By Dr. David Kotter
A pastor sits at his desk on Monday morning. Sunday’s sermon is over. Next Sunday’s is six days away. One screen holds an open Bible. The other, ChatGPT. A cursor blinks patiently. Which window should he click first?
This scene is no longer hypothetical. It is becoming a weekly decision in churches across the country, and one of the defining pastoral questions of this generation.
Every generation of pastors has had to decide what new technologies belong in ministry. The printing press did not eliminate preaching. Radio did not replace the local church. Livestreaming extended the reach of many congregations without changing the nature of pastoral ministry.
Artificial Intelligence asks a harder question: Can it imitate the work of pastors themselves?
My own work spans these two worlds. I serve as the dean of the School of Theology and Director of the innovation lab for artificial intelligence at Colorado Christian University. One role trains pastors in the vocation of preaching; the other builds frameworks for how Christian institutions should use AI.
What is our role in using AI responsibly? This is a question I’m constantly asked by pastors, students and church leaders alike. Attorneys, physicians and business leaders are wrestling with the same question as every profession decides what work can be delegated to machines.
Some assume Christians should reject AI outright. Others see no meaningful limits. Both answers are incomplete. Pastoral ministry raises the question in an unusually personal form because the work itself is fundamentally relational.
The point is not to do more ministry from behind a screen. It is to spend less time behind one.
Here are three key tips to highlight how AI can be used without losing the authenticity of the pastoral vocation.
#1: AI is an assistant, not a substitute.
British Bible teacher John Stott described preaching as standing between two worlds, faithfully bridging the ancient text and the contemporary hearer. That bridge is not assembled from facts. It is built via prayer, wrestling with Scripture and through the slow work of knowing those who sit in the pews.
Every faithful pastor knows the quiet cost of that work. AI can produce something that resembles a bridge. It cannot walk across one, because it has never carried anyone’s grief or joy. Along with theological concern comes a practical reason for caution. Artificial intelligence lacks the theological judgment required to distinguish between plausible language and faithful interpretation.
#2: AI saves time, but it’s not a pastor.
Used wisely, AI frees pastors to be more present, not less. Scheduling, bulletin design, translating a sermon for a multilingual congregation, even routing directions to a hospital visit: AI handles these tasks capably.
For pastors who already feel stretched thin by emails and meetings, the appeal of offloading as much as possible to software is obvious. Every hour it saves is an hour a pastor can spend in hospital rooms, counseling conversations, mentoring relationships and neighborhood evangelism. AI can even help a pastor whose Greek or Hebrew has grown rusty, or who never had the chance to learn the biblical languages, dig into the original text as a foundation for a sermon he must still write himself.
The point is not to do more ministry from behind a screen. It is to spend less time behind one.
#3: AI can’t pray.
The hardest questions arise around prayer — but an AI-generated outline is not a substitute for spending time with God in the quiet.
According to the Barna Group, three in four senior Protestant pastors say God can work through AI, yet only a small fraction is comfortable letting it write their sermons. Pastors are already drawing this line by instinct. Pope Leo XIV recently urged Catholic clergy toward the same caution, reminding them that a homily is an act of shared faith, not machine-generated content.
The stakes reach beyond the pulpit. Pastors are not only making a private choice about a tool. They are modeling, for congregations navigating this same unfamiliar territory, what wisdom with AI looks like. That matters because Christians believe human beings are made in the image of God, a conviction that keeps presence from ever being interchangeable with content.
On Monday morning, thousands of pastors will once again sit before two screens. One will hold an AI assistant; the other will hold the words that have guided the church for centuries.
Wisdom will not be found in refusing new technology, nor in embracing it without limits. It will be found in remembering what no technology can become. Artificial intelligence might help a pastor manage a church. It cannot help him become a shepherd.
Dr. David Kotter is the Dean of the School of Theology and Director of the Quarry Innovation Lab for AI at Colorado Christian University.
