The Church's Faithful Response to Generative AI as Infrastructure
Part 2 of the Top 10 predictions for 2026
Generative artificial intelligence can no longer be peripheral to church life. It will be embedded in the systems where people heal, learn, worship, and seek spiritual guidance. Healthcare ministries will encounter AI diagnostics. Educational programs will use adaptive learning systems. Media production and community engagement will be shaped by synthetic content platforms. Pastoral care will intersect with AI-powered tools for outreach and spiritual support.
Faith communities now face a critical question: How should the church engage with generative AI infrastructure faithfully, proactively, and in service of human dignity and discipleship?
This is not a question churches can defer. The technology is not coming; it is already here. The Church must neither uncritically adopt nor reflexively reject AI, but engage with theological wisdom, pastoral discernment, and clear ethical frameworks.
Recognizing the Shift: From Novelty to Infrastructure
Generative AI has already moved from innovation to operational reality. 45% of churches now use AI tools, yet less than a quarter of these churches apply AI to core ministry functions like sermon development or pastoral care. This gap signals both opportunity and risk.
In healthcare, education, entertainment, and institutional workflows, AI is becoming a default component of systems—not just a novelty. For the church, this means technology once peripheral will now shape the contexts in which people live, learn, heal, and create meaning.
Several interfaith working groups have begun outlining ethical frameworks for AI use in religious settings, emphasizing transparency, human oversight, and the centrality of lived community. However, the technology is moving faster than most institutions can respond. This urgency demands immediate action.
The Church cannot be merely reactive, shaped by cultural infrastructure. It must shape the infrastructure itself—and that begins with recognizing what is at stake: human dignity, relational formation, spiritual authenticity, and the integrity of pastoral care.
Theological and Ethical Foundations
Faith communities have begun articulating responses grounded in Christian principles. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued guiding principles in 2024 emphasizing spiritual connection, transparency, privacy, accountability and value-alignment when using AI.
In the Vatican’s recent doctrinal note Antiqua et Nova, Church scholars reflected on AI’s limits and named three essential human capacities that AI cannot replicate: first, the wisdom of lived, embodied experience that comes from physical existence in the world; second, relationality, which is grounded in authentic connection with others through shared vulnerability and presence; and third, the capacity for spiritual encounter and moral agency.
Key theological principles should guide church engagement:
Human dignity and relationality. Technology should serve relationships, not substitute them. AI may assist; it cannot replace the embodied presence of pastoral care, sacramental encounter, and spiritual community.
Transparency and truth. Users must know when they interact with AI. Content generated or mediated by algorithms must be labeled and verified against doctrinal integrity and theological soundness.
Justice and the common good. AI deployment must consider equity, accessibility, and inclusion. The church cannot permit technology to deepen digital divides or exclude vulnerable populations.
Stewardship and discernment. The church must neither uncritically adopt nor reflexively reject AI. Instead, it engages with wisdom, asking: Does this serve the Gospel? Does it protect human dignity? Does it strengthen community?
The Spiritual Integrity Question
A critical concern demands attention: AI lacks doctrinal accountability and spiritual grounding. AI systems can generate text that appears compassionate or theologically sound, but they do not believe, worship, or hold convictions. They do not know God. Their suggestions, while often convincing, are neither prayerful nor prophetic.
Users often turn to generative AI for religious guidance and counseling, driven by personal emotional and spiritual uncertainties. Generative AI can generate text that reflects bias, misinterpret scripture, or promote ideas incompatible with a person’s faith tradition, particularly when AI training data lacks theological grounding.
The vulnerability is real. For Christians experiencing isolation, spiritual crisis, or wounds from institutional church, AI-generated spiritual guidance can feel intimate and responsive. Unlike pastors, AI will not rebuke, demand accountability, or call toward transformation. For some Americans, that absence of challenge feels like grace. For others, it represents a hollow version of faith, one that comforts without transforming.
The church must articulate clearly: authentic spiritual formation requires accountability, communal discernment, and the transformative challenge of truth spoken in love. These cannot be outsourced to algorithms.
Practical Ministry Engagement
Pastoral Care and Community Formation
AI-powered chatbots and personalized content systems may become common in health and education contexts. Churches should explore how AI might support—but never replace—human pastoral presence.
Use AI tools to enhance accessibility: translate sermons into multiple languages, create tailored devotional content, reach isolated members. Be explicit that human love, embodied presence, and sacramental encounter remain primary. When using AI for pastoral outreach, ensure human follow-up.
Train congregants in digital literacy: how to discern and engage thoughtfully with AI-generated content. Equip them with theological frameworks for evaluating what they encounter online.
Teaching and Discipleship
With AI infrastructure entering schools and educational platforms, churches involved in Christian education must ask: How does faith formation respond when content becomes hyper-personalized and algorithmically curated?
