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Your Caution About AI Is Wisdom, Not Lag
Sixty-four percent of church leaders say their church should have an AI policy. Five percent have one.
New Barna research, produced with Pushpay for the State of Church Tech 2026 report, surveyed 1,306 church leaders. A majority use AI at least once a month personally, but only a third say their church uses it anywhere in ministry or operations. The concerns are specific: 83% worry about data privacy, 51% about plagiarism or integrity in message preparation, and 49% about losing authenticity in preaching and teaching.
In the same study, 94% of leaders say technology helps the church fulfill its mission today, and 75% say it has improved connection with their congregation. This isn't a group of leaders resisting change. It's a group asking the right question first: does this serve people, or does it just save time?
What this means for your church: the gap between what you use personally and what your church uses openly is where trust gets built or lost. Naming your standards out loud protects the relational core that makes a small church worth belonging to, and it lets your team use good tools without carrying a low-grade sense that they're cheating.
Three steps this week:
Name what's already happening. Take fifteen minutes at your next staff meeting and list every place AI touches your ministry: sermon prep, newsletters, social captions, meeting notes. You can't steward what you haven't named.
Draw one bright line. The simplest standard: a human reads and edits anything before it reaches a person. Pastoral care, condolence notes, and counsel never go out unread.
Draft one page. This is just a single page your board can approve: what we use it for, what we never use it for, who reviews it. A free template is in the Toolkit below.
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Ministry Intel
The Hidden Way AI Is About to Test Every Pastor's Soul | Carey Nieuwhof
Nieuwhof argues that AI's real risk to leaders isn't reputational, it's personal: tools that make you look brilliant without doing the work and creating friction. His counterweight is character built in advance: honest friends, fast confession, and asking what you'll wish you'd done in five years.
This week: Name one person who has permission to ask you hard questions, and tell them that's their role.
AI, Loneliness, and the Church's Moment | Church Tech Today Podcast
In this podcast, Ed Stetzer makes the case that AI arrived precisely as loneliness peaked, and more people now bring their hardest questions to a chatbot than to a person. But instead of a tech strategy, Stetzer encourages small community.
This week: Ask your small group leaders where they see isolation, then name that gap from the platform this Sunday.
Growth Toolkit
A downloadable template from Church Law & Tax covering acceptable and unacceptable AI uses, plus handling of sensitive records like pastoral care notes and donor data. Free resource.
Findings from 1,300+ church leaders on how peers are using technology, with an accompanying webinar. Gives your leadership team shared data instead of competing opinions. Free with signup.
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