Online Reporter
Noah Senthil
AI is everywhere, and it’s advancing at unpredictable rates. Between apocalyptic doomsday predictions and “utopian” visions of a labourless world, faithful pastors of varying ages, gifts, and denominations are wondering what this means for pastoral life and ministry.
Many advocate for ministers incorporating AI into church work. Some have already started. According to research from Barna in 2024, US pastors have varying levels of comfort with using AI based on the task: graphic design (88 percent), marketing (78 percent), communication (58 percent), sermon research (43 percent), creating study materials (39 percent), and sermon writing (12 percent), among other tasks.
Countless Christian companies already offer these services. For example, Logos Sermon Assistant promises to revolutionize sermon preparation, while Subsplash’s Pulpit AI will “take your impact beyond Sunday” by clipping your sermons for social media platforms.
These types of services — for busy and burned-out pastors — promise to alleviate unnecessary burdens and save time for you to spend elsewhere. We’re only beginning to see the pressure pastors will face to incorporate AI into every domain of church life.
In certain respects, AI can and will be marvellous: scientific breakthroughs, medical miracles, and translating ancient scrolls. But how should we think about using AI in a pastor’s everyday work? Plagiarizing sermons isn’t the only ethical consideration. What about church leaders using AI to break down a sermon series or build a VBS curriculum? Or using AI to create discussion questions for small groups? Creating the agenda for an elders’ meeting and recording the minutes of what transpired? Designing a new church logo? Summarising articles or books rather than spending significant time reading them?
If you’re a pastor or church leader pondering potential uses of AI in ministry, here are four questions to ask.
- What are the God-given responsibilities of the pastoral office?
Before you outsource pastoral responsibilities to ChatGPT, consider the nature of your duties as a shepherd of Christ’s church. Don Carson and John Woodbridge articulate how many pastors feel about their job description: “The modern pastor in America is expected to be a preacher, counsellor, administrator, PR guru, fundraiser and hand-holder . . . [and] an accountant, janitor, evangelist, small groups expert, an excellent chair of committees, a team player, and a transparent leader.”
Though we perceive all of these qualifications as necessary, most of these aren’t scriptural or realistic. For even the most talented pastor, it’s too much. The desperate desire for help is understandable. But whether a chatbot can assist in pastoral tasks isn’t the same question as whether they should. The pastoral office is personal — delegated to you, an undershepherd, by the Chief Shepherd.
In Acts 6, the apostles called on deacons (diakonos, “servant”) to meet the early church’s mounting needs, but it remained the apostles’ calling to devote themselves “to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (v. 4). They couldn’t delegate this task. The diaconate — an ecclesial office with specific functions — has as many moral and spiritual qualifications as the pastorate, and the health of the ancient church depended on both. The same is true today.
- What kind of pastoral formation is taking place?
An often neglected dimension of the spiritual formation movement is pastoral formation. Pastors are examples to the whole flock of God, for good or ill. God doesn’t care only about ends (ie a great sermon) but also about means. Your struggle with the text of Scripture as you scour commentaries and pray about how to apply it to your people isn’t a problem to be overcome. It’s central to pastoral formation.
The temptation of AI comes from its unspecified utility. A tool (eg a screwdriver) has a defined and limited use, but artificial general intelligence (AGI) — what many of the tech companies are working toward — promises to do anything and everything with human-level intelligence. We’re not there yet. But we see glimpses of the AGI posture now as chatbots respond to limitless prompts and promise effortless power.
- Does using AI undermine pastoral authority and the church’s credibility?
Christians today can be tempted to gain biblical instruction not from a local church but from Christian “influencers” and celebrity pastors’ livestreams. It’s hard enough for the average congregant to value mediocre preaching in person when he or she could hear a better preacher on double speed from the convenience of home. Are people going to be more or less motivated to come to church once they know their pastor is using Grok to “collab” on the sermon of the week?
The temptation of AI plagiarism, even if not the original intent, could also create a scandal that harms the church’s reputation. It’s challenging to distinguish between collaboration and plagiarism. Once AI is an excellent researcher (it’s currently not), it’ll still be ethically tenuous on this point alone. Pastors, “keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching” (1 Tim. 4:16). You don’t need to be technophobic, but you must be “above reproach” (3:2).
- What precedent is being set for the next generation of pastors?
At this rate, today’s AI will seem archaic in 15, 10, or even 5 years. If pastors adopt “artificial ministry” now, while generative AI is still so limited, that sets a precedent for the next generation to follow — when AI will promise to alleviate even more “burdens” from pastoral ministry. Wendell Berry once observed, “Always the assumption is that we can first set demons at large and then, somehow, become smart enough to control them.” Far too often, this means the following generation is tasked with trying to put the demons back into Pandora’s box. Pastors should consider what it means to “finish well,” not only in the age of AI, but also in a time of pastoral shortage and moral crisis in the church.
When you lay hands on a freshly appointed shepherd, what unnecessary weights are you laying upon his shoulders? Pastors being “able to teach” (v. 2) has far less to do with rhetorical prowess than with the wisdom and courage to proclaim and defend sound doctrine. A wise and seasoned pastor may retain the ability to teach while outsourcing some of the grunt work of sermon preparation to ChatGPT. But what about the generation that goes through seminary assuming this is OK for pastors to do? Will they bother doing the work of memorising Scripture, gaining proficiency in biblical languages, and studying orthodox doctrine and practice?
Digital technology already has a death grip on this generation. But pastors can lead the way in resisting forms of technology that isolate and dehumanise us and nudge us toward vice rather than virtue. — TGCAfrica.org
