By Brent Lacy

Artificial intelligence is not coming to ministry. It is already here. Pastors are using AI to draft sermons, write newsletters, answer member questions, and create social media content. Church administrators are using it to manage communications and generate reports. Children’s ministry leaders are using it to create curriculum.

Most of them are doing it without a policy, without guidelines, and without much thought about the ethical implications. That needs to change.

• 67% of pastors have used AI tools in their ministry (Barna Group, 2025)
• 23% of churches have a written AI policy (Barna Group, 2025)
• $0 cost to create an AI policy for your church

What AI Can Do for Your Church

AI tools are genuinely useful for ministry. Here is where they add real value.

• Writing assistance. Drafting newsletters, announcements, social media posts, and correspondence. AI can produce a first draft in seconds that a human then edits and personalizes.
• Research. Summarizing articles, finding illustrations, exploring theological questions, and gathering background information for sermons.
• Administration. Creating templates, organizing information, drafting policies, and managing routine communications.
• Accessibility. Generating transcripts of sermons, translating content into other languages, and creating accessible versions of materials.
• Creativity. Generating images for bulletins and social media, brainstorming event ideas, and creating visual content.

What AI Cannot Do

AI cannot replace the Holy Spirit. It cannot replace genuine human relationships. It cannot replace prayer. It cannot replace the gathered church.

• AI cannot preach. It can generate words. But a sermon requires a pastor who has wrestled with the text, knows the congregation, and brings the fruit of prayer and study to the pulpit.
• AI cannot provide pastoral care. It can generate responses. But pastoral care requires presence, empathy, and the kind of knowing that comes from genuine relationship.
• AI cannot make theological judgments. It can summarize theological positions. It cannot discern which position is true or how it applies to your specific congregation.
• AI cannot be trusted with confidential information. Prayer requests, counseling notes, giving records, and personnel matters must never go into an AI tool.

Five Ethical Principles for AI in Ministry

What Your Church AI Policy Must Cover

A good church AI policy does not need to be long or technical. It needs to answer five core questions clearly.

• What AI tools are appropriate for church use, and which are not?
• What kinds of content should never be generated by AI? (Pastoral care communications, sermons, confidential matters)
• When AI is used, what disclosure is appropriate?
• How should AI-generated content be reviewed before use?
• What data privacy considerations apply when using AI tools?

The free policy template from MinistryPlace covers all five. It is written in plain language. A board of deacons with no technology background can read it, discuss it, and adopt it in a single meeting.

The Sermon Preparation Question

This is the question most pastors are actually asking. Is it ethical to use AI in sermon preparation?

Using AI as a research tool, to find cross-references, generate discussion questions, or check your outline for logical gaps, is no different in principle from using a commentary or a concordance. The sermon is still yours. The study is still yours.

Using AI to write the sermon and preaching it as your own work is a different matter. It raises questions of integrity, pastoral authenticity, and the nature of preaching itself. The line is not about whether AI was involved. It is about whether your engagement with the text, your prayer, and your pastoral knowledge of your congregation are genuinely present in what you preach.

Leading Your Congregation Through AI Questions

Your congregation is already using AI. Some of them know it. Some of them do not. Some are enthusiastic. Some are frightened. All of them need pastoral leadership on this question.

Start with a brief, honest statement from the pulpit about how your church approaches AI. Not a full sermon. A two-minute acknowledgment that AI is part of the landscape, that your church has thought about it, and that you are available to talk about it.

Then make yourself available. The conversations that follow will be some of the most important pastoral conversations you have this year.

Related: The Church AI Toolkit for Small Churches | A Biblical Framework for AI in the Church | Church AI Policy Guide

What the Research Says: Where Pastors Actually Are

New research from Barna Group in partnership with Gloo (June 2026) gives the clearest picture yet of how pastors are actually using AI. Only 13% of pastors say they do not use AI at all. The rest are using it, most of them without formal guidelines.

The most common uses:

• 50% use AI for brainstorming or idea generation
• 37% use it for graphic design or visual creation
• 36% use it for biblical or theological research
• 34% use it for generating small group discussion questions
• 34% use it for administrative tasks like scheduling, emails, and document preparation
• 24% use it to write or edit sermons, up from 12% in early 2024

The emotional picture is more complicated. 71% of pastors describe feeling cautious about AI. 40% feel conflicted. 52% feel curious. 79% worry about AI acting as a replacement for God. 63% worry about AI replacing the role of pastors entirely.

Separate Barna/Pushpay research (March 2026) found that only 5% of churches have AI guidelines in place. 83% of church leaders are concerned about data privacy. 51% worry about plagiarism or maintaining integrity in message preparation. 49% are concerned about the potential loss of authenticity in preaching or teaching.

The Policy Gap: Why Only 5% of Churches Have Guidelines

The Barna/Pushpay research found that only 5% of churches currently have AI guidelines. This is not because church leaders do not care. It is because most leaders are still in the early stages of understanding how these tools may shape ministry.

The gap between adoption and policy is dangerous. When staff and volunteers use AI without guidelines, they make individual decisions about what data to share, when to disclose AI involvement, and which tools are appropriate. Some of those decisions involve prayer requests, counseling notes, and giving records. Most consumer AI tools do not guarantee data privacy.

A simple, one-page policy closes most of this gap. It does not need to be thorough. It needs to be clear enough that every staff member and volunteer knows the basic rules before they use an AI tool in a ministry context.

Handling the Hard Questions Your Congregation Will Ask

Building an AI Ethics Culture in Your Church

A policy is a starting point, not a destination. The goal is a culture where staff and volunteers think ethically about AI without needing to consult the policy for every decision.

Three practices that build that culture:

Related: The Church AI Toolkit for Small Churches | A Biblical Framework for AI in the Church | Church AI Policy Guide