Artificial Intelligence and Ministry To Young People
26/02/2025
Chris Jones is the Youth Ministry and High School SRE Advisor for the Northern region.
I recently attended a conference where a young man introduced himself to me as a ‘digital Christian’. When I asked for clarification, he articulated that he routinely used various artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist him in his personal faith. He said that he used AI daily to decide what to read in his Bible and to write prayers for him to use. Whilst this was the first time I‘d met someone who considered this a key part of their Christian identity, it’s clear that we now have a rapidly increasing number of AI tools available to us that we might choose to use within the ministry space.
In the context of ministry, there’s almost no limit to the ways in which we might employ AI tools to assist us in our tasks. Yet this is an arena in which we need to do some thinking before we blindly use the tools at hand. So how do we wisely discern what is beneficial for us and for those we are ministering to when it comes to faithfully using AI for ministry purposes?
Here are three considerations that will help us as we make these decisions:
1. All Artificial Intelligence is a tool
Take a look around you right now and you’ll probably find many objects that could be considered a tool. Your phone, a pen, a light bulb. Most of the tools we use in our daily lives were invented in the past 150 years. They’re so thoroughly normal to us, that it would seem strange to call them technology. But that’s exactly what they are.
Douglas Adams once made an astute observation about the nature of technology. He said that there are three categories of how people view technology[1]:
- Everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal.
- Anything that gets invented between then and before you turn 30 is incredibly exciting and creative, and with any luck you can make a career out of it.
- Anything that gets invented after you’re 30 is against the natural order of things, and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it, until it’s been around for about ten years, when it gradually turns out to be alright.
Broadly speaking, those of us under 30 probably consider AI technologies to be exciting and are willing to experiment with them, while the rest of us are likely to be more sceptical and hesitant to use them.
Regardless of our natural inclination towards AI, it’s important to remember that AI is a tool, and that tools exist for us to transform God’s creation for our practical purposes. AI is neither inherently good nor bad, but the way in which we use it as a tool can be either faithful or unfaithful to our responsibilities in the world as God’s people.
As we use any technology (including any form of artificial intelligence) we need to ask ourselves about our motivations for using it, and what is both gained and lost by using it. These reflections will help us to make wise and godly decisions.
2. Traditional AI and Generative AI serve different purposes
The suite of AI tools available to us fall broadly into two categories – Traditional AI and Generative AI. Traditional AI performs specific tasks intelligently. It learns from existing data to make predictions or decisions based on that data. Siri or Alexa are common, everyday examples of this type of AI. In traditional AI the tool can do a specific job, and can often do it really well, but it can’t create anything new.
Generative AI, however, is a form of AI that can create new content. By learning from existing data, generative AI tools can create an exciting story, a piece of music, or beautiful images. This means it can also be used to create a graphic for your next teaching series or indeed to write your whole youth talk. At its best (and these tools are only going to get better) the content produced completely by generative AI is becoming increasingly indistinguishable from content produced completely by a human. This means we need to think more clearly about how and when we choose to use tools in this form of AI.
Both forms have good and useful purposes within a ministry context, and both have the capacity to be used in ways which negatively shape us as God’s people, serving his church. The important thing is that we, as the users of these tools, are intentional and thoughtful in understanding what they’re doing for us and what they’re doing to us.
3. Shaping with our tools, or shaped by them?
As with any tool, how and when we choose to use Artificial Intelligence will determine how we shape the world around us with those tools, as well as how our use of those tools will shape us as human beings. In his excellent book, From The Garden To The City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology, John Dyer articulates that when we use any technology we use that tool to transform the world as it is into the world that we desire.[2] This is just as true for a shovel as it is for artificial intelligence. As we use AI tools we’re shaping the output of our ministry efforts and in turn shaping the world around us. We can choose to do that with consideration and intentionality, or at times it may happen incidentally.
At the same time these tools are also shaping us. Just as using a shovel shapes the person using it – think blisters and an aching back - so also using AI shapes us in various (although perhaps less immediately obvious) ways. As we increasingly have a broader range of AI tools at our disposal for ministry, we need to be asking ourselves such questions as:
- Will using this tool sacrifice spiritual, social, or relational growth as a human being for the sake of convenience?
- Will using this tool cause myself or others to be deceived about the source of the content?
- Will using this tool encourage people to love, follow, and serve Jesus more wholeheartedly?
We need to be careful to pay attention to the processes and practices that these tools hide and remove from us. Sometimes this will be of little consequence, but at other times we may lose something significant of what it means to be a human being in relationship with one another and with our creator God.
As we consider how to most wisely use these tools, we shouldn’t view them as a replacement for the important Spirit-led processes of evangelising and discipling young people, but rather as sources of inspiration and time-saving efficiencies for tasks that are not central to the sanctification of the young people we minister to, or indeed to ourselves. To put it another way – AI is best used when we thoughtfully use it as a helpful tool, rather than simply relying on it to save us from our lack of organisation.
And for those wondering – no, this article wasn’t written with the assistance of AI.
[1] Douglas Adams, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet; Sept 1, 1999; https://douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html
[2] John Dyer, From The Garden To The City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, 2011, p.35
