The following is a response to the open letter in the October 31 issue of Adventist Record by Mitchell Strahan, regarding the use of AI in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia.
Dear Mitchell,
It was nice to chat with you briefly at Big Camp—one of the great blessings of Big Camp is the random catch-ups that build community.
Thank you for your open letter regarding the use of AI in our Church in Australia. As you point out, in wider culture and in the life of the Church, AI use is increasingly being embraced. I saw some of the examples you refer to. I agree we need to guard against a use of AI that generates quick content but may undermine authenticity, trust and ultimately engagement in the Church from the public. While I agree that we run the risk, especially among younger generations, of overt AI use being a negative, there are also upsides when it is used well. I agree with the challenges you outline in view of creativity and work and how we might be negating giftedness. At the same time, there are places where a message can be more effectively communicated or ministries enhanced by AI. For example, when cleverly used by a gifted person, design is enhanced without the overt AI “feel” you refer to or where translation tools allow wider engagement.
You are right that study, writing and preparation “shapes the person doing it”. A leader who wrestles with a text when crafting a presentation is also changed by the wrestling. If we outsource that work, we may gain speed and lose depth, and it is depth that is desperately needed in a consumer culture that increasingly skims life as well as each other.
I agree that the church is a body that includes gifted designers, writers, story tellers, artists, photographers, musicians and more. If we simply default to AI generated content, we risk undervaluing creative parts of our church body. We must then ask the questions, “Can AI be used to strengthen giftedness without replacing it?” And, “What does it look like to value the process of human creativity over the ease and speed with which AI produces content?”
As you point out, we must be informed by biblical principles and Adventist heritage as we work within the changing context of AI. Our responses must be shaped around guidelines that enhance stewardship, creativity, mission and pastoral care over reliance on quick answers and material that can negate the work of the Spirit. Our Adventist heritage provides a useful guide. As a church, we embraced the printing press, then radio, television, satellite and the internet. We recognised the opportunities and shortcomings in technology in a way that was engaged but not uncritical. We embraced, yet resisted, technology where needed. Technology has been seen as a tool that can both enhance—yet also undermine—the mission of our Church.
We need to filter AI through the same lens. How might AI enhance what it means to be the church? What might it destroy? Can AI make administrative processes more efficient so that a local pastor has more capacity for pastoral leadership? Where can AI be used to create tools for mission, eg, the ability to easily translate languages?
As a Church system, we are working through the seemingly ever-changing challenges and opportunities of AI. Our administrators’ gatherings include a focus on AI and implications for our Church. At our recent business professionals gathering, AI was a theme explored through various windows. Adventist Technology are very aware of the privacy and data challenges and are continually working across our Church system to guard against and mitigate challenges. Our ministerial association is acutely aware of the benefits and challenges of AI for our pastors, chaplains and elders. They continue to work on AI guidance, including implementing guidelines, resourcing and training, so that our team filters AI usage with a view to grow the ingredients of a healthy ministry, informed by AI but not reliant on or subservient to it in unhealthy ways. Our educators prayerfully work through what AI means for the mission of our schools. As you point out, OneVoice27 includes a focus on digital content and we are working toward what it looks like to use AI in constructive ways rather than simply adding AI noise that disengages.
The bigger AI challenges for our Church may perhaps be around the workforce changes that are already underway. How might AI take on roles across our system and how will these changes impact our Church employees and the communities we serve within?
Open AI CEO Sam Altman points out a possible dystopian future if we lose the primacy of humanity in the AI shift. Altman outlines if we get the AI settings wrong, we could end up in a culture where “you’re going to get a cure for cancer, you’re going to have material abundance, but you will have no freedom, you will have no agency, it will be a perfect surveillance state . . . you’re going to get great comfort, but there will be nothing left in the world for you to really do. Nothing that really matters.”
The type of future Altman outlines as possible feeds anxiety across our culture. Yet, this very “anxiety” can be a catalyst for mission as the Church models what it is to be a non-anxious presence in the world. In the face of a “nothing that really matters” culture, the Jesus story always matters. Embracing biblical community is vital in a world that undermines it. The Church’s core functions of growing, serving, connecting, sharing and worshipping are even more critical in an otherwise-dystopian context.
In view of next steps, holding back the “tide” of AI use, moratorium style, is not an option where our Church system works against hierarchical control. However, increasing resourcing and guidance around the use of AI is essential and a challenge across all levels of the Church organisation.
I support your call for a Church-wide conversation and a guiding framework. We are working on this very thing. Rather than a blanket prohibition, we are developing clear, practical guidelines for AI use, including the role of the human in the generation of material and where AI should be avoided. We are increasing training and resourcing around AI as, I agree, that investing in people is the best answer to the temptation of the shortcut. The gospel works through relationships and no tool can really do the work of a person who has been changed by Christ and then shares Him. If AI can help in this process, then great. If AI undermines relationships and human value, then we need to put in place strategies to negate these negative effects.
Thank you for your contribution in this conversation. I look forward to continuing it with you and our church family as we inspire, empower and equip for thriving communities of hope.
PS. This reply to your letter is not generated by AI.
God bless in your ministry,
Dr Brendan Pratt
Dr Brendan Pratt is the president of the Australian Union Conference.
