Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of everyday life, from workplaces and schools to churches and Christian ministry. But as its use grows, questions are emerging about how Christians can embrace its benefits without outsourcing the thinking, relationships and spiritual formation that lie at the heart of Christian life.
The AI Christian Partnership has sought to help churches navigate those questions with a set of guidelines encouraging Christians to approach AI thoughtfully, ethically and in line with Christian values.
Christian Today spoke with Chris Goswami, founder of the AI Christian Partnership, about why the Church needs to engage with AI now, the opportunities for ministry and evangelism, and why questions about being human are increasingly important in an AI-driven world.
CT: What prompted the AI Christian Partnership to produce these guidelines for the Church now? Were pastors themselves asking for this kind of guidance?
Chris: I think AI has reached a tipping point in the sense that it is becoming so impactful across society, and the church is not exempt from that. AI is being adopted silently - people are just using it because it's there and it's easy - and Christians and churches will be using it even more in 12 months’ time. But it’s the silent adoption that concerns us.
With social media, we didn't grasp the impact until much later. So, rather than understanding the impact of AI with hindsight, it'd be much better with foresight to try to understand this world that we are all entering, whether that’s through our employment, the church, our children or their education, or even through hobbies and interests.
Our guidelines are not promoting AI. What we are promoting is a conversation about AI. If you don't want to use it, that's okay, but be clear about why. If you do want to use it, that's also fine, but be clear about the implications of what this means. Pastors have been somewhat asking these questions but our concern is that a lot of people are not asking.
These guidelines were trialed in March and April of this year with 10 churches from four denominations. The response we consistently got back is, “Thank you for doing this. They’re really needed. We really need to be having this conversation.” People are seeing that this is actually something that concerns us. AI is already impacting the church – it’s coming into the church, in the pulpit, in wider ministries, small groups, the back office, communications, newsletters, and in the congregation. So, even if some ministers might say ‘I'm not using AI’, your congregation is using AI and they will have ethical and theological questions. And possibly the biggest pastoral task facing the church over the next two to five years will be walking with people whose jobs are being severely disrupted by AI.
So, even if you're not using it, we have to look after people who are using this. What we're trying to do here is address both sides of the equation - the people who are silently adopting AI and not really discussing it, and the people who have a fear of AI.
CT: Barna recently found that congregants in the US are using AI more than their pastors. In your experience, do pastors feel equipped to guide their churches through this emerging technology?
Chris: During the industrial revolution, initially many people’s jobs were taken away but it also created many more jobs in the end. And that will happen again, I believe. As pastors, we have to be equipped for pastoring our congregation and helping them in what would be a sea change. At the moment, I don't think pastors are equipped for that. But it's not sufficient for us to say that we don't use AI, because this is not just about writing sermons. Once people's eyes open to the societal disruption of AI, everybody will realise they need to know about this and that they don't feel equipped.
The second area of concern is our own actual use of AI. We need to at least have some information to be informed. What about AI and the environment? What about AI and personhood? What does it mean to be a human? I was on a call this week with theologians, academics, Christians, and we were discussing AI and consciousness. To the average person in church or in the pub, that's a stupid suggestion; obviously, it's not conscious, it's not like a human! But there are already developments taking place in frontier AI labs and the scientific community - and even among some Christian theologians - which are starting to argue that AI is or is going to be conscious. Once that happens, there will be a whole new raft of challenges and opportunities for pastors.
The challenge is: how do we communicate? Are we equipped to communicate to our churches well? To be a human isn't just about intelligence and answering questions. It means much more than that from a Christian perspective. We will have to explain why a machine will never have the image of God, and we will have to be able to deal with people who believe that machines have rights or who already think AI is conscious - AI companions are very convincing.
We need to have a response but we also have to be able to give the positives. For example, when it comes to AI and the environment, on the one hand it produces a lot of CO2. But on the other hand, I saw a report about how AI is helping farmers in India predict the beginning of the monsoon so accurately that they can plant the right crops at the right time. So, there's not just one argument.
CT: How can we help church leaders become more confident and informed on the use of AI?
Chris: I would say: start with the guidelines, the conversation starters and the church statement. All three can help churches begin conversations about AI in their own context. Or join a training day. The point is to get informed, because the guidelines are great, but we also need conversations where people can ask the questions they're facing on the ground, which may be different from the ones we answer in the guidelines.
And this isn't just about ministers. A Sunday school teacher at our church recently told me she was preparing a lesson for primary school children and thought the material she had was really poor and dry. She asked AI to suggest a session based on Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, then to suggest a song to help the children remember it and a craft activity. She said the result was brilliant.
