TUSCALOOSA, ALA. — From theological research to Scripture translation to Bible trading cards, Christians — like most Americans — are embracing artificial intelligence.
More than half of adults under 50 said they interacted with AI at least once per day in 2025, according to Pew Research.
Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of practicing Christians said in a recent Barna study that AI is improving their lives and making the world a better place — compared to 53 percent of U.S. adults overall.
But as AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini and other AI tools become ubiquitous in everyday life, what does the technology mean for the mission of the church?
Wes Woodell
“I believe tech will play a role in this great movement of Jesus around the world, because tech is simply a means for spreading the most powerful thing given to humans — and that’s the Gospel,” said Wes Woodell, a church planter and founder of Connect My Church.
Woodell explained that Christians have always been at the forefront of new technology, often innovating new means to share the Good News. He pointed to the church’s adoption of mediums like books, magazines, radio, movies, TV, websites, podcasts, phone apps and online livestreaming — all for the furtherance of the Gospel.
“The mediums change, but the mission doesn’t,” noted Woodell, whose company — besides offering church management software — is developing AI tools for Bible study and discipleship.
AI in the pulpit
Mark Posey, minister for the Winfield Church of Christ in Alabama, likened using AI to presenting “Old Truths in New Robes.” That was the title of a pair of books by Franklin Camp, a prominent 20th century evangelist in the Yellowhammer State.
Mark Posey
“The premise of those two books was, the principles never change, but there are times when we present them in new robes to make them relevant to the time — to stay, in essence, practically up to date,” Posey told The Christian Chronicle.
“I’m just trying to use it in a balanced fashion to continue to present the unchanging truths of God’s holy word,” the preacher said of AI.
Posey said he uses ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini as research tools for sermon outlines, vacation plans, financial advice and other topics — as well as to generate graphics for the sermon starters he posts to his Pulpit Preview Facebook group.
He emphasized that he treats AI as a resource to draw ideas and concepts from — not to develop his theology. It “goes without saying,” he said, “all theology comes from the Bible.”
Mark Posey uses AI to generate graphics for the sermon starters he writes for his Pulpit Preview Facebook page.
But the Alabama minister — who’s made more than 40 mission trips to Ukraine — warned against creating “a generation of lazy preachers.”
“I do see a danger of preachers being aware of their own spiritual growth and not becoming dependent, or relying completely, on an outside source for all of their knowledge,” Posey said, recalling similar concerns about sermon outline books in years past.
AI-generated media
At the Madison Church of Christ in Alabama, media outreach minister Jason Helton helped create a series of Bible character trading cards using AI-generated imagery. The church printed hundreds of cards every week to coincide with a study of Judges and Kings.
After each sermon, kids could go up to an elder and tell him something about the day’s lesson to receive a card.
The Madison Church of Christ used AI to create Bible trading cards depicting the judges and kings found in Scripture.
“By the end of the sermon series, not only did they learn about characters and the folks in the Bible, but they also had this new relationship with every one of our elders, so the value was tremendous,” Helton told the Chronicle.
“I would much rather my Bible class teachers reward my kids with those (cards) that are constantly teaching them than with candy and little trinkets and stuff that break and don’t really have any value.”
That success later inspired Apologetics Press — a Montgomery, Ala., publisher associated with Churches of Christ — to launch a full collection of Discovery Bible trading cards.
Helton is also looking into the AI research tools of the Logos Bible study app and ways to use AI to analyze church attendance trends.
Coty Elder
At the Renaissance Church of Christ in Atlanta, Coty Elder and his team use AI to generate images and videos to accompany sermons and worship songs as well as to create social media content.
“The goal is to take a single sermon or subject and then break it all out into different mediums,” the software developer said. “I jump on Chat(GPT). I say the sermon title. We’ve already kind of prepped our Chat to know what it needs to look like, so I don’t have to prompt it multiple times. And then at that point, it generates the image.”
Elder’s company, Plotabl, also used AI tools to create Quest 4 The Kingdom, a video game-like digital experience that integrates Bible class lessons and study tools for Renaissance youth.
Avoiding artificial relationships
But Helton cautions Christians to use discernment when engaging with AI and to weigh the spiritual value of anything AI generated.
“To me, the greatest danger from a spiritual standpoint … is that it does blur our perspective of what is authentic and what is artificial,” he said. “The idea of shortcuts is a really fine line that requires a lot of wisdom and discernment to know when you’re in pursuit of efficiency but also know when you’ve gone too far. … I think spiritually speaking, shortcuts are really dangerous. I think every sin could be looked at as a shortcut.”
“The greatest danger from a spiritual standpoint … is that it does blur our perspective of what is authentic and what is artificial. The idea of shortcuts is a really fine line that requires a lot of wisdom and discernment.”
The outreach minister is especially concerned about young people developing relationships with AI chatbots and characters — often unwittingly.
“Particularly with children, they don’t know the difference — they can’t discern because they don’t have the life experience, the wisdom and even the cognitive development,” Helton said. “That’s what’s really, really dangerous to me about any kind of bot interaction among adolescents.”
Woodell, meanwhile, is pursuing an AI model that can be trained on good theology and self-contained on a small device to be sent into mission fields — similar to the solar-powered MP3 players with Bible translations and courses used by Sunset International.
“What if, instead of just being an MP3 player, you put the very best Bible professors in the world on here, where they could ask this thing a question and it’ll just talk to them conversationally?” Woodell posed.
But he stipulated that he’s not trying to replace the human element of the Great Commission.
“I am not trying to eliminate human connection,” added the Harding University graduate. “I see this as a medium to enhance human connection and a way to build the kingdom of God — not to be a hindrance, but to magnify truth, not to magnify error.”
‘Digital Babylon’
Helton developed a workshop called “Analog Faith in Digital Babylon” to help churches and families navigate an increasingly digital culture without being consumed by it, just as God gave his people a purpose in Babylonian exile in Jeremiah 29.
Jason Helton
“God says you’re going into this place that’s opposed to me, but I want you to create the culture that I’m ascribing to you and describing for you. I want you to create godly culture,” said the Faulkner University alum. “And I think that’s the role of the church in any age but especially the digital age.”
As 44 percent of millennials and 39 percent of Generation Z trust spiritual advice from AI as much as from a minister, according to another Barna study, Posey advises Christians to always go back to the Bible.
“We must have a healthy balance within the Lord’s church of cross-generation encouragement to always be the people of the book,” the preacher said.
Likewise, Helton encourages Christians to simply approach AI mindfully — not ignorantly.
“We need to be cautiously skeptical of technology, but not innovation,” he said. “I think we need to ask questions like, ‘What is my spiritual purpose for this?’ and ‘What is the spiritual value of this?’ And in doing so, I think that we can thrive in this digital Babylon age that we live in.”
CALVIN COCKRELL is Managing Editor for The Christian Chronicle and serves as the young adult minister for the North Tuscaloosa Church of Christ in Alabama. Reach him at calvin@christianchronicle.org.
