Everything you might be wondering.

Most preachers ask two questions when they consider a tool like this: Am I outsourcing my calling? and Is my sermon safe? This page answers both.

The short answer to the question of outsourcing your calling: No. The Sermon Coach evaluates a sermon you've already written. It doesn't study for you, write for you, or pray for you. The pulpit is still yours, and the work of getting there is still yours. The rubric is a trusted reader after the fact — not a co-author, not a ghostwriter, not a stand-in for the slow, prayerful, Spirit-driven work of sermon prep.

The short answer to the question of safety: Yes. Your sermons are yours — your study, your prayer, your work for your congregation — and The Sermon Coach is built to keep it that way.

Here's what that means in practice:

Your sermons stay private to your account. No other user can see them. In a Classroom, your instructor can read your evaluations — that oversight is the point of the tier — but your classmates never can. Everywhere else, private by default.

Your sermons are never used to train AI models. The Sermon Coach uses Anthropic's Claude API under data privacy terms that prohibit using your inputs for model training. Your preaching stays your preaching.

Your sermons are never shared or sold. We don't sell your data. We don't share your manuscripts with third parties. The only services that touch your sermon text are the ones required to deliver your evaluation — and they're listed in our Privacy Policy.

You stay in control. You can request deletion of any evaluation, or your entire account, at any time — just email Chris and we'll permanently delete it within 48 hours. Deletion is permanent. Your library is yours. Ask anytime and we'll send you everything you've submitted.

Built by a pastor, for pastors. We use the rubric on our own sermons too. If you ever have a question about how your data is handled — or about how the tool fits in your week of sermon prep — email Chris directly. He reads every email.

Paste your sermon text: a manuscript you wrote or a transcript of a sermon you preached. The evaluation works on the written text. All 11 criteria are scored in your dashboard, including emotional arc and dynamics (criterion 8) in the written category narratives. A visual beat-by-beat timeline is planned for when audio upload is available; it is not part of the product today. If you preach from notes rather than a full manuscript, send what you have and we'll work with it.

Yes, and many preachers find that's the most useful way to use it. Paste your manuscript on Thursday or Friday, read the evaluation, and you've still got time to fix what needs fixing before Sunday. The rubric doesn't care whether you've preached the sermon yet. It reads what's on the page: whether the text is driving, whether the gospel is clear, whether the application speaks to a real person's Monday morning. You walk up to preach having already heard the hard feedback, instead of wondering about it from the pulpit.

A few minutes. You submit your manuscript and your evaluation comes back while you're still at your desk.

A structured dashboard scoring your sermon against 11 criteria drawn from Chapell, Simeon Trust, Piper, 9Marks, Keller, and Robinson — with specific anchors in your sermon text, a band-level summary (Faithful, Strong, Exemplary, etc.), and an affirmation paragraph plus an improvement paragraph at the top. Every evaluation also includes How It Preaches, a separate craft read of the sermon (more on that just below). See the samples on the homepage for the actual format.

Every evaluation has two halves. The rubric scores your sermon against 11 criteria and tells you whether it is faithful: is the text driving, is the gospel clear, does the application land on a real person's Monday. How It Preaches is the second half. It sets the scoring aside and reads your sermon the way it plays for the person in the pew, walking the five movements every sermon moves through: the open, the big idea, the structural logic, the illustrations, and the landing.

It is a craft read, not a scorecard. No numbers, no bands. Just an honest paragraph on each movement: where the sermon grips, where it goes slack, whether an illustration earns its place or stalls the momentum, whether the ending arrives or just stops. It reads for what you were going for before it tells you whether you got there, and it names the real weak spots without inventing problems that aren't on the page.

The rubric tells you whether the sermon is faithful. How It Preaches tells you whether it lands. Two reads of one sermon, so you walk up to preach knowing both.

The rubric draws from the evangelical expositional tradition. It will work best for preachers who already operate inside the expository, gospel-centered, and text-driven stream. Email Chris before subscribing if you're not sure — he'll be honest about whether it's a fit.

A subscription is built for preachers who preach regularly — every Sunday, or close to it. You get a monthly evaluation allotment, you build a habit, and the per-sermon cost drops sharply. A pack is for preachers who preach occasionally — elders, guest preachers, lay preachers, church planters in early days, retired pastors doing pulpit supply. You buy a pack when you need it, use the evaluations when you preach, and skip the months you don't. Packs cost more per sermon than subscriptions because there's no commitment and no cadence — but you only pay for what you actually use.

Yes — 18 months from the date of purchase, for all pack sizes. That covers the once-a-quarter preacher comfortably and gives you room for unexpected slow stretches. After 18 months, unused evaluations expire — but you'll receive reminders before that happens.