So, this is for anybody who serves or volunteers in a local church. Let's equip as many people as we can, and hopefully that will start a cascade of other training events across many denominations.
CT: At the recent Missional AI conference in London, experts there suggested AI is prompting people to ask deeper questions about what it means to be human. Could this become a significant evangelistic opportunity?
Chris: Yes, a hundred per cent, absolutely. There are examples of people coming to Christ and being connected with a local church, but these are few and far between. Nonetheless, we need ethics around this. Some of our guidelines, for example, talk about transparency and this means they must know they are talking to an AI. As Christians, we have to be upfront about that. ‘I am an AI’ should be the first thing that it says. Most people are fine with that once they know.
As another example, AI is speeding up Bible translation and we can put Bibles into so many countries. The speed at which AI is helping us is fast. And an evangelism organisation is using AI to translate conversations and evangelistic presentations into other languages. Now obviously the downside of that is: what happens to the interpreters? The guidelines don’t tell people what is acceptable or unacceptable. Instead they focus on how to think through these questions. But there absolutely are many good missional uses of AI and it's a great asset for Christian ministry when it's used in line with Christian values.
CT: How do we answer these questions about what it means to be human from a Christian perspective and how can Christians help people find those answers?
Chris: One of the good things about AI is it is forcing these discussions to happen. Every Christian should know what essentially makes us human, what makes us different and what it means to have the image of God. We should know these things anyway, but most Christians couldn't answer these questions off the top of their head. Someone said AI is like holding up a mirror to ourselves and we're having to think, ‘What is this thing?’
From my experience, the secular world is open to Christians’ interpretation because most people in the secular world also are not happy about AI having consciousness. They also want to know what's the difference. I have been asked this question in a secular group, “If AI can do all these things and it can exceed us, it's so intelligent and it's conscious, what does it mean to be human?”
My answer is that if you are a materialist – if you believe everything in the universe is material, and even our thoughts and emotions are just chemicals and electrons - then there's no difference. But if you believe there is something supernatural in this universe, let's talk about that.
A long time ago, AI Christian partnership was having a conversation about the use of AI in pastoral care. There are lots of trials now going on in the world of using AI, for example, with the very elderly, and some of the short-term feedback I've seen has been very positive. But it forced us into a conversation about what is really different about human pastoral care. You can have a cup of tea with somebody. That might sound insignificant, but it isn't. That's a real difference.
So, in a healthy sense, AI is forcing us to think about things we perhaps should have been thinking about anyway: what does it mean to be a person? And that's what the Pope's Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas talks about. It says there is an objective purpose of work to get things done, but there is also a subjective purpose, which is how does it form me as a person? And it's a really good and lengthy explanation of how wonderful it is to be a human. Our job is to try to disseminate these teachings now. We have the provocation to do it now because people are asking these questions - it’s an opportunity.
CT: Much of the Christian conversation around AI focuses on its dangers. Are there also positive ways the Church should be embracing AI in ministry? Have you heard any encouraging examples from churches already using AI well?
Chris: An outstanding is real-time translation of church services. A church near me with a lot of Iranians speaking Farsi uses an app called Breeze that can translate everything - sung, prayed, spoken. The congregation have a QR code, so no app required. And actually, even though it is translating from English, even some native English speakers are using it because they just need a bit of help to hear the content a little bit slower or repeated.
Another example comes from a minister across several churches. During a BBC Radio Four interview, he shared that he was given a report on a church heating system that he couldn’t understand. One of our guidelines is to use AI to critique, not create, and so instead of asking AI to give him the right heating system, which would have been a lazy way to use it, he uploaded the report and asked it to explain it, then suggest three questions he could ask his team to help him make an informed decision.
He has also used AI to think through different ways of organising pastoral care in one of his churches. Rather than asking AI to choose the best approach, he asked it to compare the different models and explain what good organisation is and the pros and cons of each, before making the final decision himself.
We say in the document, ‘Use AI to release your thinking and not replace your thinking.’ If you're using AI, use it well. There’s a word of 2026 - ‘friction maxxing’ - which is where people in secular professional organisations, particularly non-Christians, have realized they don’t want to use AI in everything because they don’t want to lose their skills. So, how much more important is that for us as Christians? We don't want to lose the Holy Spirit as well as our skills.
So, there are good and bad use cases. One really bad use would be asking AI to write a sermon or write a prayer. A good use would be asking it to critique your sermon or give you the news events of this week so you can write the prayers. There’s a subtle but distinct difference between doing your own thinking and outsourcing your thinking.
