Part 1: AI + THE FUTURE OF CHURCH LEADERSHIP
Michael Whittle, VP of AI at Subsplash talks about how AI can give pastors and staff more time for ministry; unlock the discipleship potential of existing content; make ministry more personal and data-informed; level the playing field for churches of all sizes; and protect congregational data while embracing innovation.
Church Executive: Over the next 3 to 5 years, in what critical ways do you expect AI to change the way churches operate?
Michael Whittle: On the practical side, I think the big opportunity is that daily administration hopefully begins to become less of a time investment for churches. My hope is that churches will then be able to focus more on the people they’re pastoring. If AI can really help speed up a lot of those administrative processes, I think it will help small, medium and large churches ask, “Where are we reallocating time?” How do we shift time away from administrative tasks and toward being with people and doing that part of the work of ministry?
Then there’s the spiritual formation and discipleship side. I recently read a Barna report that said something like 44% of millennials believe getting spiritual advice from a chatbot is the same as getting spiritual advice from their pastor. That’s really scary. I spend a lot of time traveling and doing workshops with different clients, and whenever I share that statistic, every pastor’s reaction is, “Whoa.”
But I think the really cool thing about that is that it helps the church ask, “What is the thing we can provide that AI never can?” And I really think that’s embodied, relational discipleship.
So I almost think this will be a fresh wave of administrative efficiency and innovation, but at the same time, a return to hyper-personal, hyper-pastoral ministry. Because I think for a lot of our young people, especially, the only time they’re going to be in any kind of in-person, embodied environment might be when they’re at church.
CE: As it relates to the support of ministry efforts, where do you see the best opportunities for using AI?
Whittle: I think there’s the practical piece, and then there’s the spiritual formation and discipleship piece.
I think one of the biggest opportunities, although it’s not a super-new idea, is unlocking the value of the sermon. How can churches take that sermon and use it to create resources and discipleship content for their congregation throughout the week? I think that’s huge.
Beyond that, I think it’s anything that allows a church leader to look at various data points within their church and connect those insights back to a real person. When was the last time this person checked in their kids? When was the last time this person served? Who hasn’t been around in the last six weeks? I think AI is going to help create a more hyper-personalized ministry context by making that data more accessible and actionable.
Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to how much time our teams are spending on administrative tasks and what we can do to leverage that time to get to know more people better.
And then there’s another really exciting opportunity. I think, for the first time, AI can help level the playing field for churches of all sizes. The average church in the United States still has fewer than 100 people. Those pastors are often bi-vocational, and they haven’t necessarily been able to do the things that larger churches have done in terms of resources and ministry support. I think AI, in many ways, democratizes the resources available to churches of all sizes. That’s a really exciting thing.
CE: What are some practical applications of AI that church leaders might not be considering yet?
Whittle: I think there are some really positive applications, and then there are some ways people are using AI that they might need to think through a bit more carefully.
One of the really cool opportunities is automation and personalization. Think about a pastor who has been preaching sermons in their local church for 15 years. They can now use that entire library as a resource to disciple their people. Imagine making those sermons searchable so someone could go to the church website and ask, “What has Pastor so-and-so said about anxiety?” and find relevant teaching right there. I think there’s a huge opportunity to unlock the informational side of what we do through preaching and teaching.
Translation is another great example. I pastored a church in Los Angeles for years. We were a medium-sized church in a massive Spanish-speaking community, and we wanted to offer translation. But in 2019, the cost of doing that would have been about the same as hiring a full-time employee. Now, the cost is pretty much next to nothing.
To me, what AI does is take the things the church has always been best at doing — preaching, teaching and giving people hope — and find new, creative ways to unlock them.
I also think there’s tremendous opportunity in automating administrative tasks. How can we automate more of those processes so churches can communicate more clearly and effectively with their congregations, whether that’s sharing information about upcoming events or providing discipleship resources? AI can really help with that.
On the other side, though, there are some things church leaders need to think about more carefully. I see so many well-meaning church staff members uploading giving data into a large language model without realizing they’re potentially sharing that information with a large company like Anthropic or OpenAI.
But I think the really exciting development is that we’re beginning to see tools that, for example, allow a church bookkeeper to build dashboards using giving data within a secure data environment. Those kinds of tools can help us know our people better, but we have to do it safely.
The key is making sure that, as we use these tools, we’re protecting the data our church members have entrusted to us.
CE: Is AI able to help churches do more with limited staff and resources?
Whittle: Yeah, absolutely. I think when you consider what large churches have always been able to do — hire a communications director, build a content team and dedicate resources to those kinds of things — small churches simply haven’t had the resources to do the same.
I think AI represents this first wave of technology that really democratizes those capabilities. That’s why I became so interested in it early on and what it could do for the church. A church of 65 people can now potentially communicate at the level of a church of 5,000. Whether it’s editing, designing, translation or other communications needs, those capabilities are now much more accessible.
And if we can do that, I think what it’s going to do is give pastors some time back. For a pastor at a small or medium-sized church, it’s not unusual to also be the bookkeeper, the volunteer coordinator and the person visiting people in the hospital. Oftentimes, at least for a lot of my pastor friends, prayer and sermon preparation happen on Saturday afternoons, whenever they can find the bandwidth.
If AI can help pastors get back to the ministry they originally signed up to do and spend more time doing those things, I think that’s really powerful. Ultimately, it can help churches of all sizes put more focus on loving their people well and doing the work of discipleship.
Keep an eye out next week for Part 2 of this insightful, timely conversation: PUTTING AI TO WORK IN THE CHURCH
Highlights include:
- 3 practical ways churches can begin using AI today
- The church functions best suited to AI-assisted workflows
- How AI can help churches improve discipleship
- What to consider when integrating AI into your church’s existing technology platforms
- The skills church staff will need to develop as AI becomes more prevalent
- Avoiding info overload: where to start when exploring AI
