By Wale Mafolasire
In the rapidly evolving world of technology, few innovations have sparked as much conversation, curiosity, and concern as artificial intelligence (AI). As the founder and CEO of a mobile app for online giving dedicated to empowering churches and their communities, I’ve participated in countless discussions revolving around the intersection of faith and AI. Whether I’m speaking at conferences, attending services, or volunteering in the community, AI is a hot topic.
As technology reshapes so many aspects of our lives, AI is becoming a transformative force. While it’s often associated with Silicon Valley, it’s increasingly finding a home within the walls of the church. From streamlining administrative tasks to revolutionizing storytelling, AI has the potential to support and elevate faith-based work in new ways.
In our 2024 Giving in Faith report, we found that faith leaders are exploring AI’s potential as they look for new ways to connect and grow their ministries. Nearly 78% were familiar with at least one AI-powered or virtual reality tool, and some shared how AI-driven writing tools, like ChatGPT or Grammarly, have become part of their ministry toolkit.
At the same time, many places of worship face declining attendance, staffing challenges, outdated technology, and inconsistent giving. Generative AI could provide much-needed support to help drive their missions forward and strengthen their impact. We recently spoke with several faith leaders who discovered the benefits, considered the challenges, and envision a 2025 — and beyond — where AI and faith continue to intersect.
Benefits Abound: Creativity and Connection
Generative AI is transforming how churches connect with their congregations and local communities by enhancing outreach, inspiring messaging, and growing giving efforts. By leveraging this innovative technology as a pivotal partner, churches can adapt to the evolving communication landscape, strengthen outreach, and foster a culture of giving within their communities.
Enhanced Outreach
As more congregants engage through digital platforms, churches are using AI to help craft compelling social media posts and event descriptions, create eye-catching visuals, and streamline content development. These tasks save time, boost creativity, and enable faith leaders and their teams to maintain a stronger digital presence while focusing on meaningful connections.
When Worship Ministry Director Akiera Carr at North Church Rockmart, was looking for new ways to promote their Vacation Bible School, she turned to AI. In just 15 minutes, she transformed three main characters — modeled after members, including herself — into vibrant Pixar-style graphics using Microsoft Copilot. These visuals captivated attendees and elevated the overall experience.
“It was better than anything I could have imagined,” said Lead Pastor Vince Carr, who’s been using AI for several years. “AI allowed her to create something extraordinary in record time.”
When Pastor Carr’s team struggled to host their Celebrate Recovery program because everything sounded the same, they used AI. “It gave us new ideas and ways to reach out to the community, and what we’ve seen, in turn, is growth in our program.”
North Church Rockmart also uses AI to simplify social media outreach. “We’ll take event details, feed them into AI, and say, ‘Make it pop!’ It generates engaging text and visuals that draw people in,” he shared.
The results speak for themselves — their social media engagement has skyrocketed, with many newcomers discovering the church online.
Bishop Charley Hames, Jr., a longtime advocate for forward-thinking leadership, views AI as a defining opportunity for the modern church. In his latest book, Leveraged Leadership: Unlocking the Power of Influence, Impact, and AI, Bishop Hames unlocks a transformative approach that equips leaders to shape moments of significance, maximize limited resources, and drive extraordinary outcomes in ministry and the marketplace.
“AI has been around for decades, but its current applications are taking on new life,” he said.
For Bishop Hames, AI’s potential to revolutionize church operations became clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. With in-person services halted, his congregation rapidly adopted tools like Givelify for online giving. Revenue streams shifted from 35% digital to over 90% in weeks. “Moments like this define whether you thrive or merely survive,” he reflected.
This is no surprise as we found in our 2024 Giving in Faith report, that digital giving is the new norm and continues to be highly popular with congregants: 98% of churches offer at least one digital giving option, and gifts made to places of worship through digital means are higher, on average, than those made in other ways.
In his administrative role overseeing the Ninth Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, which includes 95 churches across seven states, Bishop Hames relies on AI to manage an immense workload. Tools like ChatGPT and Grammarly have drastically reduced his time drafting letters and other communications. Bishop Hames shared how AI reduced his letter-writing from 30 hours weekly to just a few.
