Opportunities and Threats of Artificial Intelligence in Christian Ministry: An Interdisciplinary Approach Through the Lens of Scientific Exploration and Technology

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications are everywhere, including within churches and other faith communities. Churches are complex systems, and the incorporation of new people and things over the lifetime of these communities changes them. New technology, in general, and AI tools in specific are no exception. In Christian ministry, innovation is no stranger: witness how quickly churches adopted online worship during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that AI is already present in the complex system of churches, care must be taken to assess the opportunities and threats associated with its intentional adoption before doing so. This report advocates for ministry to make use of an approach borrowed from scientific exploration for the evaluation of opportunities and threats and for managing the process of introducing and managing new elements into a complex system: systems engineering (SE) principles and processes. SE methodology enables scientific exploration in environments that are difficult to explore due to danger, cost or technological immaturity by rigorously managing the development, introduction and life cycle of technology that will be used in the complex system of exploration. Such an approach would be promising for increasing the safety of a technology that comes with some inherent danger, easing its integration into church operation, mission, formation and worship and in turn allowing ministry leaders agency in determining the future of their relationship with artificial intelligence.

1. Introduction

1.1. Innovation

It is not difficult to imagine God as the consummate innovator. The gift of adaptability to changing conditions has been a great blessing to humans, enabling us to survive various environmental threats and take advantage of opportunities that our adaptability afforded us. This gift goes beyond the adaptability of individual humans to the passing of heritable traits that provide advantages to future generations. That is evolution: changing over time to adapt to new conditions.

Institutions also evolve, including Christendom as a whole, various denominations, and individual church communities. I would argue that it is demonstration of God’s steadfast love. For we live in a system that includes everything else on Earth, and as the environment changes over time, so do we, as people and as church. That God innovates is biblically supported: “Behold, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland,” Isaiah 43:19 (ESV). We credit God with having made everything in the universe (Genesis 1). We are said to be made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and while we can debate whether that means in the visual image or the metaphorical image, the possibility cannot be ruled out that the image of God refers to an innovative nature.

Humans are innovative, so does our innovation differ from the innovation of God? The depth and breadth of the imagination of God is necessarily incomparable to have created everything we know of and certainly that which we cannot imagine, ex nihilo. We often constrain our imaginations by what we think is possible from the experience of what we already think we know. Other cultural and psycho-social constraints such as ego, arrogance, the fear of failure, reluctance to offend, etc., can also place limits on both our imagination and our willingness to innovate. We humans are sometimes resistant to an innovative idea, process or product because of an emotional attachment to a present or previous idea, process, or product that is familiar and comfortable. I have observed this to be true in business, science and even in church, where there is often an overlay of economic considerations that can be an impediment to change in the broad sense and innovation in a more specific sense.

I would argue that the lack of constraint on the innovativeness of God is qualitatively different to the innovativeness of humankind because of the various constraints through which we often filter our innovation. When God created everything as narrated in Genesis, it was all declared good, not perfect, hence a qualitative attenuation in our innovation relative to God’s.

Not all change is innovative, but innovation is a category or subset of change. Innovation is a change that introduces novelty that adds value to an idea, process or product with a notable impact. When considering innovative change within the context of Christian ministry, it is important to evaluate the impact on the primary mission of ministry: to reconcile people to God.

Christian ministry is meant to be a lifelong process for all practitioners of that faith. It is a relational endeavor, and church leaders must rise to the challenge of constantly nurturing both individuals and church institutions with respect to not only spiritual matters but also more material concerns, including decisions about when to be innovative and when to stick with tradition. It can be a difficult balance because we must honor both tradition and innovation. Innovation is not necessarily oppositional to tradition; however, people are often uncomfortable with change in the general sense, and resistance to change can be voiced as reluctance to alter tradition when the resistance is actually a response to a fear of losing something familiar by embracing something new. That is why it is important not to push change gratuitously but rather to offer innovation with its attendant value and impact. This includes technical innovation in ministry.

Ministry presently makes use of technologies that would have baffled the early church: LED lighting, electronic musical instruments, sophisticated computer algorithms for church management, web conferencing for worship and Christian formation, and various social media platforms for communication. And now we have artificial intelligence.

