What Should Pastors Do About Artificial Intelligence?

Pastors Must Think Deeply About AI 

By Cody Crumrine 

As a programmer, startup founder and elder at Lanse Evangelical Free Church (EFCA), I spend a lot of time thinking about the latest tech. I wonder "How can I use this in my career and personal life?” and "How will this change things for myself, my kids, our country, our world and my brothers and sisters in Christ?” The advances in AI during the last few years have already had incredibly positive and negative impacts in all of those areas, so I was eager to review AI Goes to Church: Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence. 

AI Goes to Church is at its best when it motivates Christians to be active stewards of technology. It encourages the Church to be a proactive influence on a grand scale, to seek creative new ministry avenues at the local level and to be mindful of our own tech use and consumption on a daily basis. 

It shines especially bright in Chapter 7 when talking about “AI and Social Justice.” Korpi presents the idea of believers living with an eye toward the kingdom in clear and actionable terms. This chapter is also the most technically accurate, describing the same concerns around bias and disenfranchisement that people “in the industry” talk about, and doing it accurately. 

Unfortunately, the book falls short on its promise to provide “Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence.” Korpi engages a number of topics worth considering but spends too much time on too little content. Less ink spent saying “scripture contains wisdom for modern issues” (most of Chapter 3), fewer off-topic diversions (like whether the snake in the garden was Satan) and fewer frameworks (sometimes several per chapter) could have freed up room for practical preparation regarding issues like:

• How do we promote unity while sycophant chatbots influence us to be more self-righteous?  
• How do we encourage someone afraid of losing a job to AI?  
• How do we counsel someone addicted to a virtual companion? 

I confess my feathers were ruffled when I read this sentence:  

“Programmers and tech entrepreneurs tend not to view human beings as sons and daughters deeply beloved by God [...].”  

As a programmer—worse still, a “tech entrepreneur” building with AI—I care deeply about how technology affects people (as do most of my peers, both Christian and not). 

It’s from my vocational experience that my strongest cautions arise. Korpi advocates for the development and use of “pastoral AI” for basic biblical education and pastoral counseling. He acknowledges the risk that such use could reduce human-to-human interaction, but my concerns go further. 

With present technology, “pastoral AI” will be heavily influenced by the cultural undercurrents of the internet age, will have a bias toward agreeing with the user and will be more convincing than accurate. As a result, it will tend to affirm when it should correct or challenge, and present secular ideology expertly disguised as sound theology. This issue—referred to as alignment (fitting AI’s behavior to a given moral framework)—is one of the more difficult and hotly debated topics in the AI industry today. We do not yet know whether these are limitations that future progress will allow us to overcome. 

I encourage you, whether pastor, elder or layperson, to think deeply about how the AI age will affect you, your family in Christ and the world at large. With some cautions in mind, AI Goes to Church will help you do that. But there’s more work needed. 

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Pastors Must Lead in the Age of AI 

By Lowrie Robertson 

Technological advances, from Gutenberg’s press to the telescope to YouTube, often meet reactive resistance—and even fear—in the Church. In light of this, Todd Korpi advocates for a proactive approach by pastoral leadership in AI Goes to Church: Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence. Its release is timely, although it remains to be seen if it has come in time, and whether or not it will receive a hearing. 

Korpi confronts Christian leaders with the need to lead the way in shaping the AI future—already a fact of daily life for billions—harnessing its potential for good while restraining its capacity for abuse. He provides a helpful overview, including a chapter in laymen’s terms on how AI works, its likely future impact on work and ministry, higher education, social justice, theology and ethics. Our responsibility as Christian leaders to guide the conversation in keeping with biblical theology—particularly the imago Dei—is the most salient and consistent point of Korpi’s book. 

Pastors cannot afford to dismiss AI. It has a significant impact on the sanctification and spiritual well-being of those we shepherd and our own as well. This impact ranges from the seemingly insignificant to the profoundly harmful. Korpi points out one of the more easily overlooked impacts: “...turning myself into a demanding toddler when I interact with AI negatively impacts me…it can spill over into my interactions with other human beings.” He also notes the more troubling: “This is perhaps most concerning in the rise of sexually abusive interactions with AI chatbots…”  

How can we respond? Korpi’s practical suggestion: Use AI to streamline the pastoral and administrative workflow to free up more time for face-to-face ministry interaction. 

Various aspects of Korpi’s style and thinking will cause some evangelical pastors to chafe. Nonetheless, it is important for pastors to consider his proposals, setting aside their own biases and preferences. We will not move forward well if we cannot weigh pros and cons with significant, if imperfect, objectivity. 

Perhaps the most significant practical impact the book has had on me is to renew my interest in entering digital spaces for the purpose of the missio Dei. Korpi opened my eyes to the biblical basis for remote ministry in Paul’s letters, which allowed him “to be simultaneously present in one location (where he was ministering physically at the time) and present in another, with a proxy (such as Phoebe) reading his letters to another of his churches.”   

AI Goes to Church is the kind of read that can get lost on a busy pastor’s to-read list, and that is just the kind of reality that often finds us responding to how a cultural conversation is going, rather than leading it. This has never been beneficial to the work of the kingdom. Reading Korpi’s book is a helpful first step in learning to lead the way in the age of AI.