By Brent Lacy

By Brent Lacy

A bi-vocational pastor in rural Tennessee described a moment that stopped him cold. He had used an AI tool to help draft a letter to a family whose son had just died by suicide. The letter was, by any measure, well-written. Compassionate. Theologically sound. He sent it. Three days later, the mother called him. She said the letter felt like it came from a stranger.

He had not told her he used AI. He had not told himself, fully, what he was doing. He was tired. He was stretched. He reached for a tool that made a hard thing easier. And something real was lost in the transaction.

That story is not an argument against AI. It is an argument for thinking carefully about what AI can and cannot do in ministry, and why. The theological category that does that work most clearly is one most pastors already know: imago Dei. Most have preached it. Few have applied it to technology.

What Imago Dei Actually Means and What It Does Not

Genesis 1:26-27 records that God created human beings in his own image. The Latin phrase imago Dei has generated centuries of theological debate. Does it refer to human rationality? Moral capacity? Creativity? Relational design? The capacity for dominion and stewardship? Theologians across traditions have answered differently, and the debate is not settled.

What is settled, across virtually every serious theological tradition, is what the imago Dei is not grounded in: performance. Human dignity does not derive from what we can produce, how efficiently we work, or what outputs we generate. It derives from God’s creative act and his relational intention toward humanity. You bear the image of God because God made you and called you his own, not because of anything you have accomplished or can accomplish.

This matters for AI in a specific and urgent way. A 2025 theological study published through SSRN by Luciano Meneguetti argues that the imago Dei “underpins a dynamic understanding of the human person as inherently dignified, relational, and morally responsible” and that any technology framework must subordinate technical development to a moral order rooted in care, justice, and transcendence. The practical conclusion is simple: efficiency is not the highest value. Faithfulness is.

When AI enters the church, it brings with it a set of implicit values: speed, scale, optimization, consistency, cost reduction. None of those are Christian virtues. They are not evil either. But when they become the primary drivers of ministry decisions, something essential gets displaced. The imago Dei framework is the theological tool that keeps that displacement from happening quietly.

The Question AI Forces the Church to Ask

When an AI tool can write a sermon outline, draft a pastoral letter, generate a children’s lesson, compose a worship liturgy, and answer a grieving person’s questions about death, all in seconds, it forces a question that most churches have not yet asked directly: what is distinctively human about what we do in ministry?

The answer is not the words. Words can be generated. The answer is the person behind the words. The pastor who has wrestled with the text for three days. Who knows the widow in the third row lost her husband six months ago and is still not sleeping. Who has prayed over this congregation through a church split, a building campaign, and a pandemic. Who brings the weight of genuine relationship to every sentence.

New research from Barna Group in partnership with Gloo (June 2026) found that pastors are predominantly using AI for “behind-the-scenes work, as a thought partner, a visual aid.” They are using it to prepare for ministry, not to replace what happens when they are actually with people. That instinct is theologically sound. The challenge is that the line between preparation and replacement is easier to cross than most pastors realize, especially when they are tired and stretched.

Researchers at Pastoral Psychology (Springer, 2026) put it plainly in their peer-reviewed study “Not Human Enough? Rethinking AI’s Place in Pastoral Care”: AI can generate responses, but it cannot generate presence. And presence is what pastoral ministry is made of. A companion study in the same journal, “Algorithmic Empathy: Assessing AI’s Capacity for Presence in Pastoral Care” (Sande, 2026), found that recipients of AI-assisted pastoral communications could often detect something was missing, even when they could not name what it was. The mother who called the pastor in Tennessee was not imagining things. She was detecting the absence of genuine presence.

Three Imago Dei Principles for Church AI Use

The imago Dei does not tell us to avoid AI. It tells us how to use it. Here are three principles that should shape every AI decision your church makes, drawn from the theological literature and from the practical experience of small church leaders who are working through this in real time.

Principle 1: Human Relationships Cannot Be Automated

The imago Dei is fundamentally relational. God exists in relationship, Father, Son, and Spirit, and created humanity for relationship with himself and with one another. This is not a peripheral theological point. It is the center of what it means to be human. Ministry is relational work. Pastoral care, discipleship, counseling, and preaching are not information-delivery systems. They are relational acts that require a human being who is genuinely present to another human being.

This means AI should never replace the relational core of ministry. It can help you prepare for a conversation. It cannot have the conversation for you. It can draft a follow-up email. It cannot sit with a grieving family at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. It can generate a list of discussion questions for a small group. It cannot discern that the man in the corner has not spoken in three weeks because his marriage is falling apart and he needs someone to notice.

The line is not arbitrary. It is theological. When you automate a relational act, you are not just cutting a corner. You are making a statement about what you believe people are worth. In a small church, where relationships are close and expectations of authenticity are high, that statement lands harder than it would anywhere else.