The people and the infrastructure of church communities are affected when new technology is introduced in service to the community because the church is a complex system in which all the components have an impact on one another. Ministry leaders are responsible for managing the impact on the church, its members, and in the broader community in which they are located.

Therefore, the adoption of new technologies must be carefully considered with respect to their attendant opportunities and threats, both to individuals and to the church. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are an example of a rapidly evolving technology with profound implications that should be carefully evaluated with respect to its opportunities and threats. AI tools are now present in everyone’s smart phone and whether we intentionally seek the assistance of AI, it seeks our assistance as it gathers the user data that ultimately trains the tools. To innovate or not to innovate must always be weighed within the primary objective of Christian ministry: to serve God and to serve other people on God’s behalf.

1.2. Artificial Intelligence

The development of Natural Language Processing (NLP) has facilitated the adoption of AI by practitioners beyond science and technical fields (Chowdhary and Chowdhary 2020) and the subsequent proliferation of Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, DeepSeek and the like have opened many opportunities for co-creative applications to ministry with the generation of text, images and music. The accessibility of NLP tools makes AI experimentation relatively easy for end users without a steep learning curve, and it is this easy accessibility that facilitates the adoption of AI, perhaps without a sufficient consideration of potential risks by the end user. Witness the proliferation of concerns about the effects of AI-driven social media on mental health, human relationships, politics, etc., e.g., Kalpidou et al. (2011); Pantic (2014); Lau et al. (2016); Bashir and Bhat (2017); Beyari (2023), etc.

The application of any new technology comes with both opportunities and threats1, and these should be evaluated prior to adoption of the technology. One might argue that this is true for any technological development because there are often unintended consequences of its use. One example of the criticality of such a process is the vetting of pharmaceutical therapies before making them available clinically. New technologies are often repeatedly evaluated after adoption in this regard to increase safety, lower costs, or to increase the range of applications for which the technology might be useful. Artificial intelligence tools should also be evaluated in the same way for each context in which they might be used. Indeed, there is no lack of cautionary studies on the risks vs. benefits, or in starker terms, opportunities and threats, of AI in a variety of contexts including the disciplines of philosophy and religion. This article focuses on an approach to assessment of opportunities and threats associated with AI in the context of the study of and/or practice of Christian ministry, which unsurprisingly is well represented in the literature, e.g., Geraci (2008), Coghill (2023), Jambrek (2024), Tampubolon and Nadeak (2024), Satyavrata (2024), Temperman (2023). La Cruz and Mora (2024), Adigun and Afolaranmi (2024), Afunugo and Molokwu (2024), Song (2021), to name a few from a variety of Christian and cultural contexts. It is important to recognize that there are different levels of AI, artificial narrow intelligence (ANI), artificial general intelligence (AGI), and artificial super intelligence (ASI), and each is accompanied by different opportunities and threats. Jambrek (2024) offers a good summary of where these levels of AI are headed. The increasingly common generative AI tools are all examples of ANI, as are ANI tools that function in the background to perform repetitive tasks associated with things like e-commerce and internet search engines.

1.3. Context: A Key Element in the Adoption of New Technology

Because context can be determinative in the adoption of new technology (e.g., Baerenklau 2005; Nystrom et al. 2002; Lee et al. 2013; Ziefle et al. 2012), all of the factors that affect the adoption of AI software (and hardware) must be considered as contextual input for a system comprising AI tools, their authors, the science behind the development of the particular AI technology, the specific denomination of the Christian religion in which the AI tools may be used, the cultural context of the end user, and the context of this author as both ordained minister in the Anglican tradition and scientist. Those contextual elements and the experience of developing and vetting new technologies prompts this author to leverage that experience and apply it to the evaluation of the opportunities and threats that new technology may pose to its adoption in the practice of ministry.

Leadership in ministry is an act of exploration of the human relationship with God, an archetype of the relationship that is the Holy Trinity, and the relationships between people. It is no less as exciting a “landscape” as the wilderness on Earth and beyond. Relationships between the elements of a complex system full of human beings and God cannot be understood with a single observation because the system is dynamic. This is one reason why both leadership training for ministers and congregational development make use of systems theory for understanding organizational health, managing change, etc.; however I could find no examples of churches going beyond systems theory to the use of systems engineering approaches for either an assessment of opportunities and threats associated with change such as the adoption of new technology or for increasing operational health by process management.

