Calling all pastors — this piece is for us. If you’re like me, you were trained by mentors, seminary professors and catechists to prioritize pastoral care within your ministries. Regardless of denomination, we were trained to give our ear to the needs of our congregants.
We were taught how to make visits to those who are sick and shut-in. We learned how to offer bereavement care to people who are living with loss. We found a rhythm of feeding our communities through food pantries and food drives. Some of us learned how to become advocates for our members through the work of lobbying and demonstrating publicly to get the attention of our elected officials so that the necessary policies might be changed for our communities to live well. For most clergy, that work has fallen under the umbrella of pastoral care.
But what if I told you that, in addition to our members needing their pastor to hold their hands through those needs, in this moment they also need their pastor to walk them through the implications of artificial intelligence? Yes, grappling with the implications of AI is actually a pastoral care concern. Why? Because the fast pace of technology has a direct impact on the personal and professional lives of our parishioners.
Our members have always looked to their congregational leaders to help usher them through unexpected communal moments within society. When natural disasters occur, we look to the church for assistance in recovery. When a global pandemic broke out six years ago, we looked not only to public health officials and scientists, but also to clergy to make sense of what we were living through.
When elected leaders choose to roll back wins that we thought were secure, folks have looked to the church to speak into that gap. Likewise, as technological innovation advances at an alarming rate, people are looking for hope, clarity and wisdom as they confront it. Friends, this is a pastoral care moment.
According to findings from the Pew Research Center, 53% of Americans responding to a June 2025 survey said that AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively, and 50% said AI will worsen people’s ability to form meaningful relationships with others. Pew’s report on the study also said that “nearly four-in-10 U.S. adults say they engage with AI at least several times a day. This includes 7% who report doing so almost constantly.”
With so many people adapting to AI, it’s time for the church to grapple with the reality that we are in the midst of a seismic shift not unlike prior agricultural, scientific and industrial revolutions. We must all grapple with the ongoing momentum of this digital revolution. We wouldn’t leave our members to struggle alone with the changes brought about by the aforementioned revolutions. Likewise, we cannot leave our members in this moment.
I am encouraging clergy to take this conversation very seriously. This does not need to happen at the level of adaptation but at the level of implication. Clergy do not need to become experts in artificial intelligence overnight. But we can do what we’ve always done: Examine the implications of a particular social movement.