“I can get anywhere from 50 to 150 letter requests within a week. Old school, I would literally have to type out and craft these letters,” he said. “Instead of spending half of my week, that task has been reduced to a couple of hours, which has given me the capacity to deal with more pressing matters, more critical matters that can use my brain power to help uplift our district.”
AI helps pastors conduct research, refine messages, and even extend the life of sermons through tools like Pulpit AI, which transforms messages into shareable sermon clips.
Bishop Hames shared how one pastor put a sermon through AI, and it created a podcast; it sounds like live people discussing the sermon. Pastors no longer have to struggle to make a sermon live beyond the 30 or 45 minutes during a service. They can create bite-sized social media clips, keeping messages alive throughout the week.
“In a hybrid world, this continuity is essential,” Bishop Hames explained.
Pastor Brandon Holm’s church, The Greater Guild, uses tools like NightCafe for artwork and ElevenLabs for podcast narration. These platforms help create high-quality visuals and audio content without extensive expertise. AI also assists with sermon preparation, research support, and polishing drafts.
“It’s great for expanding ideas,” Pastor Holm shared. “I’ll input my draft, and it adds layers of polish while staying true to our church’s tone.”
Pastor Holm sees AI as a bridge to deeper engagement, enabling his church to focus on meaningful connections rather than administrative tasks.
This technology streamlines content creation while empowering church staff and volunteers to manage communications independently without the need for costly tools or extensive training. For smaller churches, AI helps level the playing field, offering high-quality tools to those with limited resources.
Generosity and a Culture of Giving
AI could also play a crucial role in driving generosity and giving within faith communities. In our 2024 Giving in Faith report, one pastor shared, “ChatGPT helps me to find various ideas that can be implemented for successful event management and funding. We use image generators sometimes to generate nice covers for our church’s events.”
Pastor Holm recently used AI to spark an idea for making giving even easier. “Instead of telling people to download the Givelify app, they could use a QR code that takes them directly to our giving platform,” he explained.
Bishop Hames noted, “AI has transformed our approach to engagement, allowing us to focus on the more pressing matters of ministry while efficiently managing administrative tasks.”
This efficiency is particularly evident in fundraising efforts, where AI tools can generate tailored messages and innovative ideas for enhancing giving campaigns. By integrating technology into their operations, churches can adapt to the needs of their congregations while ensuring that their core mission remains intact.
AI can also be used to analyze donor data—such as past giving behavior and preferences—and craft more relevant personalized appeals, which helps deepen donor relationships and enhances the overall giving experience. Beyond fundraising, AI is also helping faith leaders create individualized growth plans for congregants to support them in their faith-giving journey. These plans are helping their members give more consistently and fostering a deeper connection to their faith.
In visiting churches across the country, we’ve seen storytelling is an impactful way to inspire generosity and increase church donations.
When it comes to asking their congregation to give, Pastor Holm believes in keeping that as authentic as possible and not relying on AI-generated scripts.
However, faith leaders can use AI-driven content tools to highlight the impact of contributions through compelling stories, fostering deeper emotional connections with donors and inspiring continued giving.
Potential Challenges: Caution and Discernment
Despite its advantages, AI comes with potential challenges that require discernment and caution. One major concern pastors share is the potential loss of human authenticity. AI lacks empathy, a key component of pastoral care. While it can process language and generate content, it cannot replicate the emotional depth and understanding that human interaction provides. This limitation underscores the need for faith leaders to use AI as a supplement rather than a replacement for human connection.
Pastor Holm warned that over-reliance on AI could strip the humanistic touch from church communications. Maintaining a balance between technology and personal connection is essential.
He’s also cautious about over-reliance. He encourages proofreading and critical evaluation to ensure AI-generated content aligns with their values. “It’s a powerful tool, but it requires discernment,” he explained.
Bias and inaccuracies are another challenge. AI relies on user input and data sources, sometimes reflecting unintended biases or errors. Bishop Hames emphasized the importance of theological oversight. Ensuring diverse and accurate inputs is critical to avoid misrepresentation of faith principles.
