Cut Prep Time, Boost Engagement: The Future of Preaching with Eric Smith

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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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?

Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.

Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.

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 w