AI & Tech · Church Communications
AI Is a Tool, Not a Pastor: Keeping the Human Heart in Church Communications
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We’ve spent all year talking about what AI can do. Before the year is out, I want to talk about what it can’t — and why that matters more than anything else.
AI cannot sit with someone who just lost a spouse. It cannot hold space in a hospital room. It cannot look someone in the eyes across a communion table and know, without a word, that they need to be seen today. It cannot pray — not really. It can generate the words of a prayer, but it cannot mean them, cannot offer them, cannot carry the weight of intercession before God on behalf of a broken person.
Every limitation I just listed is actually a description of what the church is uniquely called to do. And that calling has never been more important than it is in a world that increasingly interacts with machines.
The Medium Has Changed. The Mission Hasn’t.
I’ve been saying this all year, and I’ll say it one more time because it’s the frame that holds everything else together: the medium has always changed. The message of the gospel has not.
Paul used Roman roads. The Reformers used the printing press. Billy Graham used television. We use the internet, social media, and now AI. Every generation of the church has had to ask: how do we use the tools of our time to carry the message of all time?
The answer has never been to refuse the tools. The answer has been to use them wisely, thoughtfully, and always in service of the people we’re called to reach — not in replacement of the relationships that actually change lives.
What AI Frees You To Do
The whole point of using AI for your first draft, your graphics, your research, your administrative tasks — is to give you back time. Time for what? For the irreplaceable things. The pastoral visit. The late-night phone call. The Sunday morning conversation with the visitor who’s clearly carrying something. The hour of prayer before you preach.
If you use AI to do more content at the expense of less presence — you’ve missed it entirely. If you use AI to handle the mechanical so you can be more fully human with the people in front of you — that’s redemptive use of technology.
A Word to the Exhausted Church Communicator
If you’ve been in this role for any length of time, you know the Sunday cycle is relentless. Every week there’s a bulletin, an email, a sermon graphic, a social post, an announcement that changed at the last minute, and three ministry leaders who all think their thing is the most urgent.
AI is not a magic fix for all of that. But it is a genuine help. It can absorb some of the mechanical load so you’re not running on empty by Wednesday. Use it for that. Let it draft the routine communications so you have energy left for the things that actually need you.
The Church Belongs in This Conversation
The development of AI is one of the most significant cultural moments of our lifetime. Decisions being made right now in boardrooms and research labs will shape how this technology is used — and who it serves — for decades.
The church needs to be in that conversation. Not to bless everything uncritically. Not to condemn from a distance. But to be present, to bring a theology of human dignity to the table, to ask the hard questions about who benefits and who gets left behind, and to insist that human flourishing — not just efficiency — is a worthy design goal.
AI is a tool. A remarkable, powerful, genuinely useful tool. But you are the minister. That hasn’t changed. Don’t let it.
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