The Relationship Crisis — Community That Can't Be Replicated
Convenient alternatives exist. AI chatbots, digital companions, and online content are available 24/7. Some people — especially isolated people — will choose the ease of digital interaction over the friction of embodied community. This is a real pastoral concern, not a hypothetical one.
The Deeper Question
Jahng asks: "How do we preserve embodied community when disembodied connection becomes more convenient?" But that question reveals an assumption worth examining: that the church is a service competing for market share.
Church isn't a service provider competing with other providers for market share. It's the Body of Christ — the gathered assembly of believers who share life, break bread, confess sin, bear burdens, and spur one another toward love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24–25). If someone chooses a chatbot over that, the problem isn't the chatbot. The problem is that the church wasn't being the church.
What AI Cannot Do
AI can't pray with you in suffering. It can't weep with you in grief. It can't celebrate with you in joy. It can't lay hands on the sick. It can't baptize you. It can't serve you communion. It can't show up at your door with a casserole when your spouse dies. It can't sit with you in silence when words fail. It can't look you in the eye and say "I've been where you are, and God was faithful."
AI's limitations highlight what's truly valuable about human ministry. The contrast makes genuine pastoral care more precious, not less.
What Might God Be Doing?
Creating hunger for authenticity. As synthetic interaction proliferates, people may develop a deeper hunger for genuine human connection. The church has always offered what the world cannot manufacture: real community, real accountability, real love with skin on it. If AI makes counterfeit connection easier, it simultaneously makes authentic connection more rare — and more valued.
Purifying the church. If people choose AI over church, perhaps they were never seeking Christ — just seeking a service. The church has always been refined by losing people who were there for the wrong reasons. Gideon's army was 32,000 strong — and God sent home 31,700 (Judges 7). God prefers a small, committed remnant to a large, uncommitted audience.
Demonstrating the irreplaceable. Genesis 2:18 tells us "It is not good that man should be alone." God's solution was not a better tool — it was another human being. The need for embodied community is hardwired into creation. No technology will override it, because it was designed by the same God who made us.
An Honest Word About AI's Real Risks
Because I work with AI every day, I want to acknowledge what the technology actually gets wrong — not from a position of fear, but from experience.
AI hallucinates. It generates confident-sounding claims that are simply false. In our own work, Claude has produced citations that don't exist, attributed quotes to the wrong people, and stated interpretations as facts. Every single output requires human verification. This is not a minor caveat — it is a fundamental limitation. A pastor who takes AI output at face value will, eventually, teach something untrue from the pulpit.
AI can foster unhealthy emotional dependency. People — especially isolated people — can form attachments to AI that substitute for genuine human relationship. This is a real counseling concern. As a Board Certified Christian Counselor, I've seen how people in pain will gravitate toward whatever responds to them without challenge. AI provides infinite patience without accountability — which sounds compassionate but can actually enable avoidance of the real relational work people need.
AI reflects the biases in its training data. It can perpetuate errors, reinforce stereotypes, and present contested positions as settled fact. The organizational lens principle applies to AI just as it applies to every human institution — the tool has embedded assumptions, and most users never think to ask what they are.
AI raises real privacy concerns. People sharing intimate spiritual struggles with AI chatbots are sharing data with corporations whose incentives are not pastoral. This deserves honest discussion, not dismissal.
None of these risks invalidate AI's usefulness. All of them require wisdom. And wisdom — not fear — is the biblical response to complexity.
Final Reflections
Looking across all three of Jahng's concerns, here's what we see:
He raises legitimate challenges. People WILL struggle. Pastors SHOULD prepare. Wisdom IS required.
But the underlying posture of much pastoral writing on AI — including Jahng's — is defensive anxiety. And that posture doesn't match the God we serve.
The biblical posture:
God is sovereign over technological change. The church has survived every previous revolution — the printing press, the industrial revolution, the internet — not by retreating but by proclaiming truth more clearly. The Gospel did not become insufficient when Gutenberg invented movable type. It does not become insufficient now.
From personal testimony: I've worked in AI for years while pastoring, counseling, and building businesses. The technology has made me MORE effective in ministry, not less. It handles what machines should handle so I can focus on what only a human can do: love people, speak truth, sit with suffering, point to Christ.
The question isn't whether AI will disrupt society. It will.
The question is: Will the church respond with fear or faith? With defensive retreat or confident engagement?
I vote for faith, engagement, and hope.
Because the same God who was sovereign over the printing press, the industrial revolution, and the internet is sovereign over artificial intelligence. He is not anxious. He is not scrambling for a response. He is seated on the throne, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against His church.
Our job? Be faithful. Love people. Proclaim truth. Trust God.
The rest is His.
Selected Sources
Government Documents
Executive Order 14179, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence." January 2025.
"Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan." White House OSTP, July 23, 2025. ai.gov.
Executive Order, "Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government." July 23, 2025.
Executive Order, "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence." December 12, 2025.
Church and AI Research
Barna Group / Gloo. "State of the Church 2026: Key Trends Shaping Faith." Faith & AI Initiative. February 2026.
Barna Group / Pushpay. "Technology for Missional Impact: State of Church Tech 2026." March 2026.
AiForChurchLeaders.com / Exponential AI NEXT. "2025 State of AI in the Church Survey Report." December 2025.
Pew Research Center. "Americans' Views on AI's Growing Role in Society." 2025.
Hartford Institute for Religion Research. "The Continuing Impact of Technology on Congregations."
Kenny Jahng: Public Positions Cited
Jahng, Kenny. "The Role of AI in the Church." National Association of Evangelicals. June 2025.
Jahng, Kenny. AiForChurchLeaders.com. Platform and courses.
Jahng, Kenny. ChurchTechToday.com. Editor-in-chief.
Jahng, Kenny. AI NEXT Director, Exponential. Conferences and podcast.
Historical / Theological
Noll, Mark. Various works on American Christianity and the Great Depression.
Encyclopedia.com. "Religion 1931-1939." (Church attendance during the Depression.)
Influence Magazine / AG News. "Growing Through the Great Depression: 8 Enduring Lessons." 2024.
Institute for Family Studies. "The Decline in Church Attendance in COVID America." 2022.
AI Background
Christian Daily International. "A Third of Christians Trust Spiritual Advice from AI as Much as Pastors." 2025.
Christianity Today. "Should We Bring AI into the Church?" May 2025.
9Marks. "Are AI's Promises of Productivity Worth the Risks for Pastors?" July 2025.
The Gospel Coalition. "AI's Usefulness and Its Dangers for Preachers." October 2025.
Korpi, Todd. AI Goes to Church: Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence. IVP, 2025.
Standard Disclosures
Doug Hamilton is a Christian pastor and Board Certified Christian Counselor. His faith informs his worldview. This lens is acknowledged, not hidden.
This analysis was produced collaboratively with AI research tools (Claude, by Anthropic). The methodology, judgment, and conclusions are Doug's. The research breadth is AI-assisted. This collaboration is disclosed because our own standard demands transparency.
Kenny Jahng's framework was encountered through denominational leadership channels. His public positions were evaluated from publicly available materials. This response engages his ideas, not his character.
No matter how diligently we work to set aside bias, a lens remains. Do your own research. Test these findings. Hold us to our own standard. Proverbs 18:17 applies to us too.
Written in collaboration between Pastor Doug Hamilton and Claude
Originally January 2026 · Revised April 2026