What to tell your congregation about AI

Half of pastors have already been asked how to approach AI as a believer. Here are four things worth saying on a Sunday — and a minute you can read almost as written. Reading time: about 4 minutes.

Half of pastors have already been asked. In Aligned Leader's 2026 Pastors & AI Survey, 51% of pastors and church leaders said congregants have asked them how to approach AI as a believer — rising to 60% at churches of 100 or more people. Only 6% said they are asked often, so this is not a weekly crisis. It is a question that keeps arriving, one conversation at a time, and most churches have not yet answered it out loud.

That is the gap. Ekklisia's pieces so far speak to leaders: a policy template, a flyer checklist, the numbers on how few churches have a policy. This one is for the people in the pews — four things worth saying on a Sunday, and a short paragraph a pastor can read almost as written.

1. AI is a tool, not an authority

This is the advice pastors in the survey gave most often: test it against Scripture, like the Bereans in Acts 17. A chatbot is not a teacher, a pastor, or the Holy Spirit — it is a machine that predicts the next most likely words. It can be useful, and it can be confidently wrong, including about Bible verses and quotations. So the first thing to say is the simplest: if AI tells you something about God, check it in your Bible, and bring the question to a person who knows you.

The survey's own numbers back a cautious line here. Only 14% of the pastors surveyed said Christians should use generic AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude for spiritual guidance, while 38% said no — and the most common answer among the rest was “yes, but only if you check it against Scripture.” That is a sensible middle to offer a congregation: not fear, and not blind trust either.

2. Say what your church does with AI — honestly

People are more comfortable with a church's AI use when they know what it is. Lifeway Research found churchgoers split almost evenly on pastors using AI in sermon preparation: 44% see nothing wrong with it, 43% disagree. That split is exactly why a short, honest sentence helps more than silence.

Say what the church actually does, in plain words: AI helps prepare materials and handle admin — first drafts, research, captions, rotas — but preaching, prayer, pastoral care and discipleship are done by real people. If AI drafted a passage that gets preached, say so, or rewrite it in your own words. That is the same rule Ekklisia's Responsible AI guide already states, and it is what keeps trust intact when someone eventually asks.

3. Some things never go into a chatbot

This is the practical warning most people have never heard, and it is worth saying plainly from the front: treat anything typed into a general chatbot as not private. Prayer requests that name someone, counselling notes, anything told in confidence, children's details, giving records, health struggles, abuse reports — none of those belong in a general AI tool, even “just to summarise” or “just to draft a prayer.” The same applies at home as at church: do not paste someone else's story into a chatbot to get advice about them.

If your church has a policy, this is the moment to point at it — one sentence, and where to find it. If it does not, the policy template on this site is a weekend's work.

4. Bring real questions to God and to people

The survey's pastors put it well: be cautious, but curious. AI can help you find a reading plan, summarise a commentary, or draft a small-group question. It cannot pray with you, sit with you when you are grieving, or know your life. The things people are actually looking for when they ask AI about faith — to be known, prayed for, and walked with — are things only a church community can offer. That is worth saying out loud, because it is the one answer a chatbot cannot give.

A minute you can use on Sunday

Adapt this, or read it as it stands:

“You may have wondered what our church thinks about AI, and some of you have asked me directly. Here is where we stand. AI is a useful tool, but it is not an authority — test anything it tells you about faith against Scripture, and bring your real questions to God and to people who know you. We use AI here to help prepare materials and handle admin, but preaching, prayer, pastoral care and discipleship are always done by real people. And please, never put someone else's private story — a prayer request, a confidence, a child's details — into a chatbot. If you want to talk about any of this, come and find me after the service.”

Sixty seconds, no jargon, no panic. It answers the question half of pastors are already being asked, it tells the congregation what the church actually does, and it leaves the door open for the conversation that matters — the human one.