Principle 2: Human Oversight Is Not Optional

The imago Dei includes moral responsibility. Humans are accountable for what they do and what they produce. When a church publishes AI-generated content without careful human review, it is abdicating that responsibility. The TRUST framework developed by AI and Faith researchers McGrath, Huizinga, Dyer, and Graves (2025) identifies “Transparency and accountability” as a core requirement for ethical AI use in Christian contexts. Someone must own the output. In a small church, that someone is usually the pastor.

This is not a burden. It is a protection. AI tools produce confident-sounding errors. They misquote Scripture. They generate theologically plausible content that is subtly wrong in ways that are hard to catch if you are not looking carefully. The Barna/Gloo 2026 research found that 36 percent of pastors are using AI for biblical or theological research, which means 36 percent of pastors are receiving AI-generated theological content that requires careful human verification before it influences their preaching or teaching. Human oversight catches errors before they reach your congregation. It also means that when something goes wrong, there is a person who is responsible, not a tool that cannot be held accountable.

Principle 3: Efficiency Is Not the Highest Value

AI is extraordinarily efficient. That is its primary selling point. But efficiency is not a Christian virtue. Faithfulness is. Presence is. Love is. When efficiency becomes the primary driver of ministry decisions, something essential gets lost, and your congregation will feel it before they can name it.

The pastor in Tennessee felt it. He could not name it yet. But what he was sensing was the difference between a tool that serves ministry and a tool that begins to replace it. The Christian Curator’s overview of AI and the church notes that “efficiency and innovation are not the highest Christian values” and that the evangelical conversation about AI is revealing “deep questions about human work, dignity, creativity, and what constitutes authentic Christian ministry.” Those are not abstract questions. They are the questions your church is already living, whether or not you have named them.

What This Means for the Small Church Specifically

Small churches have something large churches often lack: genuine relational depth. Your congregation knows each other. Your pastor knows their names, their histories, their struggles, their children’s names, their fears. That relational texture is not a consolation prize for being small. It is a theological asset, and it is exactly what the imago Dei framework is designed to protect.

AI, used carelessly, erodes that asset. A newsletter that sounds like it came from a corporation rather than a pastor. A pastoral letter that is technically correct but feels hollow. A sermon that is well-structured but lacks the particular weight of a pastor who has prayed over these specific people. These are not hypothetical risks. They are happening in small churches right now, in churches where well-meaning people reached for a powerful tool without thinking carefully about what they were doing.

Used wisely, AI can protect that asset by freeing up time. The Barna/Gloo research found that administrative tasks often dominate a pastor’s schedule, keeping them from their most meaningful work: teaching, discipling, developing their teams. If AI handles the first draft of the bulletin, the pastor has more time for the hospital visit. If AI summarizes the background research on a passage, the pastor has more time to pray over the application. The tool serves the relationship. The relationship is never replaced by the tool. That distinction, simple as it sounds, is the whole framework.

Applying the Framework: Specific Ministry Decisions

Sermon Preparation

Using AI to research background on a passage, find cross-references, explore what commentators across traditions have said, or check your outline for logical gaps is no different in principle from using a commentary or a concordance. The study is still yours. The wrestling with the text is still yours. The application to your specific congregation is still yours.

Using AI to write the sermon and preaching it as your own work is a different matter. Your congregation is not just receiving information when you preach. They are receiving you, a person made in God’s image who has prayed over them and wrestled with God on their behalf. The Barna/Gloo 2026 research found that 24 percent of pastors are now using AI to write or edit sermons, up from 12 percent in early 2024. The research notes this is primarily for research and preparation rather than generating the message itself. That distinction matters enormously, and it is worth being explicit about in your own practice.

Pastoral Care Communications

The Tennessee pastor’s story is the clearest case. Pastoral care communications, letters to grieving families, messages to people in crisis, words of encouragement to struggling members, require human presence. AI can help you think through what to say. It cannot say it for you in a way that carries the weight of genuine relationship. If you use AI to draft a pastoral letter, the editing process should be thorough enough that the final letter is genuinely yours, not a lightly edited AI output.

Administrative Content

Bulletins, announcements, event descriptions, social media posts, newsletter articles on general topics: these are appropriate candidates for AI assistance. They are administrative tasks, not pastoral acts. The imago Dei framework does not require you to write every bulletin by hand. It requires you to be present to the people in your congregation in ways that only a human being can be.

A Practical Test: Three Questions Before You Use AI

Before using AI for any ministry task, ask three questions. They take thirty seconds. They will save you from most of the mistakes small churches are making right now.

• Does this task require human presence or relationship? If yes, AI can assist at most. It cannot replace. A pastoral letter to a grieving family requires you. A first draft of the church newsletter does not.
• Will a human review and own this output before it reaches anyone? If no, do not publish it. AI produces errors. Human review catches them. This is not optional.
• Am I using this tool to serve people better, or to avoid the work of ministry? Honest answer required. If you are using AI because you are tired and stretched, that is understandable. But it is worth naming honestly, because the pattern, if it continues, will cost you something you cannot get back.

