There are church leaders who want to ignore artificial intelligence (AI) completely and there are those who find it intriguing, but regardless of pastors’ feelings about the technology, it is essential that they engage with it. Experts whom ChurchLeaders spoke to at Gloo’s second annual AI and the Church Hackathon offered encouragement and practical steps for how pastors can do so well.
“It can be really overwhelming. And so probably the average church leader feels overwhelmed whether they admit it or not,” said Nick Skytland, one of the hackathon’s facilitators. Skytland is cofounder of Quite Uncommon, a strategy and technology firm, and he has also served as an elder in his church.
“It’s just hard to keep up, right?” he observed. How are pastors, who “are juggling your ministry and all the complexities that come with pastoring and shepherding a local congregation” also to “keep up with the [news that the] world’s changing due to AI and it’s going to disrupt everything”?
“It can be very, very overwhelming for the church leader,” said Skytland. “But I think it’s really important for the church leader to know, this is not just a trend or a fad. It’s truly a transformational experience and it will impact everyone.”
Artificial Intelligence Is Here To Stay—So How Are Pastors Going To Engage With It?
Gloo, whose mission is to “release the collective might of the faith ecosystem,” held its second annual AI and the Church Hackathon in Boulder, Colorado, on Sept. 13-15.
The theme of this year’s hackathon was “Redemptive Technology.” More than 200 attendees from the U.S. and other countries came together on 40 teams to compete for cash prizes by creating AI solutions that will support human flourishing and thriving churches.
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Dr. Ed Stetzer, dean of Talbot School of Theology at Biola University and editor-in-chief of Outreach Magazine, told ChurchLeaders that as a missiologist, he evaluates anything by asking if it should be rejected, adopted, or adapted.
“I would say that we don’t have a choice to reject AI,” he said. “I mean, every time I put something in my phone, AI is engaged, right?” But he also would not “adopt it uncritically. For example, large language models have bias and some of the largest language models are biased more in a progressive direction.”
“I do think that we can adapt, use the tools, do so with a Christian worldview and a Christian sense of discernment,” Stetzer said.
“I think AI can be a superpower,” he continued. “I mean, I sit down and I teach pastors how to use AI, and it can save them hours every week if they use it appropriately and ethically. But they need to use it appropriately and ethically.”
Pastors should also recognize that “AI is probably going to be the biggest global disruption in our lifetime. And I think…pastors and church leaders need to learn more than they probably know now,” said Stetzer.
Not only will this knowledge “help them be more effective and fruitful and faithful in ministry, but [it will also] help their churches walk through what I believe will be a significant global disruption in everything we do.”
Steele Billings, Gloo’s director of AI Initiatives, suggested this disruption is something that God wants believers to seek his will on. “The church is the bride of Christ,” he told ChurchLeaders. “In the same way that if my bride were struggling with something, I would want her to come to me and talk to me…I believe that that’s God’s heart for artificial intelligence, too, is that as leaders, we should be seeking God for his purposes in my local context.”
“We have a belief at Gloo that God is not surprised by AI, and that God allowed it to come into existence for his purposes. And there is a redemptive purpose for AI, and it can lead to the flourishing of people,” Billings continued. But these purposes will look different for every local pastor, and Billings encouraged pastors to “seek discernment” on how the Lord might be calling them to engage with AI.
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“I would also encourage a pastor to take a few steps in trying something in their local context,” said Billings. “Use an AI model to ask a question that’s on the top of their mind, and see where that goes…but be led by the Holy Spirit, because we do believe that there are lines that can be crossed around ethics and morality of what should or should not be done.”
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