This report argues for the potential impact of applying systems engineering processes to the introduction of AI technologies in ministry contexts. Systems engineering is holistic and built upon the analysis of relationships; it scales as a process to systems of varying degrees of complexity; and it is applicable to social systems beyond technical and semi-technical systems.

This approach is taken in scientific exploration for developing and vetting new technologies with respect to their risks and benefits. What may be widely known in the scientific community cannot be assumed as commonly known amongst the variety of people engaged in Christian ministry; therefore, it is necessary to discuss the relationships between science, exploration, technology and systems behavior in such a way that the process of scientific exploration and the evaluation of risks associated with it can be made accessible and useful as an analogous approach to evaluating the opportunities and threats associated with the adoption of AI in Christian ministry.

2. Concepts for Scientific Exploration

2.1. Science and Exploration

Science and exploration are not the same. Both processes require observation, yet the scientific method requires the development of a hypothesis or model that can be tested by observation and experimentation. The goal is to support or refute the hypothesis with evidence, and key to scientific data is that the observations be quantitative. The 19th century British scientist Lord Kelvin is widely quoted as declaring that without measurement, an observation is not science2. Numerical measurement is central to the practice of science because of the perception that “numbers do not lie.” This notion should be loosely held because the interpretation of data can be overlaid with bias, particularly in the way the data is presented. Science is not as absolute as we would like it to be because of this, and that is why the scientific community holds itself accountable with the independent verification of measurements.

Exploration has more latitude. It can be described as venturing into an unknown territory to learn about it. Exploration need not have a specific purpose such as prospecting for a resource, yet all living things from microbes to elephants explore their environment to learn about new opportunities and potential threats, and one might argue that the human urge or instinct to explore the spiritual environment may be similarly an instinct to learn about opportunities and threats.

Because the scientific method requires a testable hypothesis, it is, by definition, difficult to interpret data without bias if one is personally invested in the hypothetical premise. For this reason, the scientific community insists on independently reproducible results to embrace a new experimental finding. Exploration can also be biased by hope or the possibility of reward, e.g., the discovery of something that holds value to the explorer or to someone else: the prestige of discovering a “first,” economic gain, political advantage, etc. However, exploration without an agenda presents an opportunity to approach the unknown without the requirement to measure and test, which is more conducive to opportunistic discovery or interesting chance observations.

Note that opportunistic discovery is also to be found in the Bible. Consider the story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3). Moses was tending a flock of sheep for his father-in-law when God appeared to him as fire in the midst of a bush. Had Moses not been curious enough to investigate how a bush could be burning and not consumed, his life might have proceeded quite differently. While the point of the story is the call of Moses to leadership, his curiosity led to the opportunistic discovery of something unexpected that changed his life. Such discoveries have often occurred in both exploration and science, but they occur more often when exploring without a hypothesis or expected outcome.

2.2. Technology

The definition of technology reveals much about attitude. A common thread in nearly all definitions is that technology is a practical application of knowledge. Science is a part of that because scientific principles are what enables the engineer to produce the technology. Where definitions vary and lead us to different conclusions about the utility of technology is in its use. The European Space Agency (ESA) defines technology as “‘the practical application of knowledge so that something entirely new can be done, or so that something can be done in a completely new way.’”3 This is a wonderfully aspirational view of technology. Britannica defines technology as “the application of human knowledge to the practical aims of human life—or, as it is sometimes phrased, to the change and manipulation of the human environment.”4 It could be understandable to be uncertain about technology from such a perspective. Questions must be asked: Is there a universal interpretation of the practical aims of human life? What exactly does the manipulation of the human environment mean for me or for the world? And where does this fit into the agenda of ministry to serve God and one another?

A deep dive into the philosophy of technology in a general sense is beyond the scope of this report; however, it is important to note that new technologies are often presented to potential adopters as timesaving measures that will make life “easier.” Mechanical dishwashers and clothes washing machines, clothes drying machines, air-fryers, automobiles, remote controls for devices, etc., arguably save time for other things; however, artificial intelligence is more than timesaving in its ability to process large amounts of data swiftly and present the results in a language that accessible to the end-user. AI is a technology that should force all of us as end users to decide where to place a boundary between the personal agency used for critical thinking and the convenience of saving time. I have clergy colleagues who have asked generative AI tools to write homilies. Academic institutions have had to develop screening tools to discern whether or not student essays may have been authored by AI tools.

