How Churches Are Actually Adopting AI

Only 13 percent of U.S. pastors say they don't use AI at all. That single number, from Barna Group's newest research, undercuts the assumption that churches are slow adopters sitting out the AI moment. They're not. The more interesting story is how pastors are using it, and how differently their congregations are using it — a gap wide enough that Barna's own researchers call it "confounding."

Pastors: research and prep, not the pulpit

Half of all pastors (50%) say they use AI for brainstorming or idea generation. More than a third (37%) use it for graphic design or visual creation, about the same share (36%) use it to research biblical or theological topics, and roughly one in three (34%) use it for small-group discussion questions or administrative tasks like scheduling and document prep.¹

Sermon writing is the sharpest-moving number. In early 2024, 12 percent of pastors said they were comfortable using AI to write sermons; today, 24 percent say they're actually doing it.¹ But the pattern that emerges isn't "AI writes the sermon" — it's AI as a research and prep partner: surfacing commentary, exploring theological angles, sketching a structural outline, never generating the message itself.

"Pastors are predominantly using AI for behind-the-scenes work — as a thought partner, a visual aid. They're using it to prepare for ministry, not to replace what happens when they're actually with people."

— Daniel Copeland, Barna Group Vice President of Research¹

For smaller churches without a dedicated communications role, AI-assisted graphic design in particular is filling a real gap — visual content has become essential to how churches communicate, and AI makes it accessible to leaders who'd otherwise go without.¹ Underneath the practical use sits real reluctance: nearly eight in 10 pastors (79%) worry about AI beginning to act as a replacement for God, and nearly two-thirds (63%) worry about it replacing the role of pastors or spiritual leaders.¹

Congregants are moving faster than their pastors

Here's the gap: 44 percent of practicing Christians say they use AI "very often" or "often" in their personal lives, compared to 31 percent of U.S. adults overall. At work, 39 percent of practicing Christians use AI often or very often, versus 26 percent of U.S. adults nationally. Practicing Christians are outpacing nearly every population segment measured — including their own pastors.²

Only 16 percent of pastors say they use AI "often" personally; "very often" barely registers as its own share of the data. A third of pastors use it only "sometimes," and 45 percent say "not very much" or "not at all." At work, pastors report using AI often or very often at 24 percent — well behind the 39 percent of practicing Christians.²

"Ask people yes-or-no whether they use AI, and the average pastor and the average American look about the same. It's frequency of use where the difference actually shows up. The danger for pastors is underestimating just how normal AI is for the people around them."

— Daniel Copeland, Barna Group²

Trust runs further than comfort — and that's the tension

Barna also asked how much people trust AI with personal flourishing — spiritual growth, happiness, meaningful relationships, sense of purpose. Pastors' trust across those domains clusters in single digits to low teens (12% for spiritual growth, 8% for meaningful relationships). Practicing Christians report meaningfully higher trust in every category.³

The sharper number: when asked whether spiritual advice from AI is just as trustworthy as advice from a pastor, 30 percent of U.S. adults agree — and among practicing Christians specifically, it's 34 percent. Among Gen Z that climbs to 39 percent, and among Millennials, 44 percent.³ Those same respondents are, at the same time, deeply worried about AI misinterpreting scripture or displacing spiritual leaders — the trust and the fear coexist in the same people.

That tension shows up concretely around scripture. Barna asked pastors and Christians what AI should do when theologians genuinely disagree on a passage's interpretation. Three in five pastors (60%) want AI to present every major interpretation and explain the differences, without picking one. Only about a quarter of practicing Christians (26%) prefer that — an equal share instead wants AI to name which interpretation is correct, a preference just one in 10 pastors shares.⁴ Christians are more than 2.5 times as likely as pastors to want a "right" answer instead of a set of options.

What this means for a church deciding whether to adopt AI tools

The data doesn't describe resistance or blind adoption — it describes discernment already in progress, on both sides of the pulpit. Practically, that suggests two things worth planning around, not just observing: your congregation is very likely already using AI more than your staff assumes, and the tools your church adopts internally (for prep, communication, and operations) will land differently than any AI-adjacent feature you put in front of members directly, where trust and unease sit closer together.