These questions will not resolve every edge case. But they will keep the imago Dei at the center of your AI decisions, which is exactly where it belongs. The church that asks these questions consistently will use AI in ways that strengthen its ministry. The church that never asks them will use AI in ways that slowly hollow it out.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does AI threaten the concept of imago Dei?

No, but it does expose how thin our working theology of human dignity often is. The imago Dei is not grounded in human capability, productivity, or cognitive output. It is grounded in God’s creative act and relational intention toward humanity. AI can replicate certain outputs of human cognition without possessing the relational, moral, and spiritual dimensions that define what it means to bear God’s image.

How should the imago Dei shape a church’s AI policy?

A church AI policy rooted in imago Dei will treat human relationships as irreplaceable rather than optimizable, require human oversight and ownership of all AI outputs, prohibit AI from substituting for pastoral presence in moments of genuine need, and refuse to let efficiency become the highest value in ministry decisions. See our Church AI Policy Guide for a practical template your board can adopt in a single meeting.

Can AI be used in ways that honor human dignity?

Yes. AI used to free up human time for deeper relational ministry, to make content accessible to people with different reading levels or languages, or to handle administrative tasks that drain pastoral energy can honor human dignity by allowing people to focus on what only humans can do. The question is always whether the tool serves people or begins to replace them.

What does imago Dei mean practically for sermon preparation with AI?

It means the sermon must remain genuinely yours. Using AI to research background on a passage, find cross-references, or check your outline for logical gaps is no different in principle from using a commentary. Using AI to write the sermon and preaching it as your own work is a different matter. Your congregation is not just receiving information when you preach. They are receiving you, a person made in God’s image who has prayed over them and wrestled with God on their behalf.

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What Happens When the Imago Dei Framework Is Ignored

It is worth being concrete about what goes wrong when churches adopt AI without a theological framework. These are not hypothetical scenarios. They are patterns that small church leaders are already reporting.

A pastor in the Midwest began using AI to draft his weekly sermon outline. Within six months, his congregation began commenting that his preaching felt different, less personal, less connected to their specific lives. He had not noticed the shift himself. He was still preaching, still standing in the pulpit, still delivering the words. But the words had stopped coming from the place they used to come from. The wrestling with the text had been replaced by a prompt. The prayer over the congregation had been replaced by an efficiency gain. His congregation felt it before he did.

A children’s ministry volunteer in a small Baptist church used AI to generate a four-week curriculum on the life of David. The curriculum was theologically adequate. It was also generic in a way that the children noticed. The stories felt like they came from a textbook rather than from someone who knew them. The volunteer had not reviewed the content carefully enough to catch two Scripture references that were slightly off. One child memorized an incorrect verse. The parent who caught it did not say anything to the volunteer, but she did say something to the pastor. The trust damage was quiet and real.

A church administrator used AI to draft a letter to a family whose daughter had just been through a difficult situation. The letter was compassionate and well-written. The family received it and felt, in the words of the mother, “like the church had sent us a form letter.” They did not leave the church. But something shifted in their relationship with it. They became less willing to be vulnerable with the pastor, because they were no longer sure the pastor was the one they were being vulnerable with.

These stories share a common thread: the imago Dei framework was not applied. No one asked whether the task required human presence. No one asked whether a human would review and own the output. No one asked whether the tool was serving people or replacing the work of ministry. The result in each case was a small erosion of trust, a small loss of the relational depth that makes small church ministry distinctive.

Small erosions compound. A church that loses a little trust every month will find, after a year, that it has lost a great deal. The imago Dei framework is not just a theological nicety. It is a practical protection against the kind of slow erosion that AI, used carelessly, produces.

How to Introduce This Framework to Your Leadership Team

The imago Dei framework is most useful when it is shared, not just held privately by the pastor. Here is a practical way to introduce it to your leadership team in a single meeting.

Start with the question: what do we believe about why people have worth? Let the conversation develop naturally. Most church leaders will land on something close to the imago Dei without being prompted. Then ask: how does that belief shape how we use tools that can do some of what people do? That question will generate the conversation you need to have.

From there, introduce the three principles: human relationships cannot be automated, human oversight is not optional, and efficiency is not the highest value. Ask your team to apply each principle to a specific AI use case your church is already considering. The conversation will be more productive than any policy document, because it will be grounded in your team’s own theological convictions rather than in rules handed down from above.

The goal is not to produce a policy in that meeting, though a policy may follow. The goal is to build a shared theological vocabulary for talking about AI, so that when specific questions arise, your team has a framework for thinking through them together rather than making isolated individual decisions.