Your alarm goes off. You check your priority e-mails before using a map app to check traffic for your suggested route. On your way to work, you pick up an online coffee order automated based on your purchase history.
You may not realize or intend it, but artificial intelligence (AI) is already an important part of your morning routine.
Your church congregants are likely using AI across a spectrum — from simple day-to-day queries, to mental-health support, to deep theological exploration. We’re at a pivotal moment: AI is moving fast, and it’s shaping culture as it goes.
Church leaders need to engage rather than letting technology shape their people on its own. And this moment is particularly important for the church and its leaders to lean in.
It’s a moment when we as the global Church still have the ability to meaningfully influence what AI ultimately becomes, and how it gets incorporated into the rest of our lives and our work. If we wait too long — or much longer — Christians won’t be able to influence AI’s development.
Of course, asserting influence over AI needs to be just as carefully considered as using it at all. And even using technology in leading a congregation is a grey area for a lot of church leaders.
Some are confident. Many are cautious but engaged. Many more are anxious or resistant to using any technology powered by AI.
It’s important to strike a balance between justified caution and prudent reserve — after all, there have already been a significant number of ethical and moral scandals associated with mainstream LLMs or AI tools in the brief time they’ve been culturally mainstream. Careful use is necessary. But this is the domain of wisdom, not fear.
If we’re not careful, the Church won’t take the lead — and that would be a missed opportunity to shape AI for human flourishing.
The global Church missed its chance to meaningfully shape social media. And as social media grew, over time, into every part of our lives, it has transformed our social lives, our culture, our communication and community-building habits.
In many instances, social media has produced negative outcomes, with research showing varied forms of mental health struggles due to over-exposure or over-use of social media.
If social media is changing our lives this much, just imagine the impact AI could have. It’s up to us to ensure we shape AI for good.
The fact is that AI-powered tools have a wide range of low-stakes, high-impact practical applications for every church today.
For example, there are tools that help pastors repurpose their already-written sermons into social media content, small-group discussion questions, devotionals, children’s ministry material and more. AI-powered technology like this can help you reclaim time, making you a more efficient and better spiritual leader.
You can automate emails. You can dramatically increase the efficiency of producing written materials for ministries at work in your church — and then spend your days ministering to your flock in-person.
People use AI to help them work, help them learn, and even help them grieve. Effective ministers in the age of AI will be able to help guide them as they use it, not merely admonish them not to engage it.
Clearly defining your use of AI, and your church’s relationship with AI, is a helpful first step for many. This is difficult work, of course — but it’s the work of prudence and wisdom. It’s critical and irreplaceable pastoral work.
AI tools will not necessarily encourage users to be critical thinkers. It’s essential when we approach AI and AI-powered tools to bring a spirit of faith, wisdom and clarity.
I have a pastor friend that told me he just didn’t know where the “line” was when he was preparing a sermon. “I know that I want it to help me,” he said. “I want it to help me maybe think about some introductions, help me maybe think about some bridge text. And then I want to write it because it needs to be in my voice.”
This is the moment a good AI policy needs to be discerned and written for your church. A good AI policy will ensure that AI products used by pastors and staff affirm, at all times, God’s design for the human person. We can and must ensure that AI tools help further human flourishing rather than corrode it.
That’s why my team and I are advancing values-aligned AI. This is AI built on trust, grounded in truth, and designed to serve people. It is designed with ethical sources and transparent methods, and it’s measured by how it supports real human flourishing — not just how fast or clever it is.
We’re here to ensure churches aren’t left behind in this moment. We want to equip, to advocate, and to help the Church lead — not lag — in the age of AI.
It can feel intimidating to learn to use these tools, and to learn how to use them well. Start by exploring ministry-centered learning groups on social media. Follow faith leaders who are exploring the space. Prayerfully experiment with the tools yourself. The opportunities to discern how to use these tools and develop both insight and skill while using them are abundant.
In learning to use these tools, AI-powered resources will feel more familiar, more clearly subordinate to our actual vocations and personal lives.
There’s hope in AI— it has the power to dramatically increase our capacity for relationships and our ability to communicate. It’s up to us to make sure that’s how we use the tool. And using the tools intentionally and wisely will help us control them.
What’s more, maintaining openness to new technologies helps the global Church continue her eternal mission in a digital age.
For instance, AI has dramatically accelerated the translation of the Bible into every language. It’s empowering communities from all over the world to start and complete the translation of God’s Word into their heart language. It’s helping missionaries and pastors communicate to populations they might otherwise be unable to reach.
This is powerful and unambiguously good work for the Kingdom — and it’s all work that’s supported by AI.
So, embrace AI-powered tools to help boost your ability to speak, minister and connect. Educate yourself, and bring others along with you. Help the global Church meet this moment and shape the future of AI for good.
Brianne Shaw serves as senior product marketing manager for Gloo, a leading technology platform for the faith ecosystem, providing values-based AI, resources, insights and funding so people and communities flourish and organizations thrive, www.gloo.com.
