Episode Summary:
In this solo episode, Kenny Jahng, founder of AIforChurchLeaders.com, confronts the five most common—and often unspoken—questions pastors have about artificial intelligence in ministry. He shares practical first steps for engaging with AI, explains why every church needs an AI policy, and offers biblical framing for approaching technology from the pulpit. Church leaders will walk away with actionable tips, encouragement for honest conversations, and resources to help their teams discern wise use of AI tools.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
How to begin using AI in ministry by tackling a real, low-stakes problem this week
Why immediate, simple AI policies matter for churches already using these tools
What lines leaders should draw when using AI for sermon preparation to maintain integrity
Ways to biblically address AI from the pulpit and build your congregation’s digital discernment
Which tasks are appropriate (and which are risky) for church staff to automate with AI
The importance of regular dialogue and shared frameworks among staff and volunteers
Where to find structured resources and courses tailored for ministry leaders engaging with AI
Key Quotes:
“Taking the first steps is going to help you figure out what the next steps are going to be.” — Kenny Jahng
“Transparency builds trust every single time in every single direction.” — Kenny Jahng
“You can use AI in the front end, but you yourself have to show up on the back end.” — Kenny Jahng
“AI is a tool built by people who bear the image of a creative God.” — Kenny Jahng
“The mission is about serving others. That is something that you need to keep central.” — Kenny Jahng
Links & Resources Mentioned:
https://aiforchurchleaders.com
https://chatgpt4churchs.com
https://aipolicysimplesimple.com
https://www.FrontDoor.church
State of AI in the Church national survey report
About the Church Tech Today Podcast:
The Church Tech Today Podcast helps pastors, church staff, and ministry leaders navigate the intersection of faith and technology with confidence. Hosted by Kenny Jahng and brought to you by www.FrontDoor.church.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Kenny Jahng [00:00:00]:
Hey, friends, it’s that time again. The Church Tech Today podcast starts now. Today, I wanted to go through an article that I just posted. Over@aiforchurchleaders.com we started a blog. We’re going to give a lot of meaty material over there regarding AI fluency and using AI for good, hence the name AI for Good blog. And one of the first blog posts out of the gate is something that I’ve been getting questions over and over again. I decided to write some of them down when I’m going out into speaking and workshops and trainings, et cetera, and I started to track what are some of the most common questions. And this is the list of those.
Kenny Jahng [00:00:41]:
So here are the five questions pastors are afraid to ask about AI. So what happens is I’m at a speaking engagement and we’ll have Q and A questions will happen, but then there’s actually questions that happen after that, right? People don’t want to have public broadcast of their questions. They’ll wait for the event is over, they’ll find me in the hallways, they’ll find me somewhere else, they’ll email me a question directly, largely, I think, because they just don’t want it to be perceived that this is an issue for them. So I started to compile and basically do pattern recognition. So basically, I think each one of these questions are valid and we should have discussions about them. So let’s just get right to it. The question number one that I hear over and over again when someone pulls me aside or whispers what they actually want to know is they say, hey, I keep hearing about AI. I came to this workshop.
Kenny Jahng [00:01:38]:
I’m learning as much as I can. But where do I really start? Because there’s no instruction manual, I get this question more than anything else, right? And I think today, in 2026, most pastors are not asking whether AI is worth paying attention to. They’ve already crossed that bridge. What they’re stuck on is the on ramp. Like, what is the real tangible first step I should be doing that’s actually going to not waste my time and get me ahead, get me some traction, right? The moment where I should probably learn this actually becomes something about doing actual things versus just like listening to podcasts, reading articles, or hearing about it in anecdotal conversations. So this is what I tell everyone who asks that question, and that is start with one real problem you have this week. So a sermon illustration that you can’t find. Maybe it’s a newsletter.
Kenny Jahng [00:02:35]:
You’ve been putting off an announcement that needs to sound better than what you drafted last night. Right? So basically all you have to DO is open ChatGPT or Claude. Claude is my tool of choice right now. And describe the problem like you’re talking conversationally to a smart intern. That’s all you have to do. You don’t need to restructure your sentences and be careful about it. Like literally just talk out loud. Now if you can use voice mode, I would even say that.
Kenny Jahng [00:03:06]:
And so just explain the problem that you are actually curious about and see what comes back. That’s it. That’s the start. That’s how you actually begin. If your church already uses social media, if it uses email automation, video streaming, you’re already engaging with AI, right? You just didn’t have to learn that consciously. Right? So this is the same thing you learn by using it. You learn by taking the steps, not by watching someone take the steps. So figure out some real things that you want to start using with and just try, try stumbling together with the AI.
