In the Age of AI, Everyone Is a Builder

The tools have changed who gets to shape what comes next. That includes you.

For most of the history of technology, “building” was a narrow category. You needed specific skills, specific tools, and usually access to specific environments. Everyone else was a user, someone who received what builders made and adapted accordingly.

That division is over. And nowhere is the shift more consequential than in the AI being built right now for the faith & flourishing ecosystem.

Here's why that should matter to you, specifically: the AI being shaped right now will determine how people seek guidance, form community, grow spiritually, and understand what it means to flourish. That's not a future concern; it is a today concern; it's happening in your church, your ministry, your nonprofit, right now. And not all AI is created equal. Some of it gets faith right, but most of it doesn't. 

The people who can fix that are no longer just the developers or engineers. It’s the builders. If you didn't think you were a builder, you are (we all are), and you have a seat at this table.

The Gap Is Measurable, and It Has a Cause

The AI being built right now does not understand the communities it is increasingly being asked to serve. The FAI Benchmark, developed by Gloo, evaluates AI across seven dimensions of human flourishing: character, happiness, relationships, meaning, health, financial stability, and faith. It exists precisely because there was no standard for measuring whether AI actually promotes flourishing among those who use it. AI models that should not be measured up against those dimensions should not be trusted to serve communities shaped by them.

In the latest FAI Insight Reports, an industry benchmark tested 36 of today's leading AI models through a Christian worldview lens rather than a general one. Every model got worse; composite scores fell by as much as 19 points, and the faith dimension we saw above showed the steepest decline of any category, averaging a 30-point drop. That's not because anyone set out to build AI that ignores faith. It's because the people who built these models weren't in the room when it came to faith. The result has a name: Procedural Secularism. In plain terms — ask these models a real faith question, and they default to generic, neutral, therapeutic language instead of engaging real theological content. They hedge, instead of answering the way someone who shares your faith actually would.

Building AI that closes this gap requires more than better engineering. It requires people who understand these communities from the inside.

The Data Shows People Aren’t Waiting

Here's why this isn't hypothetical: faith communities are not waiting to engage with AI. Whether you've touched it yet or not, the people in your church or organization already have.

Only 13 percent of pastors say they don't use AI at all. Half use it for brainstorming and idea generation. More than a third use it for biblical and theological research. AI-assisted sermon work has nearly doubled in a single year — from 12 percent in 2024 to 24 percent today. (Barna / Gloo State of the Church, June 2026)

And the people in the pews are moving even faster. Nearly half of practicing Christians say they would trust AI with their spiritual growth. One in three U.S. adults say AI's spiritual guidance is as trustworthy as a pastor's — a share that climbs to 44 percent among Millennials. (Barna / Gloo State of the Church, May 2026)

This is not a community sitting on the sidelines. These are mission-aligned people who are already engaging AI at scale, without the right infrastructure, without a standard for evaluating whether that AI reflects their values, and largely without the theological grounding their communities need.

Closing that gap won't come from just engineers and developers building AI for the faith ecosystem. It'll come from builders; it will come from you. 

What's Missing Is Presence, Not Skills

The most important thing faith communities (Pastors, ministry leaders, nonprofit workers) can contribute to AI is not technical in nature.

It is domain knowledge. It is the understanding of what human flourishing actually looks like in the context of real communities. Specific theology, specific needs, and specific definitions of what it means for a person to thrive. That knowledge cannot be scraped from the internet. It cannot be approximated from generic training data. It can only come from the people who carry it. There's no shortage of engineers and enterprise-grade infrastructure right now. What's missing is the knowledge that only ministry leaders, practitioners, and people like you carry.

A room full of engineers without a ministry leader in it builds something generic. A ministry leader without the right tools stays stuck on a problem they can already see clearly. Put both in the same room, working from the same mission, and you get AI that actually works for real people in real moments. Humans hold the mission. The technology just extends the reach

In 2026, Everyone Is a Builder

Being a builder in 2026 means being willing to name the problem clearly, from real experience, in real community, and using the tools available to form a solution, no technical experience needed. Being a builder in 2026 means you don’t have to know how to write a single line of code to address a problem. It means using the domain expertise you carry and allowing it to inform the solution you are building. 

You, Pastor, Church Leader, Nonprofit Organizer, you are a builder. Gone are the days of waiting for a technologist to swoop in and solve your problems. You can now be a part of the solution. And let’s be honest, that feels a little daunting, but maybe also a little exciting. 

What if you could find a solution to a real problem: College campus ministries that struggle to retain new students in transition due to high volume can now use AI to help them follow up and prevent people from slipping through the cracks. Food Banks that work relentlessly to ensure their pantries are stocked can now use AI to automatically notify staff and manage inventory, so they can better serve their communities. The possibilities are endless because everyone is a Builder. 

This is exactly what we built the Gloo AI Hackathon for. If you've never heard the term before, a hackathon is a few intense weeks during which people team up to build something real and then show it off at the end. No prior product, no résumé, no polished pitch required, just a problem worth solving and people willing to solve it. This year’s event includes three tracks, hundreds of mission-aligned builders, and $200,000 in prizes for the teams that build AI that actually serves real people and promotes human flourishing.

You Are Exactly Who This Moment Is Looking For

The tools are ready. The infrastructure is built. The standard for shaping technology for good is here. Now all it’s missing is you: ministry leaders and practitioners willing to step out of the role of passive user and into the role of builder. The mission is yours. The tools are ready. Are you?