Technology has long shaped church communications, from the advent of radio and television to the photocopiers that enabled mass-produced bulletins. Today, the emergence of AI tools for churches offers the potential to generate images, articles, and videos in mere minutes. However, real-world results vary, and church leaders should exercise discernment when integrating these applications into their ministry.
The most effective way to determine how these technologies fit your mission is to explore them firsthand. To help you navigate this shifting landscape, consider the AI implications for church leadership. The following resources provide a starting point for your experimentation.
- AI for writing content. ChatGPT (Chat.OpenAI.com) has gotten the most press in this area. Type in a request such as “Write a brief description for why people should be in a Bible study group,” as I did recently. I got a useful response in seconds. For short content like this, it can be useful, but I strongly advise against using it (and similar AI programs) to create Bible studies, devotional materials, etc., as the content it generates has no guarantee of truth.
Recommended text-generation programs:
* Easy-peasy.ai—This breaks its offering down into categories, various kinds of posts for various social media platforms, etc.
* WordAI.com—Claims human-level readability and that it’s not detectable as AI writing
- AI for images. If you are already using Canva (Canva.com) in your church communications ministry, it has a useful and easy-to-try AI tool in its “Text to Image” app. Sometimes, the results have little to do with the prompt you entered, and it isn’t good at creating people. However, I have found it useful for patterned backgrounds and simple images. Use this link for dozens of free ones I created and a video that shows how I did it.
Additional AI image creation tools:
* Craiyon.com—free, similar quality to what Canva produces.
These two are more advanced, time-consuming and costly, but can result in high-quality images:
* Dall-E 2 (OpenAI.com/product/dall-e-2)
* Midjourney (Midjourney.com)
- AI for video creation. In reality, all video creation tools online use some sort of artificial intelligence. I’ve recently been testing them, and one that stands out is VEED.io. It is the easiest video creation tool I’ve ever used, and within minutes you can record a video, screencast or any combination thereof, in any size. Plus, it has a built-in teleprompter, caption generator and many more tools.
Additional video creation programs include:
* RunwayML.com—Also includes many image-editing features, worth checking out
* Beautiful.ai—Creates slide decks
* Lumen5.com—Creates videos from blogs
AI seems magical. In reality, its results are simply the compilation of content and actions from the web. It has no mind of its own—it is us, the good and the bad, truth and lies. There is no fact-checking against biblical truth or objective checking for any reality in it.
AI can be a useful servant and, as we do with all our communication projects, we need to pray for wisdom and discernment, remembering that the God who created the galaxies with a word isn’t at all surprised by the wonders of AI.