Three AI Mandates for the Church

Mission in the Age of AI

The Church has a complicated relationship with technology.

Not a bad one. A late one.

Television, mobile, social media, video streaming — in nearly every case, the Church arrived after the moment had passed, often spending its early energy building walls rather than bridges. We created “Christian-approved” content ecosystems while culture moved on without us. We debated social media’s appropriateness while a generation of teenagers is being rewired by it. We are still, in some corners, debating whether to even stream our services.

I say this not as criticism but as diagnosis. The pattern is real, and it’s worth naming — because AI is the moment where that pattern can no longer be afforded.

While much in this space remains uncertain, one thing is not — time is a luxury the Church, indeed Humanity, lacks.

This isn’t a debate about whether AI is good or bad. That debate is already behind us. AI is here, it is accelerating at a pace no institution fully grasps, and the organizations that wait to “see how culture reacts” will find themselves not just behind — but irrelevant.

So what does the Church do?

I believe there are three mandates. Not suggestions. Not considerations. Mandates — because the moment demands that kind of language.

Mandate 1: Leverage AI for Scale and Efficiency

This is where you start — simply because you have to. Using AI to drive scale and efficiency fits with AI’s most basic core use case. Beyond human curiosity, this is why we built it. Get more done, better, faster, cheaper. Embracing that reality allows you to learn along with other organizations across industries, harness new tools being built, and get the same value from AI a Fortune 500 company is getting — but this time without the massive overhead of expensive software licenses. Organizations that begin here develop the muscle memory, the internal vocabulary, and the cultural permission to go deeper. As the old adage goes, start simple but simply start.

A word of warning though: if your entire experience with AI is the free version of ChatGPT, you haven’t experienced it. I use this analogy with church leaders and it lands every time — in my area, the Amish population is significant. Using the free version of AI and calling it your reference point is like owning a horse and buggy while genuinely believing you understand the car. You’re moving faster than walking, sure. But the world is passing you at 6x your speed, and you don’t know what you’re missing because you’ve never felt the acceleration.

Get on the paid tier. Experience what it actually does. Then bring that experience back to your team.

Mandate 2: Grow Your Ministry of Presence

If Scale and Efficiency is the most time-sensitive, Ministry of Presence is the most strategically important.

Here’s what’s coming: a loneliness epidemic that AI will simultaneously cause and attempt to solve. Tools are already emerging that offer frictionless intimacy; companionship, counsel, emotional support — all without the friction that makes intimacy real. The American Psychological Association’s Stress in America 2025 report found that nearly 70% of adults said they needed more emotional support in the past year than they received — and that half of U.S. adults already report feeling isolated, left out, or lacking companionship. This loneliness epidemic was already underway before AI arrived to offer its counterfeit solution.1

According to Pew Research (December 2025), nearly two-thirds of American teenagers have used AI chatbots — with roughly one in three doing so daily, and a growing share turning to them for emotional support and advice.2

The Church’s distinctive — genuine community, the irreplaceable weight of a human being showing up — has never been more countercultural. Or more needed.

Here is a truth I believe even having personally experienced an AI relationship. AI cannot care for you. Period. End of statement. I’ll unpack this further in a future article.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that culture will need to experience the isolation before it recognizes the gap. We as the Church need to be ready when it does. That means investing now in the things AI cannot replicate: pastoral mentoring, biblical counseling, the ministry of showing up in the lives of the people we love and serve.

AI handles the production. Your people handle the presence.

Mandate 3: Steward the Truth

This one is long game — but the groundwork needs to be laid today.

We are entering a post-truth information environment that makes the social media era look quaint. Deepfakes, AI-generated content, and the collapse of institutional trust mean that “what is actually true” is becoming genuinely difficult to answer. AI will accelerate this. Most people already can’t tell.

In that world, institutions that hold to a verifiable, consistent standard of truth — the Gospel — become anchors.

The Church hasn’t just claimed to be an authority on truth. We’ve literally been given the task to “go and make disciples of all nations…” The mandate to steward truth isn’t new. The tools being used to distort it are.

The real question is whether we’ll adapt our infrastructure to prove it — in how we handle AI-generated content, in how we ensure our Bible tools are theologically grounded, in how we show our work to a skeptical world.

This one requires nuance. There is real suspicion of the Church in culture right now, and earned authority looks different than claimed authority. But truth doesn’t ultimately need marketing. It needs consistency, transparency, and time.

Start building now.

So What Do You Actually Do Monday Morning?

Two things.

First, develop an organizational opinion on AI. Not simply a policy handed down from the executive pastor — engage a genuine conversation. What does responsible use look like for your staff? What should AI be used for? What shouldn’t it? Get educated yourself first, then create a community of practice internally. Open the dialogue. Bring in outside voices. Engage your volunteers. You will be surprised what expertise already exists in your congregation.

Second, stop waiting for clarity that isn’t coming. The leaders who wait for the dust to settle will find, when it does, that the landscape has completely changed beneath them. The mandate isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to be in motion.

The Church has missed moments before. This one is different — not because the technology is different, but because the pace is. There is no catching up this time.

There is only now.

Notes

1  American Psychological Association. (2025). Stress in America 2025: A Crisis of Connection. https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/stress-in-america/2025

2  Pew Research Center. (December 9, 2025). Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/12/09/teens-social-media-and-ai-chatbots-2025/

3 Photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash