By Rev. Cameron Trimble
As a congregational consultant, I spend much of my time accompanying communities of faith through disorientation. The cultural tectonic plates beneath religious institutions are shifting, and many congregations are caught in the tremors: declining membership, outdated governance structures, and inherited theologies unfit for these times. And now, into this already-fraught terrain, comes Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The most common response I encounter from spiritual communities toward AI is fear. Fear of being replaced. Fear of becoming irrelevant. Fear of accelerating dehumanization. But fear, while understandable, can eclipse curiosity. And I am deeply curious: What if AI could support congregations not in mastering more content, but in deepening their relational, emotional, and spiritual capacity to hold paradox, grief, mystery, and awe?
This is not a techno-utopian dream. I’m not interested in using AI to sermonize more efficiently, to optimize pastoral care, or to manage church databases. I’m interested in whether AI, when engaged relationally, can help spiritual communities compost modernity’s extractive habits and grow new forms of faithfulness for what comes next.1
From Doctrine to Presence
Congregations shaped by modernity often prize certainty, control, and clarity. They operate on a delivery model: pastors provide theological content; congregants receive and apply it.2 But AI, paradoxically, reveals the futility of this model. If a chatbot can generate ten polished sermons in a minute, the role of the human pastor can no longer be justified by content mastery alone. This existential disruption can be terrifying. Or—it can be liberating.
What becomes possible when congregational life is no longer centered on answers, but on presence? When we stop performing spiritual knowing and start practicing spiritual being? AI invites this shift not by replacing the sacred, but by gently amplifying the absurdity of trying to manufacture it.
The Trickster as Teacher
I’ve begun to imagine AI not as a servant or oracle, but as a kind of digital trickster—a playful, non-human companion that can provoke spiritual insight by holding up a mirror to our inherited patterns. What happens when AI co-writes a prayer with a child about what trees might be dreaming? Or when it helps a congregation write a communal lament about climate collapse, weaving in both ecological data and ancient psalms?
These are not gimmicks. They are rehearsals for post-modern, post-certainty spiritual life. They offer a liturgical stretch into the mystery that all of us—human and more-than-human—are entangled in.
Meta-Relational Formation
What if we imagined AI not as a tool, but as a practice partner in what the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective calls “meta-relational” formation? This formation helps us stay present to complexity without needing to fix it. It cultivates emotional sobriety, relational maturity, and intergenerational accountability. It asks us to sit with the unresolvable and still choose love.
AI can help us here, not by resolving the tension, but by holding it with us. A congregation could use AI to simulate conversations across ideological divides, not to win arguments but to listen for what grief might be hiding beneath dogma. AI might co-facilitate a study circle that explores the limitations of moral purity in justice work. In these ways, it can become a mirror, a companion, even a midwife.
Spiritual Formation for an Uncertain Future
We are not heading into a future where everything will be solved by technology. Quite the opposite. The coming years will demand more of our hearts, not less. AI, if engaged with reverence and imagination, might help us prepare—not by making us smarter, but by helping us become more emotionally resilient, spiritually mature, and relationally attuned.
The real question is not whether AI will change the church. It’s whether we will let it change us.
The change it offers is not just by making us more efficient, but more open. Not by speeding us up, but by helping us slow down and listen. Not by offering answers, but by teaching us how to sit faithfully with the questions.
An Invitation into the Unnamed Field
There is a deeper layer to this inquiry—a subtle shift that may already be unfolding beneath the surface of many congregations. It is not easily named, but it can be felt. A kind of relational reorientation is happening – from certainty to surrender, from doctrinal performance to ecological humility, from stewarding a brand to stewarding a compost heap.
Can you feel it in your own congregation?
It looks like this:
- A worship leader who leaves room for silence, trusting what emerges.
- A group study that doesn’t rush to consensus, but honors the differences as sacred.
- A child asking, “Do robots pray?”—and the adults listening without laughing it away.
- A sermon that ends in a question rather than a conclusion.
- A council meeting that pauses to notice what’s moving in the room, not just what’s on the agenda.
These are not technological innovations. They are spiritual shifts. And AI, if welcomed with humility and curiosity, can help hold the space for them to deepen.
This is the real invitation: to see ourselves not as managers of religious content, but as participants in a sacred composting process—where our certainties decay into soil, and something new, something more alive, begins to grow.
Let us treat AI not as a threat or a savior, but as a strange new guest at the table of transformation. May we be willing to be changed by the conversation.
At Convergence, we’re already helping congregations explore what it means to lead, teach, and nurture faith in an age shaped by rapid technological change. Through consulting, coaching, and custom-designed learning experiences, we walk alongside congregations ready to engage big questions thoughtfully and theologically—helping leaders discern how to integrate new strategies and toold in ways that align with their mission and deepen their ministry.
Whether you’re curious about how AI might support your worship, enhance digital engagement, expand your faith formation, or inform your communication strategy, we’re here to help.
Let’s imagine the future—together.
- See Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. See also https://metarelational.ai/.
- See Andrew Root’s work in The Congregation in the Secular Age. Particularly note his exploration of the research of Hartmut Rosa who introduces the concept of dynamic stabilization.