Kenny Jahng [00:03:43]:
And you just want to get out of that mode of where you’re just passively observing, reading, hearing about it. You want to get into the mode of using it. I think the mistake most leaders make when they’re trying to learn AI is that they’re waiting until they feel ready. Like in reality, you’re not going to feel ready. The tool is going to reward someone who experiments, not someone who just waits and prepares. Right? So just get started. Taking the first steps is going to help you figure out what the next steps are going to be. Now, if you are that type of person that wants a structured starting point, I would recommend chatgpt4churchs.com chatgpt4churchs.Com that’s a course that we put together and it’s meant for every beginning pastor, church leader, volunteer, because we go through the basics.
Kenny Jahng [00:04:35]:
What actually is generative AI, how does it work, what is it good for, what is it not good for? And that walks you through a bunch of ministry specific use cases so that it’s not abstract, so that it’s not just secular type of business type of examples. It’s it is church and ministry use cases. And so if you go through that course@chatgpt4churchs.com you’re going to leave working with a prompting framework so you’ll have confidence exactly what to type into the computer every time. And you’re not going to leave with just this vague sense of what you, you know, you should be doing something in this area. You’re going to have very concrete next steps. But absent that, just get started. Open chatgpt.com, open Claude AI. Give it 20 minutes.
Kenny Jahng [00:05:21]:
Put something on your calendar and start with something that’s low stakes this week, right? And if you want to go further, take the course, and you’ll be further than most other peers before the month is out, if you just put in the reps on a daily basis. We all know with something like this, the best time to start is a year ago, but the second best time is today. So that’s the first question. Second question that I stumble into is like, hey, do I need this AI policy? Shouldn’t we get something in writing for our teams? And what does that even look like? And the question is, yes. I mean, the answer is, yes, you need one. And most churches really do not have one. In fact, in the last state of AI in the church survey, 91% of church leaders support AI use in ministry, 61% use it frequently, and yet 73% of church leaders say they do not have an AI policy whatsoever. That’s a massive gap between usage and recognition that it’s being used and not having some guardrails.
Kenny Jahng [00:06:28]:
And that gap, I think, is this leadership crisis that’s dressed up as innovation, saying, oh, it’s going so fast, I just need to learn about, learn about it, then I’ll get to the policy. No, you need to get to a policy now. It needs to be simple, needs to be get out of the gate, something that everyone has shared language around. Your people are using AI tools, ready to prep your small groups, answer pastoral emails, create content for your church. They’re doing all that right now and they have zero shared frameworks on how to do it. With discernment. Your expectations are probably going to be very wildly different than your volunteers, your church staff, etc. And again, what I’m saying is a policy does not need to be complicated.
Kenny Jahng [00:07:12]:
It just needs to start with, say, answering these four basic questions, like what’s approved, what’s off limits, who reviews it before it goes public, and what do we tell our community about how and when we use it? Start with those four questions. And that’s the best place that you can actually start to iterate and evolve in AI policy. Now, if you need structured help, again, the fastest way I think you can get this done is go through our masterclass, aipolicismadesimple.com all of these courses and resources that we’ve built is in response to the questions and the needs and the request of the communities that we serve. So aipolicismadesimple.com is simply a self guided masterclass. It walks you and your leadership team through building a customized policy from scratch. There’s templates in there, there’s even recognition that some are going to be very conservative ministries, some are going to be very leaning hard into AI first as a ministry, and some are in the middle. And the masterclass accommodates all those points of views. So you don’t have to start from a blank page.
Kenny Jahng [00:08:18]:
You don’t have to hire a consultant. You just need to work through the specific process and those intentional questions that are guided through that masterclass. And then on the other side, you’re going to come out with something that you can actually use. The masterclass actually has canva templates that you can even make it friendly and all nice and clean, designed, you can output something. So if you are, you can do it in a weekend, you can just sit down, power through the questions put into the canva template, and you can have something polished and nice and simple that you can publish in a day or two. So that’s where I would start. Start with those basic questions. If not, start with that program and then you can build from there.
