I’ll try to make this general enough for a wider Christian ministry audience, but my context is Young Life, so forgive some of the insider language if you’re reading this from outside the organization.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” – James 1:5
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude have been at the forefront of culture for the past couple of years. As a ministry professional and missionary for the past 12 years, the only shift that has been more impactful in culture has been the advent and use of social media. And while social media is a primary topic for some of the work I’ve been doing lately, AI is quickly overtaking the conversations I’m having within our organization and outside of it as well.
Now, to be totally honest, I find using programs like ChatGPT and Claude unbelievable. If you haven’t used one of the latest LLMs yet, I’d encourage you to try it out. Even asking it a question you’d normally Google (like “how do I fix my toaster?” or “what are the best restaurants in Woodbury, MN for a day trip?”) will blow you away. And as I’ve begun to use it to be more “productive” (more on this below), they continue to astound me with their answers, brainstorming, plans, and more.
But at the same time, there’s always something in the back of my mind that questions using these new tools for ministry.
You may be reading this from the perspective of someone who, like me, has been using AI for the past couple of years for all sorts of tasks. You also may be reading this from the perspective of someone who hasn’t used these tools at all. Or you might be somewhere in between. But I will tell you, no matter where you fall on this spectrum, you have certainly consumed media (blogs, posts, music, video, and more) that has either used AI or was entirely created by it.
Because of this, I thought I’d share some thoughts I have on using AI in Young Life (and ministry more broadly) in hopes that it will help others use it responsibly.
Let’s get into it.
The easiest way is not always the best way
This is especially true when we’re preparing for a club talk, campaigner lesson, or especially our own spiritual development and discipleship. If you’ve ever used AI for these things, you know it can do them… well… really well sometimes. But telling a chatbot “write me a Young Life club talk for WyldLife kids in New York City” or “create a campaigner lesson for a group of freshman boys about how to handle stress” or “how should I pray better?” can feel like we’re losing the personal, relational, incarnational touch that we hold as the gold standard of our ministry.
We want to struggle with the Lord in these things. We want these processes to be Spirit-led, because it’s not AI going ahead of us when we’re helping kids understand Christ and the Christian life, it’s His Spirit doing that.
However, using AI to help us research specifics around a Bible passage we’ve been given, for context, theology, or links to other Scripture, is a great use for AI, as it’s no different than Googling or searching commentaries. Most LLMs work by drawing on vast training data and generating relevant responses based on our questions and context.
So asking things like, “Can you give me some context around the parable of the sower?” or “Is there a well-established commentary on Philippians 4:8 that would be helpful as I prepare a Bible study?” could really enhance what you’re preparing and save you time, so you can focus more on the relational aspects of our ministry.
But please be cautious here too. Chatbots do not do a good job of sharing Truth. AI is not the Holy Spirit.
AI will give you what you want
Now, this might seem like a great thing at first, until you realize that if you ask ChatGPT to prove that Christ did in fact rise from the dead, and then ask it to prove that He didn’t, the chatbot will give you a detailed outline for both.
Unless prompted otherwise, AI will push you into confirmation bias – the tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses while ignoring or dismissing contradictory evidence (I got this definition from ChatGPT). And it builds on your previous prompts and conversations. This means it has the tendency to keep pulling you deeper into the pattern of thought you might already have, even if that thought process is wrong.
AI is not a person. It is not relational, even if at times it can seem to be. This means it doesn’t do a good job at parsing out things that require relational nuance, like how to fundraise with a specific donor or write language for your email newsletter tailored to your specific community.
That said, if you give an LLM specifics around your context, ask it to give you the other side of an argument, or define the audience you’re trying to reach, AI can be an amazing tool because it will give you what you want.
So instead of asking, “How do I tell a donor about our ministry?”, try asking:
“I am going to have an appointment with a new donor to Young Life who knows I am going to invite them to give. They are an older couple in their 70s who have grandchildren in Young Life. They love the Lord and have heard great things about our ministry. I also know they have a large capacity to give, as they recently gave another Christian nonprofit in our community a $20,000 gift. How can I help them see the benefits of partnering with Young Life in our area?”
Go ahead, type that into ChatGPT and see what happens.
Your brain on AI is not as good as your brain off it (generally)
Creativity and innovation are key components of what has made Young Life Young Life over the last 83 years. Our ability to remain true to our foundational principles (keeping the Main Thing the main thing) while allowing our areas freedom in how those foundational principles are lived out is key to our effectiveness.
When we begin to use AI for creativity and innovation, two things can happen:
- We’re no longer being truly creative or innovative, because AI is just grabbing things from other sources and using those to inform its responses.
- A recent MIT study suggests that people who use LLMs for creative ventures (not just for programming, but for writing newsletters, scripts, talks, etc) are actually becoming less creative in their day-to-day thinking.
That same study suggests that using LLMs to revise, rewrite, or edit something you’ve already created yourself actually increases your brain’s activity. In other words, if you take the time to draft something on your own and then feed it into an LLM to polish it, it will help you get better results and help you improve in the process.
Another great place LLMs can help in ministry is brainstorming. In Young Life, we end up doing a lot of brainstorming, mostly as a team of leaders or staff. Not only can it be helpful for areas that have full teams, but this practice can be immensely beneficial to areas with small teams or just one staff member. And while it won’t do anything to help with the feeling of being alone (see above), it can push us out of our usual routines and help keep our ministry fresh for the next generation.
My hope with these brief thoughts is not to be exhaustive, but to start a conversation and hope others contribute to it. This is a divisive topic in the ministry world and needs nuance to be able to keep being fleshed out as this technology continues to shape our world in unknown ways.
I will leave you with this thought though. Every time a new technology has entered into culture, there has been push back. The printing press, the radio, the tv, the internet, social media and now artificial intelligence. I don’t believe it is our job as Christians to solely find the evils in these new technologies, but instead to test them to see if there are uses as well for the Kingdom of God.
Reference:
“Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task.” MIT Media Lab. https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/
