Your congregation is already using AI for spiritual formation. The only question is whether you are part of the conversation.
According to Barna’s 2026 State of the Church research, conducted with Gloo, nearly one in three U.S. adults say spiritual advice from AI is as trustworthy as advice from a pastor. Among Gen Z and Millennials, that number rises to two in five.
Roughly four in ten practicing Christians say AI has already helped them with prayer, Bible study, or spiritual growth. And 41 percent of pastors report using AI themselves for Bible study preparation.
But here is the gap that should grab every senior pastor’s attention: one-third of practicing Christians say they want guidance from their pastors on how to navigate AI. Only 12 percent of pastors say they feel comfortable teaching about it.
That is not a technology problem. It is a discipleship problem with an urgent shelf life.
Why pastors keep missing this
AI feels like a technology issue, which makes it easy to delegate to the staff member who runs the website or the volunteer who manages the livestream. But AI is not showing up in your church’s IT strategy. It is showing up in your congregants’ private spiritual lives. They are asking it theological questions. They are asking it for counseling. They are asking it what Scripture means.
Lifeway Research’s April 2026 study found that U.S. Protestant churchgoers are split on AI in sermon preparation: 44 percent see no problem with it, 43 percent disagree. On AI as a sermon topic, 42 percent of churchgoers say they would value a sermon applying biblical principles to AI. The interest is there. The pastoral teaching is not.
Meanwhile, AI is not waiting. It is being integrated into prayer apps, Bible study tools, and counseling platforms right now. Your congregants are forming convictions about what AI can and should do in their spiritual lives, whether or not anyone disciples them through it.
What good AI discipleship sounds like
The answer is not a sermon against ChatGPT. That posture does not land, and it cedes the conversation entirely. The answer is a pastoral posture that takes AI seriously as a spiritual formation variable and teaches people how to think about it Christianly.
Three principles worth starting with.
First, AI is a tool, not a teacher. It can help a person find a verse, summarize a passage, or think through a question. It cannot know them, pray for them, weep with them, or sit with them in grief. The pastor’s role is to make that distinction clear and keep it clear.
Second, discernment matters more than avoidance. Pretending AI is not happening is not a pastoral strategy. Teaching people how to evaluate what they are reading, what they are praying, and what they are being formed by, is.
Third, the relational church is the irreplaceable church. Every AI tool on the market today can answer a question. None of them can replace the embodied community of believers. That is not a marketing line. That is the single most strategic theological truth pastors can repeat in 2026.
Why this is a leadership formation issue
The 12 percent of pastors who feel comfortable teaching on AI did not get there by accident. They got there because they did the work, read the material, talked to other leaders, and wrestled with the implications before their congregation did.
That work is not happening at most churches. It is happening at the ones where leaders are deliberately building their own formation in rooms full of other leaders doing the same thing.
The TKN Leadership Summit 2026 gathers leaders who are wrestling with exactly these kinds of questions in real time. Not the polished version for the podcast. The honest version in the hallway. November 10 and 11 at Kingdom Fellowship AME Church, Calverton, Maryland. Theme: Inspire. Influence. Impact.