Just as science requires critical thinking, technology development does as well. And just as science can be inherently biased, so can the technology that results from that science. Technology is often regarded as a black box. It can be used without knowing how it works. This requires a certain level of trust, and depending upon the way the technology is presented, uncertainty with respect to trust can prevent the adoption of the technology. Trust levels in black-box technology are varied, and there are robust studies in that regard (Nickel 2012; Christensen and Lyons 2017; Von Eschenbach 2021; Schuetz et al. 2025).

The adoption of technology within the specific context of Christian ministry is subject to the same trust challenges as within other contexts with the additional challenges posed by church culture. Change is often perceived as a threat to tradition, even though the Bible presents God is an innovator. However, some of this hesitation is justified. If we use generative AI to write homilies and formation materials, is there room for the Holy Spirit? Does the Spirit of Wisdom speak through the technology of humankind? The literature boasts tens of thousands of references specifically dealing with just that question, e.g., Hutson and McMaken (2025), Dorobantu (2024) and millions of references to theology and technology in a more general sense. This tells us that it is an important topic to address in an era where our technology has progressed to a milestone where the technology itself is becoming a source of innovation. Herzfeld (2022) reminds us, “Processes such as genetic engineering or nanotechnology not only modify existing objects but also create things that are entirely new.”5 This invites important questions, “Can technology be independently innovative?”, and if so, “Do we want to give away our agency?” If we do cede agency to AI tools, would we not be guilty of abnegating our responsibilities inherent with Christian moral theology to God, to one another and to the planet? The importance of articulating a theology of technology may be secondary to the importance of pondering the theology of human agency and personal responsibility.

The 20th century sociologist/philosopher/theologian Jacques Ellul wrote extensively about the effects of what he called “technique” on human society and on Christian theology. Ellul notes in the frontmatter “Notes to the reader”6 of his major work The Technological Society (1964) that technique refers to “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.” This is a sobering view of the potential breadth of impact of technique or what I would characterize as the “technosphere.” Every activity would clearly include Christianity and other religious practices. I would bristle at the thought of making ministry more efficient as opposed to more effective. And while we cannot assume that those are oppositional end-members, the focus of ministry should always be on impact: the reconciliation of people to God and the care and feeding of souls with wisdom.

In later writings, Ellul (1989) said that the quest for efficiency through technique would force humans to adapt to it rather than the techno-system adapting to human social systems and that this would create a de-emphasis on the sacred.7

Ellul’s line of thinking again prompts us to consider the urgency of the first-order question of how clearly we understand the theology of personal responsibility and agency. Tanner (1993) makes a compelling argument for the importance of the theological basis for human responsibility in making moral choices. To understand the impact of everything we bring to ministry is such a moral choice; in fact, more accurately, it is a moral mandate, lest we become an impediment to the purpose of Christian ministry.

The Bible clearly informs us of the personal responsibility God gave us for our taking care of one another and our environment, having given us dominion over every living thing. Given the long reach of technological innovation, especially with the tools of generative AI, it is imperative that we think carefully about its impact on much more than ministry, but upon all of humanity and the world we inhabit.

Within the specific context of my question, “If we use generative AI to write homilies and formation materials, is there room for the Holy Spirit?”, I would argue that part of the purpose of crafting a sermon is to wrestle with the Word as Jacob wrestled all night with the angel to awaken changed by striving. Yes, it takes time to write a sermon or to prepare a formation class. But is not that preparation a place where striving with the Word through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit leaves the minister transformed?

I do not believe that the Holy Spirit works through technology but rather through the people who design and use it. There is room for the Holy Spirit to grant us wisdom as ministers of the Gospel as we make decisions about how to use technology in ministry, and those decisions will be easier if we engage processes to help us evaluate the impact of adopting technologies such as AI in our praxis.

2.3. Systems

Science is what enables new technology. Technology enables the measurements that science requires, and it facilitates the exploration of unknown and sometimes inaccessible environments. Both science and exploration dictate the initial requirements that the new technology will be designed to meet. This trio of disciplines acts as an open system, and the constituents interact as a function of changes in environmental conditions.

