I have said to a number of people that I am hoping we can become an “AI-First Ministry” and the immediate, slightly humorous but not fully intended to be funny, responses have been:
- "Ted, our goal is to put God first in our ministry, not AI."
- "Ah, you want to push a button ministry."
- "I thought we wanted to be a people-first ministry."
- And so on.
I get it. I’m sure the phrase “AI-First Ministry” rightly feels a little off. Thinking about it, I have concluded that “AI-First” is problematic. So, “AI-Native” it is. The definition sets the framework into a proper context.
What do I mean by "The AI-Native" ministry?
I first heard the term “AI Native Non-Profit” from Bill Simmons of Hope Rises, on the Non-Profit CEO podcast. I am shamelessly stealing it here, but Bill should get the credit for it.
This is my attempt at defining “The AI-Native Ministry.” I am very open to hear your thoughts. Feel free to give me some ideas on how to improve it in the comments of my Substack:
An AI-Native Ministry is one that treats intelligence as infrastructure, not as a tool.
An AI-Native Ministry is one that treats intelligence as infrastructure, not as a tool, and redesigns its work so that people can be at the center of its mission delivery, increasing human presence, community, and agency in decision-making.
An AI-Native Ministry does not ask, “where can we use AI?” but rather knows that there is an AI agent on the team.
An AI-Native Ministry asks, “What is the necessary human element we can serve?” and AI comes along to implement that vision. The team doesn’t look for an application to use AI as a tool, but rather focuses on serving people and letting AI be a part of that process.
The prior question
The prior conversation to have about AI, particularly as applied to ministry, surrounds the morality involved.
The prior conversation to have about AI, particularly as applied to ministry, surrounds the morality involved (what is often called the “ethics”). One of the best current pieces I could find on this topic is produced by Quintin McGrath and posted on the Lausanne Movement's website under the title, AI Ethical Framework (a presentation at the end of June 2026 by Dr McGrath to the WEA Mission Commission is also available on YouTube).
He suggested four areas to consider:
- Commission Alignment
- Relational Alignment
- Utility and Equity Alignment
- Moral Alignment.
McGrath's article is as relevant now as when it was posted almost a year ago which is astonishing when you consider the pace of change we are experiencing with AI. These are all worth considering as you develop your approach.
A policy adoption or formal statement made about AI... rules surrounding use.
An AI-Native Ministry would codify these in some way. There might be a policy adoption or formal statement made about AI. There may be rules surrounding use, areas where AI was not allowed to plunder information, and clear communication to constituents about how their data was being fed to AI. My own organization has no such guiding document (yet).
Intelligence as infrastructure
Infrastructure is all around us, all the time. Its ubiquitous nature means that it is not something that we see. It fades into the background.
Infrastructure also is enablement. You’re currently using electricity to read this. That electricity is infrastructure that makes it possible for you to do so, and you didn’t think about it at all.
For AI to be successfully deployed in an AI-Native Ministry, it... must become ubiquitous, fade into the background.
For AI to be successfully deployed in an AI-Native Ministry, it also must become ubiquitous, fade into the background, and enable us to do our work.
Because AI is so new, it doesn’t feel at all like infrastructure. When I see one of my staff members struggling to sort a spreadsheet to pull out a list and cross-reference other information against it, I suggest to them that they use AI. This is novel, and it feels different than how they used to do their work.
There is a learning curve. There is the natural human reaction to resist change. But then they see the results. Time is saved and they like it. That is a step toward adoption. This is where many ministry workers are today.
If you are trying to think up a good way to use AI in ministry, then you are not seeing it as infrastructure. Instead, you are seeing it as a tool looking for a problem to solve. We are on a change curve right now, with AI moving from novelty to tool. We are deep into adoption, to get the sort of intelligence we need for ministry.
We are not yet deep into intelligence being a part of the infrastructure.
We are not yet deep into intelligence being a part of the infrastructure. Most people are using AI for copy edit, spreadsheet manipulation, and personal productivity gains. All helpful stuff, but it is not stuff that brings new insight to the fore.
Intelligence as infrastructure means that we will use AI in a discovery process, both internally and for those we serve. Part of the reason that we are somewhat stuck at the tool stage is that AI implementations are still rather crude, constantly shifting and changing, and are a bit counterintuitive... for now.
Redesigning work
As intelligence becomes infrastructure, the way we understand and perceive our work will necessarily change. What my organization Missio Nexus provides to member missionary agencies by way of information will rapidly change.
We have for years conducted survey work about the progress of mobilization, finance, member care, executive compensation, and numerous other disparate datapoints for missions activity. AI allows these to be collated in ways we are still discovering.
The preliminary work that we are doing is going to result in a rich treasure trove for our ministry members. These are things we’ve dreamed of doing that we’ve never been able to do. It will inform leaders in ways that they didn’t know were possible.
The tools are evolving quickly.
X (formerly Twitter) just made Grokbot available on my plan and I have been using it for the past few days. It is a major improvement over what I was doing in Claude Cowork for most things. Next week, it will be some other platform leaping ahead. The tools are evolving quickly.
This highlights a problem with redesigning work now. It’s hard to commit to a platform because the tools are changing so fast. Until this slows down, AI will be more about projects than primary work.
