Reclaiming the Mission: The Critical Role of Pastors in the Age of AI

I’ve written and spoken about AI a lot because it’s a pressing issue, both in our society and around the world. A new Barna study makes that urgency concrete. Christians across traditions are grappling with AI, and the numbers reveal both alarming and opportunity-rich realities for the Church. 

Dealing with AI requires a strong doctrinal foundation, and our doctrinal approach can be helped by research and data. Facts are our friends, whether those facts come from statistical research or theological conviction. The newest release from Barna offers startling numbers on how practicing Christians are actually engaging with AI, and it highlights both the challenges and the opportunities that pastors and church leaders need to take seriously. 

Christians Increasingly Trust AI

Christians are increasingly treating AI not just as a tool but as a companion, and this shift has happened faster than almost anyone anticipated. Personally, I have conversations with AI for work I do in history, theology, or missiology. While I’m driving, I can have a back-and-forth conversation on these topics. Even still, it’s striking that 48% of practicing Christians trust AI not just with information but with formation, believing that AI can help them with their spiritual growth. 

Questions about meaning, purpose, relationships, identity, and spirituality have typically been things shaped by human community, but now AI is increasingly being consulted for them. People aren’t using AI like a calculator, or even a search engine, but they are increasingly approaching it relationally, like a counselor, a life coach, or even a pastor. The connection of practicing Christians with AI is increasingly both relational and formational. It has become what some have called “presence technology.” 

People can talk with AI, and it can present as understanding our likes and our wants, and we increasingly trust it. In this, we have a diagnostic opportunity: the draw to AI reveals a discipleship deficit in our churches. It also reflects the extent to which consumerism and individualism have quietly become defining factors in how many Christians approach their spiritual lives.

I can see this adoption in my own life. I use AI tools every day: for research in theology, missiology, and history, but also for ordinary planning decisions. The more I use it, the more it anticipates my preferences and goes deeper into things I care about. That relational dynamic is exactly what makes it so powerful and so consequential when people begin applying it to their spiritual lives. Practicing Christians are increasingly entrusting spiritual formation to AI, and we should take that seriously. 

The Continuing Unease with AI

At the same time, the Barna study also showed that practicing Christians overwhelmingly said that they had profound concerns that AI would misinterpret Scripture (83%), act as a replacement for God (72%), replace pastors as spiritual authorities (72%), or cause people to lose their faith (73%). The Barna write-up calls these results confounding, and at first glance, they are. But they actually fit a well-established cultural pattern. People already distrust institutions and authority, but they still desire guidance and direction. 

We’ve seen this with social media and algorithms, and AI usage only intensifies the same pattern. The Gen Z and Millennial numbers are especially telling. When 39% of Gen Z and 44% of Millennials say AI spiritual advice is as trustworthy as a pastor’s, that finding says as much about distrust of pastors as it does about trust in AI. (Pastors: I say this with love, but also with concern.) AI is always available, instant, and non-judgmental, which can feel more trustworthy to people than a seemingly distant or inaccessible pastor or spiritual leader. 

The Gap Between Pastors and People

The data also shows that pastors and laypeople are living different realities in relation to AI. Pastors seem to see AI through a lens of skepticism and theological risk. On questions of purpose, identity, relationships, and spiritual growth, pastoral trust in AI was minuscule, ranging from just 6% to 12% depending on the question. But half or more of practicing Christians trust AI for these same areas. This is a gap that pastors and church leaders need to address. The data doesn't give us a clean answer. It gives us a responsibility. 

For example, at the Missional AI Summit, where I recently spoke on concerns about AI, I also noted that Christians are already deeply integrating AI into their lives. Both statistical and anecdotal evidence show this trend. And this has historically been a pattern with technology. While church leaders first evaluate a new technology institutionally and doctrinally (which is part of our job), average users and everyday Christians evaluate that same technology more experientially. That's not a failure of leadership. That's the gap leadership is called to close. 

To close the gap, we need to address the question from a missional and formational lens. The question isn’t whether Christians should use AI (that ship has clearly sailed). Instead, we should be asking what AI is forming Christians into. And here's the thing: the people being formed by AI aren't only in our pews. They're our neighbors, our coworkers, our family members who haven't set foot in a church in years. We have a tremendous opportunity to address these things and to reach people in the middle of it. 

Pastors and church leaders must recognize the gap between their approach to AI and that of their people, and then actually do something about it. One practical starting point: there are now tools that build AI responses based on your library of trusted resources. So if someone is in Spurgeon's theological lane or someone who holds a Reformed Baptist perspective, the answers will be drawn from that perspective and data set. 

At the same time, we need to invest seriously in discipleship around AI. When I wrote Christians in the Age of Outrage nearly a decade ago, I addressed the need for discipleship in the context of social media. We still need digital discipleship, and now we need it around AI (though it is worth mentioning that these two issues overlap, as many of our issues around social media stem from the AI algorithms that power our news feeds).

Again, this is a conversation spanning throughout culture and the Christian world. I was recently invited to an event hosted by the Vatican around these conversations. Though I wasn’t able to attend, it’s fair to say that—on issues related to life and human dignity—our Catholic friends are often addressing these issues earlier than most.  

Pope Leo recently released his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (roughly translated, “the grandeur of humanity”), building on natural law, historical approaches to technology, and theological thinking to address AI. He argues that our approach to technology and AI, specifically, can be either building a new Tower of Babel or rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. 

And in a statement that warms my missiologist’s heart, he says, “We must consider the digital world as a new continent to be evangelized, one that requires generous missionaries who are mature in the faith.” Obviously, as an evangelical, I would have significant differences with the Roman Catholic vision of the gospel and “evangelization,” but the need for both mission and formation is clearly evident in various streams of Christianity today. 

Pastors and church leaders, this is your moment. The moment we’re in doesn’t change the mission we’re on; it expands the urgency of it. We have a call toward mission and formation that was true before AI and is even more pressing because of it. What AI cannot replicate is the community of faith, the Word of God, and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit…and those are exactly what the church exists to offer. The Barna data doesn’t just describe a problem; it describes an open door. 

Let’s step through that door.