Systems are broadly defined as a collection of constituents that exhibit a behavior or meaning that the individual constituents do not exhibit. This particular definition is derived from the International Council of Systems Engineering (INCOSE),8 and even when defining specific types of systems, there is good agreement on the nature of a system. Clergy and chaplains of various faiths are exposed to the concept of systems through the study of family systems theory because it is a useful model for understanding faith communities, e.g., churches, as systems.

Family systems theory was developed from the work of Murray Bowen (Bowen 1966), who developed a therapeutic model for understanding mental illness in families beginning in the 1950s in the USA. Bowen’s central thesis was that a family is a living system of relational dynamics that must be understood to understand the individuals who are part of the family. The theme of context presents itself once again as key to understanding dynamics, and dynamics are fundamental to understanding relationships between humans with each other, with the rest of creation, and with the divine.

Beyond the family system with which those who practice ministry may be familiar, we all have at least some acquaintance with ecosystems, information systems, chemical and/or physical systems, economic systems and larger social systems because we all live within these systems. The Church is no exception, and understanding the intersection of the various systems in which it resides will prepare the Church to assess its own impact upon the larger system of human society and in turn to recognize the impact of human society and its associated technology upon the Church.

AI has become a part of all these types of systems, gathering data which is fed into the AI “super system,” and that data will provide both positive and negative feedback into the other systems in which we live. Intentionally or not, religious systems contribute data to the evolution of artificial intelligence software and hardware. Claiming our agency by researching the opportunities and threats associated with our incorporation into the AI “super system” would enable the Christian perspective to be heard in all of its diversity within the data systems that train AI to generate text, images and music that will be used by others to learn about what Christianity is. As Bostrom (2005) pointed out two decades ago, as technological developments lead to progress in transhumanist pursuits, “If and when we develop the capability to create some singular entity that could potentially destroy the human race, such as a superintelligent machine, then we could indeed regard it as a crime against humanity to proceed without a thorough risk analysis and the installation of adequate safety features.” This sort of risk analysis is what systems engineering is designed to accomplish.

3. Systems Engineering

3.1. Basic Concepts and Resources

We have discussed the relationship between science, exploration and technology as a system from which knowledge emerges, and the process by which this happens is systems engineering (SE). SE is a process for designing, integrating and managing complex systems from the articulation of what is required through the entire life cycle of the system or project. Given this definition, it could have been designed for the complex system that is a church. Perhaps this is the time to explore whether SE and church are a good fit for one another, particularly in the context of weighing the risks against the benefits of adopting new technologies into the church as a system.

SE began to evolve in the 1940s, largely as a function of the complexity of systems being developed by the U.S. military (Schlager 1956), and it is a process that is ideal for understanding the relationships between elements of a system as well as the flow of information through the various elements of a system, be they people, hardware or software. Consider the “swords into plowshares” irony, that something designed for military purposes could be a useful servant of Christian ministry.

An important characteristic of SE is that stakeholders are gathered early in the process of designing a complex project and they provide the input needed to develop functional requirements before the system is designed. Using an interdisciplinary approach to designing, building, testing and operating systems builds robustness into a complex system.

The core of systems engineering is the Systems Praxis Framework in which systems thinking is the bridge that links various systems science theories including culture and psychology (and I would also argue theology) with the practical application of systems in practice. This is what is meant as praxis—the practical application of theory9. Mapping out a Systems Praxis Framework for a church would be akin to translating theology into praxis for ministry.

There are several good resources for learning about systems engineering as a process, and they are freely available in accessible terms to non-engineers. The Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK)10 is a WIKI-based repository of systems engineering knowledge with several academic partners. From their WIKI site (see Note 10), one may interact with the frequently updated WIKI guide or download a PDF of the guide to systems engineering knowledge for offline access.

An important advantage of using with the SEBoK WIKI is its description of various complex systems in which SE could be of value. One such application is the service system, in which a church community could easily be imagined (SEBoK Editorial Board 2024). The SEBoK describes a service system as “A dynamic configuration of resources (people, technology, organizations and shared information) that creates and delivers value between the provider and the customer through services” (IfM and IBM 2008).

