3 Claude Projects Every Church Needs
Hey friend!
Open a new chat with Claude and ask for a volunteer email. You'll get a decent email for some church, somewhere.
Then you spend 10 minutes typing in your service times, your tone, and the words your people actually use. Next week you do it all over again.
Claude Projects fix that. You set up your instructions and files one time, and every chat inside the Project starts with them.
Today I'll show you 3 Projects worth building for your church, plus the habit that makes each one better every week.
Let's dive in.
A Project keeps your instructions and files, so you only set things up once.
A Project is a workspace inside Claude. It holds two things a normal chat doesn't.
- Project instructions. These are standing directions. Claude follows them in every chat inside that Project.
- Project knowledge. These are files you upload once, like a fact sheet or past newsletters. Claude uses them across every chat in the Project.
Projects are available on every Claude plan, including free accounts. Free accounts can create up to 5 Projects. If your church is on a Team or Enterprise plan, you can share a Project with other people in your organization.
The first Project is a communications assistant that sounds like your church.
Emails and announcements go out every week, and they all need to sound like the same church.
Create a Project called "Church Communications." Upload 3 or 4 pieces of writing you're proud of. Add a one-page fact sheet with service times, addresses, staff names, and ministry names. Add a short list of words you use and words you never use.
Then paste in the standing instructions. They tell Claude to match your voice, use only the facts in your fact sheet, and ask you a few questions before it writes.
Now when someone on your team needs a volunteer email, they open the Project and ask. Claude already knows your church.
The second Project is a study partner that knows your tradition, and the sermon stays yours.
A general chat doesn't know your theology. It can wander into ideas your church would never teach.
Create a Project called "Study Partner." Upload a short statement of your convictions and two or 3 of your own sermon transcripts. Name your Bible translation in the instructions.
The instructions matter most here. You want Claude to ask hard questions, find cross-references, and push back when your idea is weak. You do the writing.
Then use it to pressure-test your thinking. "Here's my main idea for Sunday on Philippians 4. Where am I stretching the text?" "What tension in this passage am I tempted to skip?"
You still own every word you preach. The Project helps you think more clearly before you start writing.
The third Project is a board and admin workspace that remembers what you decided.
A lot of a pastor's week goes to meetings. Decisions get made, forgotten, and then argued about again 6 months later.
Create a Project called "Board and Admin." Upload this year's priorities, past meeting minutes, and a short decision log with the reason behind each big call.
Now paste in a messy meeting transcript and ask for clean minutes. Ask for next month's agenda built from the open items. Ask "What did we decide about the building fund in the spring, and why?" and get an answer from your own notes.
Keep confidential matters out of it. That means personnel issues, counseling situations, and anything your board handles in closed session.
Every time you correct Claude, add the fix to the Project instructions.
Your first set of instructions won't be perfect. That's normal.
When Claude gets something wrong, fix the draft. Then decide if you'll have to give the same correction next week. If you will, add it to the instructions.
Do this for a month, and the Project you use most will feel like it knows your church.
Start with one. Pick the Project that matches your biggest weekly headache, and give it 20 minutes this week.
Build Projects like these with other leaders in the Builder Collective.
Michael Lukaszewski and I run the Builder Collective. It's a practical AI membership for founders and operators, and that includes those of you leading churches and ministries.
Every month there's a live Deep Dive where one AI workflow gets built from start to finish, with your questions answered along the way. There's also a Show and Tell on the first Friday of each month. Members get the resource library, a private Slack community, and our in-person and online events at no extra cost.
Use code CHURCHLEADER at thebuildercollective.ai for 30% off your first 12 months.
Now here are 4 setups you can use this week. The first 3 are complete Project instructions, ready to paste: one for church communications, one for a study partner, and one for board and admin work. The fourth is a prompt that turns a messy meeting transcript into clean minutes you can send to your board.
Try this now
Grab all 4 copy-paste setups here ⤵️ ⤵️
