Can Pastors Trust AI With Sermon Questions About ‘Truth’?
(ANALYSIS) No doubt about it, artificial intelligence agents are great at providing answers to basic questions that shape ordinary life.
AI has become a “nearly daily part of my life in the last couple years, as it has for many others,” noted Collin Hansen, editor-in-chief of The Gospel Coalition website, in an essay titled, "Why AI Will Write Your Next Sermon.”
For example, "I've found help for home repairs. Diet and exercise plans. Meal preparation. Trip planning. Personal health assessments. ... Even baseball swing and pitching advice for my son."
The deeper question is how will AI handle problems pastors face as the faithful wrestle with parenting and careers, marriage and morality, sin and forgiveness. These questions affect work in the pulpit, as well as private hospital conversations and prayers.
Pastors who seek AI help with sermons need to understand that the software pros who build these platforms struggle to separate factual questions from those focusing on ethics and morality, said Hansen, reached by telephone.
“Does AI mean that we don't have to study and remember the Bible as much? ... If we do that, it turns what used to be Bible study into some kind of science in which you can chop it up into pieces and then process it somehow," perhaps with another AI program, he said.
The computer system “doesn't recognize what happens in your counseling, and in your evangelism, and in your apologetics, and in your deathbed ministry, when there is a difference between asking AI to come in and supply the answers you need instead of your own personal, intimate familiarity with the scriptures,” he added. “Those kinds of distinctions are going to be lost on people who think these AI tools will make things a lot more efficient.”
Religious leaders and pastors need to pause and ask: “Efficient for WHAT? What is this THING that you are trying to accomplish? What are you going to say to these people? How are you going to pray for them if you are not actually formed in the scriptures and in prayer yourself?”
There is no question that these questions are increasingly relevant. The issue is whether many clergy can flip a switch and return to life without AI.
For example, the third annual “State of AI in the Church” survey — conducted by AIforChurchLeaders.com, ChurchTechToday.com and others — found that "AI has moved from novelty to normal.” Already, ChurchTechToday reports, 93.5% of church leaders are “actively engaging with or exploring” AI in their ministries. Two years ago, 13% totally opposed the use of artificial intelligence in church work. Now, only 2.4% say that.
In the latest survey, 43% of church leaders reported using AI every day, double the 2024 rate, while 78% used AI weekly or more than that, up from 43% in 2024. Also, 64% of survey participants used AI when doing sermon research or writing. A mere 9% of churches have a formal policy on using AI agents.
A Lifeway Research survey of Protestant pastors yielded more modest numbers, with less than 50% of those surveyed saying they are using AI. Only 10% said they are "regular users," and 32% were “experimenting with it.” Meanwhile, 18% were “intentionally avoiding” AI, while 20% claimed they were “simply ignoring” AI trends.
As for their doubts, 62% of pastors in this survey worry that users are not being honest about how they were using AI in ministry. Also, 55% affirmed this statement: “God has always shared His Word through people, and AI isn't a person.”
At this point, said Hansen, everyone knows AI programs can help users who are not gifted writers or speakers to appear “more literate.” But it is also clear that these platforms struggle to separate questions about “facts” and those about doctrine.
“Does AI know better how to answer Bible questions than a seminarian or your average pastor? Absolutely, it does,” he said. “But if you turn around and say, ‘But are you going to get good, ethical, trusted advice from AI?’ Well, no, not unless you ASK for it.”
If pastors ask about the Ten Commandments, they will hear the “mean ethical take of an AI engineer in Silicon Valley in the year 2026, a human pretending to be an objective computer. ... They will not hear the God who thundered on Mount Sinai.”
You can read Part 1 of this column here.
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Terry Mattingly lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media. He is a retired mass media professor at Milligan University.