This blog is part five of a series on Flourishing in the Age of AI from Ed Stetzer. Read part four, "Seven Questions Every Christian Should Be Asking About AI"

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If you lead a church, Christian school, ministry, or nonprofit, you can’t still treat AI as a "someday" issue. If you do, you're already behind, and the gap is growing.

Let me be blunt: if you lead a church, Christian school, ministry, or nonprofit, you can’t still treat AI as a "someday" issue. If you do, you're already behind, and the gap is growing. Many churches fell behind in the early 2000s as home internet gained traction, and again 10 years later as the smartphone and social media revolution began. 

I'm not saying this to shame anyone. I'm saying it because I've spent my career watching the church arrive late to these sorts of cultural moments, scrambling to respond after the conversation has already moved on. For example, many churches did not do any meaningful ministry online until the COVID-19 pandemic forced their hand.

We were late to the internet. We were late to social media. We were late to understand the cultural fragmentation that followed. And every time we arrive late, we pay a price in opportunity, in cultural presence, and in our ability to speak meaningfully to the moment as it is still taking shape.

AI is moving faster than the shifts to the internet or smartphones. Both inside and outside of the church, people are integrating AI into their lives at a staggering pace. And many, even while they are using AI, are asking significant ethical and theological questions about it. And that gap between adoption and theological and ethical literacy is precisely where churches need to step in.

So what does faithful leadership in the AI era actually look like? I want to suggest three commitments that every leader in the church needs to make.

Commitment One: Learn So You Can Lead

Leaders don't have to be technologists. You don't need to understand how large language models (LLMs) work at a technical level (it changes almost daily anyway). But you do need to be informed as a leader. Because people in your ministry are already using AI extensively in their work. Your staff members and teenagers are using it. Your business professionals are using it as they navigate workplace AI policies.

For a church leader, basic AI literacy means understanding what these tools actually do and don't do. It means having tried a few AI tools yourself and not just reading about them. It means knowing the difference between an AI that assists human work and one that replaces human judgment. It means being able to recognize when a congregant's AI use does or doesn’t raise ethical or formational concerns.

You don't have to be an expert. But you have to be engaged. Leaders who are uninformed about the tools shaping their congregants' daily lives will be increasingly limited in their pastoral effectiveness. The world our people are living in has changed. Our leadership needs to keep pace.

Commitment Two: Set Ethical Boundaries Before You Need Them

Christian leaders shouldn’t just react to culture. We should shape it.

One of the most significant leadership weaknesses I observe in organizations (including churches) is reactive ethics. Reactive ethics waits until a problem emerges and then scrambles to respond. With AI, we have a brief window to be proactive. We find ourselves in a rare moment when much of society, and even many technology companies, desire to hear from philosophers, ethicists, and theologians. But that window is closing.

Every Christian and Christian organization that uses AI tools needs to be thinking through some fundamental ethical questions. Many questions exist about the “proper” use of AI at this moment, because many are still working out their ideas about it. The ethics aren’t settled. Christian leaders have a responsibility to speak with knowledge and wisdom into the moment. And if we do that well, we can proactively help shape the ethical culture of our organizations (and society more broadly), not reactively.

Specifically, one of the distinctive concerns of Christian ethics is truthfulness. We hold that what is real and what we represent as real should align. AI can create content, images, and even voices that did not previously exist. Such capabilities can make it harder to know what is authentic and what is generated. So to start, churches should be clear about how they use AI-generated content in their communications, their teaching, and their ministry. Transparency and integrity are required virtues.

Christian leaders shouldn’t just react to culture. We should shape it. That means setting the tone for how AI is used in the organizations we lead—before a crisis forces the conversation.

Commitment Three: See the Opportunity

While the moment calls for caution, it also offers a tremendous opportunity. Think about what AI makes possible for ministries that operate with limited resources. A church of 200 people can now produce communications, resources, and content that would previously have required a large staff and a massive budget. 

Small churches can enhance communication quality, bridge linguistic and cultural barriers, automate administrative tasks, and more. Many of these opportunities were previously out of reach due to financial constraints. Bi-vocational pastors can handle administrative tasks more efficiently, freeing time for the actual work of ministry (and for their families). 

What’s more, the implications of AI tools for global missions are particularly significant. For decades, one of the barriers to gospel advance in unreached people groups has been the simple, practical challenge of translation and contextualization. AI tools are rapidly accelerating the translation of Scripture for those who have yet to read Scripture in their heart language. Human translators and cultural insiders remain essential, but AI is dramatically accelerating what's possible. 

We have an opportunity in this moment to use this new technology, not for the sake of enhancing productivity alone, but for the sake of reaching people with the gospel. This opportunity requires thoughtful intentionality and a commitment to lead in the cultural moment.

The Leadership Question

At the heart of all three commitments is a single underlying conviction: leaders don't get the luxury of staying on the sideline when the game is happening. And the game is happening.

So the question I want to leave you with is not, "What will AI do for the church?" That question puts us in a passive posture, as though we're spectators watching something happen to us. The better question is: "How will the church lead in the age of AI?"

Leading well means learning well and being informed. It means proactively establishing an ethical culture. It means seeing the genuine opportunity alongside the real risks. And it means bringing the church's deep wisdom and prophetic responsibility into the center of one of the most significant cultural shifts of our time.

We were made for moments like this. The question is whether we’ll show up and engage. I believe the church can. I believe we must. And I believe the leaders who do the hard work of learning, discerning, and engaging faithfully will look back on this moment as one they're glad they didn't sit out.

Todd Korpi, author of AI Goes to Church, contributed to this article.