Kenny Jahng [00:08:57]:
You can revisit that policy every six months, every nine months, every year. And you’re going to want to do that because this space moves very fast, right? So at the end of the day, the reason why you want to do this is transparency builds trust every single time in every single direction. And you don’t want to be caught off guard. And it’s better to start now with the AI policy. Wherever you are in your AI journey, even if you guys are not using AI in your ministry, you should have an AI policy. Question number three. Can I use AI for sermon prep without compromising my integrity? Right. There’s this big tension.
Kenny Jahng [00:09:34]:
I get this a lot, right? Especially if you’re a preaching pastor. And the answer is yes, you can use AI for summer prep without compromising your integrity. Now, there is one big caveat. I think it’s a hard line that you have to draw, draw in the sand. But basically you can use AI for research, you can use AI for brainstorming, you can pull commentaries, you can edit for clarity, you can use it as soundboarding for coaching. There are many legitimate ways to use AI in that prep work. And I think it’s very similar to the way the pastors have been using other study tools. Whether it’s research assistance, editorial, feedback, commentaries, there’s all these things where AI is just a faster version of that And I think you want to be able to dive into that deeply in those ways that stewards AI’s hotspots.
Kenny Jahng [00:10:29]:
But this is where the line is, right? You have to understand what AI is doing. AI simulates our intellect, it simulates conversations. It’s really just a mathematical word prediction machine. And so what it doesn’t have is genuine emotion, empathy, understanding, and actually doesn’t even understand the sentences you’re writing because it reduces everything down to a math equation. And we know in your priestly function of the pastor’s office, true worship involves not just understanding mathematical understandings of texts and patterns, it’s really about understanding God and really deeply sensing the spirit of where he’s trying to direct you. And so if you look at a sermon as content production, I think that’s a fault. If you look at a content production, I think that’s where you go down this rabbit hole. And then AI usage creeps into the areas where it really shouldn’t.
Kenny Jahng [00:11:35]:
It needs to be a pastor pouring out what God has been doing in, in their interior life that week, that month, that year, the wrestling of the text. This is the stuff that AI can’t get to. The 1am, 2am, 3am questions that you get that basically were answered the next week. You’re marinating on these things that just get hooks in your brain and then you need to wrestle with it, you need to consult scripture, you need to actually study. And then all the work of the spirit happens as it bubbles up the truth in the words that you need to do when you’re the herald of the gospel. So just understand that AI can’t manufacture any of that, it cannot simulate any of that, not in a true sense. And more importantly, your congregation is going to feel when you shortcut and skip and the sermon has that part missing. So general rule of thumb, you can use AI in the front end, but you yourself have to show up on the back end.
Kenny Jahng [00:12:44]:
Okay, question number four. Should I preach about AI as a topic? And if so, what do I say? You might feel you’re ill equipped and all this stuff is anxiety driven, but the answer is yes, you should. And I think you should do it sooner than you think, sooner than you’re ready to. Because the majority of especially younger churchgoers said that they would welcome hearing biblical principles applied to an AI first world in a sermon on Sunday morning. They’re already living inside these questions every day. They just don’t know if you and the pastoral staff is paying attention. I’ve gotten even in my own church Questions from other congregation members coming up to me saying, I wonder if the pastor even understands that the pressures we have in our jobs today with AI and management and all that kind of stuff, because they’re not recognizing it from the stage, they don’t personally use it in staff, etc. And so they just don’t know where the pastors and the staff are thinking about this in the life of the church.
Kenny Jahng [00:13:51]:
So here’s the frame that I’d use. AI is a tool built by people who bear the image of a creative God. And like every other tool, it reveals more about the hands wielding it than the tools themselves. It’s basically a super amplifier, right? The real question isn’t whether AI itself is good or dangerous. That’s a whole other conversation, another deep dive in a podcast that probably needs to happen. But the question I think on the surface level is whether we’re using AI to love God and love other people. Does it serve that purpose? Or is it the sidestep sacred work that requires both? And so we need to talk and preach more about what we really believe and understand is in terms of identity, in terms of image bearing, in terms of the theology of work, the meaning of personhood, what true koinonia, fellowship, relationships, community really is. These are basic things that the church historically has positions on and teaching on and great truths about.
Kenny Jahng [00:15:06]:
And this is now the time to surface them up with this lens of how to actually address it in an AI first world that we’re all walking into in this next chapter of life. So these aren’t abstract doctrines in my mind right now. They’re the most, I think, the most urgent, the most practical sermons that you can preach because on a daily basis you see it in the headlines. This stuff is happening over and over again where it’s taking over more of our world, more of our work, more of our leisure than you think. And your people need a biblical vocabulary at this moment, Right. And they’re waiting for you to give it to them. Okay, so question number five. What should church staff actually use AI for and what should they stay away from? Right.