CT: One of your key recommendations is to treat AI “as an intern, not an expert”. You’ve mentioned writing sermons but thinking about the creative side of ministry, are there some tasks - such as writing worship songs or devotional material - that you believe should remain uniquely human?
Chris: One of our recommendations is to use AI more in a secondary role – to critique rather than create. If it's a critical task, you should do it yourself. Your church's reputation could be at stake, and if it's important, you should be praying into it and thinking it through yourself, perhaps using AI only as an assistant. I would also try to encourage people to realise that as part of Christian formation, we do have to struggle, and sometimes, God meets us in the struggle. When I struggle to write a sermon, it can take me 12 hours, but I believe I'm being formed and that it's coming from my heart. God meets me in the struggle.
I was teaching at St Mellitus College recently, and someone said, “Isn't it interesting that when the resurrected Jesus on Easter day met the disciples on the Emmaus road and they were so wrong about so many things, He didn't say, ‘Here's the answer, I’m alive’”? Instead, He allowed them to wrestle with their doubts for several hours before explaining the Scriptures to them from the Old Testament. Only later, in the breaking of the bread, did they recognise Him. How much more formed were they because of that? They learned so much.
So, are there tasks I wouldn't outsource to AI? Yes. I wouldn't want to make a specific list, but if something is critical, you should be doing it yourself, with AI perhaps serving as a secondary tool. If it's non-critical, that's different, and what counts as non-critical will vary from person to person. For example, I produce a newsletter for the AI Christian Partnership. I'll often ask AI to draft a newsletter using information I give it. I still read it and edit it, but for me that's not a critical task. I've spent years writing newsletters, and I'm not too concerned if I lose some of that skill.
The reality is that we will lose some skills if we continue to outsource them. Some of those losses are okay, and some are not okay. Part of being human - not just being Christian - is identifying which skills we're okay with losing and which we aren't. It's like driving everywhere instead of walking. Eventually your legs forget how to walk. The same principle applies to AI.
CT: Many younger Christians are growing up with AI as a normal part of life, and some are even turning to AI with their spiritual questions before speaking to a pastor. How can churches disciple this generation wisely?
Chris: That's really hard and I'm not an expert. I think there are pluses and minuses that I see in Generation Z and Generation Alpha. The pluses are that they are really interested in what it means to be human, and more concerned about the environment than perhaps many of us are. The downside is for a young person struggling with anxiety - and that's a lot of young people - it's much easier to talk to AI than to go to the youth group, go to church and to have to talk to people. And that is so dangerous.
Sometimes it could be useful. For example, if a young person struggles with their sexuality but feels they have no one to talk to, and they don't even know the language to express what they're experiencing, you can see how AI might provide some initial support. But when it goes wrong, it could be disastrous. There have already been cases of AI-assisted suicides in the news.
We're going to work on this area more because it’s an important question.
CT: Could AI ever replace the pastor?
Chris: In a smaller church where they can't afford a pastor, could an AI minister be of use? No, I don't think so, and I hope not. AI has been trained on material which, at the moment, is essentially non-Christian. You can have Christian AIs, but that's a different thing. So, I would say rather than that, if you really are struggling, why don't you get somebody in the congregation to really understand this stuff in the ways that we've been saying and use it well and be transparent about it? They could stand up and say, “I have a 10-minute homily, but it was written by Claude AI. I've edited it and added my own thoughts.” But in the early trials of AI-led services in the last couple of years, people have said they didn't like an avatar on a screen speaking to them. It dehumanises the experience in the end.
CT: What does the Church offer that AI never can?
Chris: Relationship and real empathy. Some people will say, ‘Oh, my AI is empathetic. It understands me,’ but that's not actually empathy because the AI has no skin in the game; it has no consequences. If you don't like your AI friend, you can just restart it. That's not a relationship.
Some studies suggest that people who become dependent on AI companions don't necessarily become better at speaking to people. Instead, they develop a type of friendship where they're always at the centre, because AI constantly flatters us. That's not how human relationships work. And you can't just reset, reboot, and restart a human relationship as if nothing happened. So, there are definitely areas where AI can be incredibly useful for ministry, but there are also places where it can be incredibly harmful.
CT: If you could leave church leaders with one piece of advice as AI becomes increasingly embedded in everyday life, what would it be?
Chris: It's a two-sided piece of advice. I think it's our responsibility to our churches and our families to understand how well this can be used, and at the same time, really understand what it means to be human, created in the image of God. Both sides of that matter equally. Use it well, understand it, and be confident about what AI can never do.
