Christianity Today October 5, 2026 6 min signal 2026-10-05

AI is weakening pastors’ authority

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Christianity Today

October 5, 2026

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Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

A California pastor named Justin Lester has built a digital twin of himself using nearly 2 million words from his sermons, books, and other messages. The artificial intelligence–generated clone offers counsel around the clock to hundreds of people in Vallejo, a city in the Bay Area. The New York Times, which reported on Lester, said the AI twin talks in the pastor’s cadence. It has comforted a woman the night before heart surgery, advised a person who felt despair over a lost job, and generated a letter for a homesick child at camp.

Lester is not alone in searching for ways to incorporate generative AI into Christianity. The creators of one AI-infused app, called Bible Chat, have created another sort of digital chaplaincy that allows users to confess their secrets and sins to a chatbot, and ask it for insight about how to interpret the bible. Bible Chat has been downloaded more than 30 million times. Other “faith tech” tools are also on the rise.

I’m sure most of us already sense something is off here, and plenty has been written about the obvious concerns with the technology: Can a chatbot pray for you? (No.) Can it know you? (No.) Can it be trusted to tell you the truth when the truth costs something? (No.) I won’t use this article to rehearse those arguments. Instead, I will focus on our existing problems, as Protestants, with spiritual authority and how AI technology that provides spiritual guidance threatens to make it a lot worse.

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Consider what Lester actually did. When the pastor created a digital twin, he wanted to extend his care to more people than one man can reach. But what he did was curtail the one thing he was set apart to carry.

Scripture describes the pastor’s task in terms that can feel unsettling even to me as a minister: Leaders are to keep watch over souls as “those who will have to give an account” (Heb. 13:17, ESV throughout). An AI clone might dispense words. It cannot, however, give that account to God. Nothing is at stake for it, and it answers to no one.

Other faith-tech apps, some of which let Christians create profiles and connect virtually with each other, carry similar problems. They appear to offer the goods of pastoral care and a Christian community. But they risk sidestepping the real-life mutual accountability that is inherent to the biblical model.

Sure, it might be alluring to tell your problems to AI and never encounter the displeasure of seeing a raised eyebrow. But we are called to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2) and to confess sin and to pray “for one another” (James 5:16). It is humans, not sets of code, who can truly give us a listening ear and petition God on our behalf.

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The growing popularity of these apps is no accident. Our society—and yes, even many Christians—is passionate about holding people to account and remarkably uninterested when accountability is asked of it in return. We demand transparency from institutions and grant ourselves privacy. We want leaders to be subject to scrutiny but don’t want our own lives subject to anyone. A pastor who can’t see you is, for some people, exactly the pastor they want.

That said, every case is different. Many Christians have left churches for reasons any reasonable person could understand: pastors who manipulated and abused people, covered up problems, or lorded their authority over the sheep. Bad authority is real, and Scripture never asks us to pretend otherwise. But the answer to bad authority is not no authority, or an AI bot that validates our every emotion. It is accountable authority found in a local congregation.

Yet, making the case for human leadership is not always easy. Spiritual authority has been so abused that I have heard even sincere Christians ask why we need it, or if it’s important. It is, primarily because real spiritual authority comes from God (Matt. 16:16–19). When authority is exercised the way Jesus exercised it (kneeling with a towel to serve the ones he leads), it can help us become the person God has called us to be.

Paul told Timothy to take what he’d received and “entrust [it] to faithful men, who will be able to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2). The methods for this have varied across the centuries—personal discipleship, formal training, denominational ordination—and we hold a mix of them now. But the overall aim is connectedness to the historic church, to the great tradition, to a faith that was delivered and passed along by humans to other humans.

Scripture is clear that God calls specific people to the solemn work of watching over his flock. Paul says the ascended Christ gave the church pastors and teachers as gifts, so that the body would be built up and no longer tossed around by every wind of teaching (Eph. 4:11–14). We all need someone who feeds our faith, guides us, and corrects our course. And this ought not be AI but someone set apart by the Holy Spirit for the task.

Even without AI tinkering in this area, there is still a lot we need to figure out about authority. Christians are not as united as we should be. People jump ship and flee accountability at another congregation across town, and many churches let them. Our existing structures have carried spiritual authority imperfectly, and sometimes sinfully, for centuries.

But these tech innovations are not making things better. We can find ways to take advantage of new technological advances. But keep the leaders. Whatever the church becomes in the years ahead, it cannot be the church without the undershepherds who keep watch and the mutual submission that holds us together.

Chris Butler is a pastor in Chicago and the director of Christian civic formation at the Center for Christianity & Public Life. He is also the co-author of Compassion & Conviction: The And Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.

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