The NASA Systems Engineering Handbook (Hirshorn et al. 2017) is also publicly available11 and easily applicable beyond space exploration to develop and manage a complex system.

3.2. Why Systems Engineering?

And how is it relevant to ministry? From a theological perspective, in the trinitarian framework of Christianity the centrality of relationships is so important that God is the archetype of relationships. It therefore follows that the systems engineering approach of analyzing and tending to relationships throughout the lifecycle of a project or organization is entirely consistent with the importance of relationships in the Body of Christ on Earth and beyond that in the Kingdom of God.

From a practical perspective, SE is requirement-based, and the requirements are provided with input from stakeholders such as the community itself, the leadership and the judicatory. An interdisciplinary team provides alternative design solutions to meet the requirements of the stakeholders, and as the complex system is constructed, it continues to be managed with an interdisciplinary approach. By definition, SE is relational. And because it is process-based, it is an ideal framework for studying how complex systems like a church community change over time as a function of environmental pressures.

The primary alternatives to SE that are used for understanding the life cycle and management of churches are business models. Such models derive their utility from what is required for a business to be successful or an organization to embrace change. And while systems thinking may be a part of a business-based approach, a church is not a business, whose health is defined by its growth. SE is a less transactional approach to designing, operating and managing a complex system, where health is assessed by agreed upon metrics that are specific to the system in question.

And finally, in arguing for the analogous approach of developing and using technology for scientific exploration as a model to explore the use of AI in ministry, I have called out the identification of opportunities and threats as a major consideration for the adoption of AI technologies, and SE provides a useful approach for the assessment of opportunities and threats to a complex system: the risk matrix.

The risk matrix is a five by five, color-coded graphical approach to understanding the likelihood of a threat or risk relative to its consequence on the system (Figure 1).

4. Opportunities and Threats

4.1. Threats

AI is commonly used in many aspects of industry, commerce, academic and creative disciplines, as well as in daily life for the internet-connected citizens in the 21st century. It is already being used in ministry (Ok 2024; Paquini 2024; La Cruz and Mora 2024; Jambrek 2024), so we must be attentive to its effects on Christian ministry as well as the converse. This is where we begin to explore the relationship between AI and ministry to look for potential opportunities and threats. Ironically, that search methodology could include AI searching its own performance to seek data on opportunities and threats. I used Google’s AI overview to ask about threats associated with the use of AI in ministry and received a response that included four theological concerns: misrepresentation and distortion, the substitution of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, playing God, bias and inaccurate content. The AI engine also described ethical concerns: data bias, the substitution of human relationships, the loss of nuance and critical thinking, the perpetuation of misinformation and ethical considerations in decision-making.

Google’s AI overview used the softer language of concerns over threats and did not address the potential surrender of personal agency to AI. This is important in the sequencing of the effects of AI on not only ministry but on humans in general because history teaches us that it is all too easy for humans to surrender personal agency and then be stripped of the opportunity reclaim it. Biblical study also illustrates the human propensity to avoid personal responsibility, asking God to intervene rather than use the gifts of critical thinking, teamwork and compassion to solve problems and build community.

If we were to aspire to a transhuman partnership with artificial super intelligence, this could lead to an even further loss of agency and reliance upon the ASI in exchange power. While there could be undeniable benefits to humankind to use the technical capabilities we have developed to improve life for humans, there is an equally undeniable recognition that where profitability and power are in play, the threats can outweigh the opportunities, and this is where safety systems must be developed and put in place. Jambrek (2024) says the following:

“Although this is widely known, it is worth noting here that human greed for money and the desire for power, influence, and control are inexhaustible motivational forces behind technological advancement. The competition among old and new technology companies in the development and application of artificial intelligence is highly dynamic, driven by profit, power, and control.”

Thus the need to go beyond the assessment of risk and engage in the process of understanding how to manage a system that may not have lofty motivation to match its capability. It is impractical to suggest that all ministers become systems engineers; however, as we serve one another in the Body of Christ, we must at least acquaint ourselves with tools beyond our own areas of expertise so that we may call upon interdisciplinary teams to address complex challenges like how to minimize risk while taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the use of AI in ministry.