Yes, anytime. If you have unused pack evaluations when you subscribe, they stay in your account and get used after your monthly subscription evaluations — so nothing's wasted. Many preachers start with a 1-Pack or 3-Pack to see how the rubric works on their own preaching, then move to a Coach subscription once they know they want it regularly.

Yes. You can move between Coach monthly and annual billing, or between Coach and a pack, at any time. Upgrades are prorated; downgrades take effect at your next billing cycle. Classroom is an institutional purchase set up by hand, not a self-serve tier switch, so it works differently — email Chris to start one.

Pay for the year up front and you get the equivalent of ten months at the monthly price instead of twelve. Coach: $290/year instead of $348. Same evaluations, same features — just less money in total.

You can either upgrade to the next tier mid-month (prorated) or wait for your next billing cycle. We don't auto-charge for overages — you stay in control of your spend. If you'd rather not change tiers, you can also buy a pack to bridge the gap.

Founding Member spots have been filled. Founding members who reserved early get 50% off subscriptions for their first 12 months, plus permanent Founding Member status: priority support direct from Chris, early access to new features, and a Founding Member badge on their account that doesn't expire when the discount does.

No — Founding Member pricing is for subscriptions only. The 50% off is meant to reward preachers who bet on the product early and committed to a monthly cadence. Packs are already priced for low-commitment use, so they stay at standard pricing. If you're a Founding Member and want to add a pack on top of your subscription (for a season when you're preaching more than usual, for instance), you absolutely can — at standard pack pricing.

Every subscription comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If The Sermon Coach isn't useful for your preaching after a month of real use, email Chris and you'll get a full refund — no issues. Packs can be refunded within 7 days of purchase if no evaluations have been used.

Yes. No contracts. Email Chris anytime to cancel and your subscription stays active through the end of the current billing month, then ends — you won't be charged again. Packs aren't a subscription, so there's nothing to cancel.

It's live. Create an account, submit a sermon, and you'll have your evaluation in a few minutes.

Sort of — better than a trial. Your first evaluation is free when you create an account. No card, no commitment. Submit a sermon, get the full evaluation back in a few minutes, and see the rubric on your own preaching before you decide anything. If it's useful, subscribe or grab a pack. If it's not, you've lost nothing but the time it took to paste in a manuscript.

Classroom is for institutions training preachers — a seminary course, a church planting cohort, a denominational track. An instructor oversees a class of preachers. The instructor reads and tracks every preacher's evaluations; each preacher's library stays private to them, visible to the instructor but never to classmates. The class shares a pooled monthly allotment of evaluations, four per seat. It's $25 per seat per month, billed by the term, with the instructor seat included free and a five-seat minimum.

The instructor, and no one else. Each preacher submits privately. The instructor over the class can read every preacher's evaluations — that oversight is the point of the tier. Other students in the class cannot see one another's work. If you're a preacher in a class, your manuscripts are visible to your instructor and to no classmate.

$25 per seat per month, billed by the term. A ten-preacher class for a sixteen-week term is $1,000. The instructor seat is free, so you pay only for the preachers you're training. Minimum five seats. Tell us about your class and we'll set it up and send one invoice.

Email Chris with your class size and term dates. We provision the class by hand right now — instructor and students set up, ready before your term starts — and send the institution a single invoice. No per-student signups, no chasing fifteen people for payment.

No. The Sermon Coach doesn't write your sermon. It reads it. The study, the prayer, the slow wrestle with the text on a Tuesday morning — that work is yours, and it stays yours. What comes back is a nuanced read of what you already wrote, measured against the preachers who shaped how you preach. Think of it less as a ghostwriter and more as the seminary friend who'd tell you the truth about your manuscript before Sunday, if only he weren't three states away and as buried as you are.

Yes. Your sermons stay private to your account, are never used to train AI models, and are never shared with third parties. You own your work; The Sermon Coach is just the rubric you run it through.

Only you — with one deliberate exception. Each preacher's library is private to their account. In a Classroom, the instructor can read every preacher's evaluations, but classmates never see one another's work. Private by default is the rule everywhere else.

No. The Sermon Coach uses Anthropic's Claude API with data privacy commitments that prohibit using your sermons for model training. Your preaching stays your preaching.

Yes. Email Chris and we'll permanently delete any individual evaluation, or your entire account and all its contents, within 48 hours. Deletion is permanent.

Dr. Christopher M. Daukas — a church planter in Phoenix, Arizona, with 25 years in pastoral ministry, 14 of them as a lead pastor, and a PhD along the way. He built The Sermon Coach for a plain reason: somewhere after seminary, the honest feedback on his own preaching dried up, and he wanted it back. It's the actual rubric he runs on his own sermons. Two of the samples on the homepage are his. Profits from this work also support training pastors in the Majority World through GTN, where Chris serves as Executive Vice President. The fuller story is here.