Centering people
Ministry is about people.
Ministry is about people. An AI-Native Ministry necessarily needs to put people at the center of what they’re doing, not technology. Conservative commentators are arguing that AI will be used in ways that diminish what it means to be human. Jonathan Pageau’s talk at the ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) conference this year is a must-see for anybody thinking about the dehumanizing nature of AI and I recommend you watch to it.
I have already sat through numerous demos of new products that do evangelism or bring people interested into an evangelism discussion. People have created apologetics bots, discipleship bots, preaching bots, and many other ministry-type bots. There are going to be plenty of new tools that right now we can’t even imagine.
In my little definition, I came up with three ways that people can be centered if we’re thoughtful about how we use AI.
1. Human presence
AI should give us more possibilities for in-person connections.
In an AI-Native Ministry, the goal is not to automate everything so that the world becomes robotic and we get rid of all of our staff. Instead, AI should give us more possibilities for in-person connections between people. It should improve the quality of that time.
An example of improved quality might be the AI task and transcription services we get in virtual meetings and with AI recorders. I don’t have to stop the meeting to write down a task. I can just say, “Okay, let’s assign that task,” and it’s been captured.
Automating routine tasks obviously can free up more time for us to be with others. I think it can go much further, though. We have begun a project mapping out mission agencies with similar methods, purposes, and goals.
Our Claude agent surfs their websites, pulls down their mission statements, looks at their primary activities. It generates a profile about each one. We can then cluster them so that we can introduce the leaders to each other. Hopefully, we’ll see more human presence because of this kind of AI-driven mapping increasing human presence.
2. Community
One of the best events I facilitate each year is called the Denominational Roundtable. It is a small event of denominational mission agency leaders. They share a lot in common. Because of this, the conversations, the information sharing, and the learning that’s happening makes it a powerful event. There’s also a sense of fellowship and camaraderie that you can’t get with any other group of people because, again, they share so much in common.
We can leverage AI to create more community, and more quality community.
That same data collection project I mentioned above will enable us to create events with cohorts of finely tuned peers. Because one of our organizational superpowers is the ability to convene mission leaders, we can leverage AI to create more community, and more quality community.
3. Agency in decision-making
An appropriate concern about AI is losing the human element in the decision-making chain. Ukraine and Russia are both currently using autonomous drone strikes under AI control. Israel did it in Gaza.
I would be surprised if the US isn’t as well, though I could find any sources claiming so. This should cause us to fear how AI is being implemented—people are not making the decisions, AI is, on something very consequential.
Use AI to increase human agency in decision-making.
An AI-Native Ministry would use AI to increase human agency in decision-making. At least for things that are consequential, affect the lives of others, and impact on ministry and mission delivery. I’m not talking about AI approvals, which we are used to if we use these various tools. Those are important, but I’m more concerned with the overall design of our mission infrastructure.
AI can’t memorize verses for you. It can’t pray. It can’t exercise the gift of discernment, or any of the other spiritual gifts, for that matter. We are spiritual beings.
The best AI can ever do is fake it. We can’t let machine learning and vector-based word guessing replace what is most important about how we are created: the image of God in us.
This deeply affects our theology of mission (commonly known as missiology). The missio Dei (mission of God) theological construct has abstracted global mission. I find it lacking in an era which abstracts human identity. When we frame our biblical mandate as "God being on mission" rather than us (or the Church), we are hiding (or spiritualizing?) human involvement.
I think this was a feature and a reason for its implementation a century ago. With the collapse of the optimistic view of an ever-improving mankind in the early half of the 1900s, missio Dei rose to prominence in part to address participation in these tragedies (if I may be so bold… it also provided cover for colonialism).
Human agency... will be at the core of a rising new missiology.
Human agency, I believe, will be at the core of a rising new missiology (theology of mission) needed for the next century. I have alluded elsewhere to the need for an "imago Dei" missiology. Both our post-modern context and AI are growing this need.
Getting there
As AI seeps into our lives and ministry, a move to an AI-Native Ministry paradigm will come whether we want it or not. Change is hard and change for any religious institution, whether it’s a church or a missionary agency, seems particularly difficult.
There will be early adopters and there will be late bloomers. There will probably also be a smattering of hold outs, naked prophets assaulting the adoption of AI.
Younger leaders in smaller, more nimble organizations are often credited with being able to make change the fastest. Our own ministry team at Missio Nexus is small, and that small size is an asset in any change process.
It will take enormous amounts of leadership to break habits and assumptions.
Larger ministries will need a more proactive and planned approach. It will take enormous amounts of leadership to break habits and assumptions as Clayton M. Christensen explained in his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma.
My suggestion is that we direct instead of react.
Originally published on Ted's Substack, TedQuarters. Republished with permission.
We will also post a response to this opinion.
Ted Esler is the President of Missio Nexus, an association of agencies and churches representing hundreds of mission agencies and churches. Ted worked in the computer industry and then served in the Balkans during the 1990s. He then held various leadership roles with Pioneers. He was appointed the President of Missio Nexus in 2015. He is the author of The Innovation Crisis. Ted has a PhD in Intercultural Studies (Fuller Theological Seminary, 2012).
