the original check the short version, especially for anything about money, meetings, or safeguarding.

How to choose just one

• Stuck on writing? Start with 1.
• Slides or social posts eating your Saturday? Start with 2.
• Newcomers who don't follow everything yet? Start with 3 or 5.
• Already publishing video? Start with 4 — it is the smallest job with the widest benefit.

Whichever you pick, do the same three checks as in our first article: is it true, does it sound like your church, and is anything private in it? If it passes all three, it is ready for Sunday.