Develop curriculum and study materials that engage the theological questions directly. What is human creativity when machines co-create? What is vocation if aspects of work become automated? What does it mean to be made in the image of God in an age where intelligent machines can mimic human language and emotional response?
Offer training for church leaders on integrating AI tools into ministry workflows—sermon preparation, media creation, communication—while maintaining ethical integrity.
Media, Worship, and Creative Production
AI isn’t theoretical. It’s practical and operational right now in 2025. If your church uses social media, email automation or video streaming, you’re already engaging with AI. Tools like Sermon Shots generate sermon snippets for digital platforms, while AI discipleship chatbots help answer theological questions instantly while adhering to your personal theological fundamentals.
Churches producing video, audio, and worship resources should establish clear policies about AI use. While GenAI may help generate imagery, music, or graphics, the church must maintain authenticity, truthfulness, and relational resonance. The output should reflect God’s story and theological integrity, not technical novelty.
Encourage creative teams to experiment with AI tools but require attribution, transparency about AI involvement, and human oversight. If worship content includes AI-generated elements, congregants should be informed.
Public Witness and Advocacy
The church has a prophetic role in society-wide conversations about AI infrastructure: Who benefits? Who is excluded? What values are embedded in these systems?
The Church of England called for a national conversation on AI and the future of work. Churches should advocate for fair and inclusive AI policies, ensuring automation does not erode work dignity, amplify inequality, or diminish human flourishing.
Building Institutional Frameworks
Develop an Ethical Technology Policy
Rather than an AI-only policy, churches should develop a comprehensive ethical technology and communication policy. AI is increasingly integrated in every online platform; it’s no longer a question of if churches use this technology, but how.
The policy should address:
Data privacy and security: How is congregational data protected when using AI tools? Who has access to sensitive information?
Transparency: When is AI-generated or AI-mediated content used? How is this disclosed to the congregation?
Doctrinal review: What theological or biblical content requires oversight before deployment?
Human oversight: Which decisions must retain human responsibility? What tasks should never be delegated to machines?
Attribution: When AI assists with content creation, is this clearly noted?
Train Leaders and Staff
More than 45% of churches now use AI tools, yet there is significant hesitancy about when and how to use them effectively. Leaders need basic competency in the technology itself.
Offer workshops introducing pastors, administrators, and ministry staff to what generative AI actually is, what it can and cannot do, and what ethical questions emerge. Provide prompt literacy and discernment frameworks. Equip them to oversee AI tools responsibly.
Embed Human-AI Workflows with Relational Emphasis
When using AI for efficiency—transcription, scheduling, analytics, administrative tasks—ensure human relationship remains the priority.
Use AI to reduce administrative burden so staff have more time for pastoral care, community formation, and spiritual presence. Never automate away the relational core of ministry.
Theological Reflection and Formation
Foster ongoing theological conversation about technology, personhood, and vocation. What does human creativity mean when machines generate? What is the church’s role when AI infrastructure shapes how people understand truth, community, and meaning?
Encourage sermons, small-group studies, and retreats focused on these questions. Help congregants think Christianly about artificial intelligence, not as tech-enthusiasts or tech-skeptics but as disciples seeking to honor God and human dignity.
A Hopeful Vision
Rather than fearful or overwhelmed, the church can step into this era with hope and purpose.
When AI becomes infrastructure, the church has opportunity to shape culture rather than simply adapt. Its voice for human dignity, authentic community, and relational authenticity is vital and countercultural.
The church can leverage new tools to extend mission: reaching people across languages and contexts, generating discipleship resources adapted to diverse needs, identifying unmet community needs. AI can amplify reach and efficiency.
But the church must remain faithfully centered on its core: proclaiming the Gospel, forming authentic community, offering sacramental and spiritual encounter. Technology serves these ends; it does not replace them.
In a world where AI systems respond in real time to personal prompts, the Church must champion what AI cannot: authentic community, deep discipleship, and genuine spiritual formation. As agents of grace, truth, and presence, churches can engage generative AI infrastructure with wisdom, creativity, and faith.
In 2026 and beyond, the critical question is not whether churches will encounter AI. They will. The question is whether the church will shape that encounter proactively—grounding it in theological conviction, relational integrity, and commitment to human flourishing—or whether it will be shaped by forces outside its control.
The time to decide is now.
Reflection Questions for Church Leaders
Where is generative AI already influencing your ministry (communication, education, media, pastoral care, administration)?
How do you ensure technology serves relationships rather than replaces them?
What theological principles should guide your church’s use of AI?
How might hyper-personalization in media and learning affect discipleship and community formation?
What tasks should always remain human in your ministry? What decisions should never be delegated to machines?
How will you train your congregation to engage thoughtfully and faithfully with AI-generated content?
What does it mean to be made in the image of God—and what does that imply for how we develop and use artificial intelligence?