4.2. Opportunities

Risk assessment is directed at the discovery of threats. Opportunity is assumed because that is the motivation for developing and adopting new technologies like AI. There are numerous opportunities such as data analytics, streamlining repetitive office tasks, creating probabilistic frameworks for scriptural thematic analysis, searching the internet for formation materials, etc. Generative AI can prompt creativity as well by emboldening us to try new designs for logos and website material because we have AI help. AI can also help with the detection of data vulnerabilities and recognition of social engineering threats like phishing. AI demographic data analytics are useful for planning mission and outreach. And finally, AI can also be used to manage church utilities, resulting in operational cost savings.

Perhaps one of the most exciting opportunities that AI can deliver is opportunistic discovery as mentioned in Section 2.1. These fortuitous observations can be quite consequential, and AI is good at detecting them by analyzing large amounts of data quickly and looking for data that suggests something curious and unexpected if present. Though opportunistic discovery can happen within hypothesis-based experimentation or with applied exploration as in the case of prospecting for mineral resources, opportunistic discovery is more easily accomplished when freed from the encumbrance of an expectation. Humans cannot be completely objective, but with the right training set, a machine can be less biased than a human.

AI is useful for opportunistic discovery because it can rapidly and sensitively compare differences between observations without “caring” about what the outcome of the observations will be. This application of AI is well documented, particularly in medical diagnostic contexts (Allen et al. 2013; Topol 2024) and in geoscience (Chen et al. 2023; Tuia et al. 2024). Religious research (Geraci 2008; Barlow and Holt 2024) lags in the literature, but it will pick up.

The analog context of scientific exploration is an ideal setting to use the systems engineering principles of requirement-driven design to best employ narrow AI to explore the Bible in original languages; theology as it has evolved in the context of geopolitical pressures, population biology, catastrophic natural events, periods of illness and plague, church politics and doctrinal evolution. ANI is well suited for seeking patterns and associations that could lead to opportunistic discoveries about Christianity and its practice.

5. Summary

This report presents advocacy for going beyond the use of systems theory in ministry to applying the processes of systems engineering to the development, introduction and adoption of AI and other new technologies into ministry practices in the church system. The application of systems engineering processes to the development of new technologies for scientific exploration has been extremely successful. It is the reason humans can now explore other planets. SE is now being applied in healthcare systems (see the SEBoK Wiki page described in note 10). SE successes in other fields do not guarantee success in its application to various functions in the church system; however, given that churches routinely invoke systems theory to understand the church as a complex system, it would seem short-sighted not to apply systems engineering as well as the systems theory we already apply to the practice of Christian ministry.

Scientific exploration is an elegant system: science drives the functional requirements for AI technology to be used, and this technology enables the measurements that the science requires. Both science and technology facilitate the exploration of unknown and sometimes inaccessible environments. These disciplines function as a complex system that can be designed, managed and operated with systems engineering principles, and they can work for the church as well. The appropriate adoption of AI tools and whatever new technologies that are to come is a consequential choice that should be made with a process that is thoughtfully beyond the many business models that make use of systems theory but not systems engineering. We should not mistake systems engineering for a series of processes that are only relevant to technical systems. SE is now being used broadly in social systems. I asked GoogleAI what has facilitated its broader adoption and received this answer: “This is because at its core, systems engineering provides a structured, holistic approach to addressing complex challenges and designing effective solutions.”

The church deserves the best tools to help it accomplish its mission, and we should evaluate everything we use in ministry with respect to opportunities and threats, and then we will be prepared to use the gift of critical thinking to evaluate the impact of adopting new technologies such as AI.

Ellul was right to urge caution, but Christians are accustomed to moral discernment (or we should be!) on the basis of the responsibility that God conferred upon us after our creation.

In the Anglican tradition, reason is a core value, but it is not just critical analysis and systems thinking that enable us to make the consequential choice. Let us cede the last word to Jambrek (2024):

“A comprehensive spiritual assessment of AI should be rooted in the Word of God and guided by the Holy Spirit. The quality of spiritual discernment of AI systems, machines, and applications will be ensured for Christians through their daily relationship with God. Considering artificial intelligence, the most important task of the church today and tomorrow is to educate and train believers in AI literacy and biblical-spiritual literacy so that they can make independent and good decisions in all situations involving AI systems.”