Kenny Jahng [00:15:59]:
Just having a cut and dry. Yes. No list would be great, but I think this is a practical question underneath all the theological ones. Right? So if you think of AI as an intelligent seminary intern, like I said before, it’s something that helps reduce administrative burdens or allows pastors like you to focus on higher value things or people centered ministry, that is a great way to think about it. But just as you would outsource pastoral care, right, You Wouldn’t outsource pastoral care to an intern. You shouldn’t use AI as a shortcut for spiritual leadership. Now, where, where can you use AI? I think you use AI freely for graphics and social media drafts and bulletin copy and helping you do event descriptions and blurbs and email newsletters and meeting summaries. I mean, there’s so much stuff that you can use AI for.
Kenny Jahng [00:17:01]:
But you still need to be careful on the other side, where it involves small group study materials, maybe outreach messaging, anywhere where you might have some issues of theological accuracy or alignment. Those are the places where you definitely need to keep a human in the loop, maybe, or a pastor in the loop. Those are the places you need to be much more careful and discerning. So general rule of thumb, keep AI away from live counseling responses and situations. Those types of circumstances are no nos, right? You don’t want to introduce AI in pastoral correspondence or messaging in crisis moments. Anywhere there’s high stakes, anywhere where there’s a human presence that’s required that the shepherding and pastoral aspect of your identity as a church and ministry leader is the entire point. That’s where you want to be careful. And if you are, I think this is one of those places where if you’re open to it, I would have discussions internally, have a lunch and learn, have an open forum, start with your executive leadership team, start with your ministry team or department, start with a staff meeting and open it up for discussion.
Kenny Jahng [00:18:20]:
You’ll find that you’ll have many people that are thoughtful about this on this topic than you think in your midst. And this is where we’re better together. Now, if you want to go deeper in again structured way, I would suggest you go look@aiforchurchleaders.com we have a video training library, we have monthly live workshops. We have a whole bunch of resources there. And it’s built specifically for ministry teams. It has tons of practical church and ministry use cases. It’s not just theoretical. If you are a communications director, your children’s ministry coordinator, your admin staff, not just the pastor, every role can find what applies to their own circumstances and their responsibilities and then start applying some of that the same week.
Kenny Jahng [00:19:10]:
And our heart is to really equip church leaders everywhere. And so most of the content is no tech background required. You don’t need to know coding, you don’t need to be a nerd. This is practical applied AI. Now the best thing you can do for your ministry is to give your people more view, right? You need to be more present, more pastoral, more Human. How do you make that happen? That’s the question I want you to ask whenever you’re thinking about AI. Because at the bottom of everything, the foundation underneath all of it all, is that you need to keep on remembering the mission is about serving others. That is something that you need to keep central.
Kenny Jahng [00:19:55]:
And you need to cast a vision for all of your teams to understand that foundational understanding so that everyone’s on the same page. The church itself has always arrived late to technology. We’ve had the printing press or the radio or TV or Internet. The church has been slow to adopt, but when it does, we can see massive shifts in history. And I think this is why you want to be optimistic for what the church is going to do with AI for good. The challenge is no longer whether churches adopt AI. It’s going to happen. It is happening as we speak again.
Kenny Jahng [00:20:37]:
If you look at the state of AI in the church national survey report that we publish every year, you’ll see that adoption is way higher than most people think at this point. The objective of the game now as a leader is to figure out how to use it with discernment so that it enriches everyone’s faith, walk everyone’s ministry work, rather than just defaulting to handing over the wheel, absent minded to AI. And then this is where I think the larger opportunity is. It’s not just for staff and your own work. It’s for your congregation, your community out there in your zip codes, already in the AI age. It’s not in the future, it’s already here. And the only question left really is whether you’ll show up as their guidelines, their wisdom for their life, so that they know how to navigate forward with it or not. And so that’s my invitation to you.
Kenny Jahng [00:21:40]:
How do you figure out these questions that most pastors haven’t really said out loud in their own ministries, in their own teams, with their own congregations. But I would suggest you start with square one and just opening up a forum for discussion. Create a safe space to explore everything together. You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to be the facilitator and the guide for your community. I’d love to know what other questions you have so we can start addressing them. Email me at kenny@churchtechtoday.com I look forward to hearing from you. And I’ll check you out here on the next episode of the Church Tech Today podcast.