While optimistic, Bishop Hames is also mindful of AI’s limitations. “AI lacks empathy,” he noted. “It’s a language processor, not a soul processor.” He calls for critical engagement with AI, ensuring it serves the church’s mission without compromising doctrinal integrity.
He’s mindful that “whoever creates the content determines the narrative.” For instance, the meaning of “woke” varies depending on context, and the creator’s perspective shapes how AI define will define the term. “For example, if you put ‘describe God’ into ChatGPT, you’ll probably get this general germane articulation of who God is, right? Now, as time goes on and more people input content, the definition might get better. But what if it’s so far to the right or so far to the left that it doesn’t encapsulate all of those who really need a concrete description of who God is?” he asks.
It is crucial to ensure that AI-generated content aligns with the church’s values and maintains a personal touch. By critically engaging with AI tools and incorporating their own unique voice, faith leaders can harness the power of technology to augment their ministry without compromising their message.
“AI is a tool,” Pastor Holm said. “It’s up to us to use it wisely.”
A Glimpse into 2025
As we move into 2025, the question is not whether churches will adopt these technologies but how they will harness them to inspire faith, build community, and advance their ministries. The pastors we spoke with anticipate AI’s continued integration into ministry.
Pastor Carr anticipates using AI more extensively in 2025, including for video editing and in-person presentations.
“I think we’re going to use it more. I think everyone is starting to get a better grasp on it. And I really feel like everything is moving toward AI,” he said. “It will be used a lot more across the board right now. I think we’re probably going to use it for in-person presentations, such as things we put up on the screens during church. So, it will be used more by many different people.”
Pastor Holm plans to explore AI-generated music, including songs with lyrics, to create something unique for their niche: geeks, gamers, cosplayers, and anime/ manga fans.
The idea of AI producing music is both exciting and intimidating for him. Still, he believes it’s promising for crafting Christian songs that feel like anime or sci-fi openings without risking copyright issues. Having original music tailored to their audience could be a game-changer.
“It would be great to have a Christian song that has the same feeling as an anime opening or as your favorite sci-fi opening without being copyrighted,” he said. “You can’t really touch a lot of music out there, but if you have your own, that’s something that I think is great. So, we’re looking into that.”
“What we have now works great. I don’t see anything really evolving too much until around 2026,” he said. “That will be the banner year for a huge technology surge. Because AI is still evolving to a point where it’s starting to learn to do things on its own – to think, not just take stuff from outside, and then actually evolve to its own thought process.”
By then, AI may evolve into a tool capable of more autonomous, creative thought. However, Pastor Holm doesn’t mean this in a dystopian sense, such as a Skynet scenario from Terminator.
“That scares me,” he explained. “But it’s going to be a more useful tool because it’s still restricted by how much it knows and how much it gleans.”
AI-generated music has potential, even if some of it feels generic. “For us, the goal is to create music that resonates with our specific audience rather than trying to appeal to everyone,” Pastor Holm shared. This focus has always been central to their mission, and AI helps them stay within those boundaries, empowering churches and organizations to connect more deeply with their unique communities. It’s about crafting something meaningful for them—and that’s what matters most.
Bishop Hames shared that he’s still in the exploration and research stage as he determines what tools he can use to enhance his ministry and brand. With a team of 10 people to support running his widespread district, he’s “maximizing resources with limited capacity.”
“That’s not enough people. What tools can I use to maximize outcome with limited resources?” he asked.
For Pastors Carr, Holm, and Bishop Hames, the journey is just beginning. Their experiences show how technology can serve faith communities, inspiring generosity, connection, and innovation. As the church embraces AI, it does so with one eye on the future and the other firmly rooted in its mission to serve and uplift.
In the words of Bishop Hames, “This is an exciting time. Let’s ensure we use these tools to thrive, not just survive.”
Wale Mafolasire is the founder and CEO of Givelify. His belief that every individual is innately a good person who wants to do good fuels his work. He drives innovation through new app features that foster connection, consistency and generosity, delivering value and positive experiences for more than 70,000 organizations and more than 1.5 million donors around the globe.
