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1-844-PUSHPAY Why I believe in AI for the Church, and where I draw the line
Senior Vice President of Customer Experience Cole Schofield shares his personal takes on AI
If you’re like me, you can’t help but toy around with new gadgets and innovations. So you’ve probably already experimented with AI in more than one aspect of your life.
I don’t only use AI for business. More and more these days, I find myself using it for everyday tasks. A few months ago, I had AI help me design a workshop for my property, and also asked it to collect bids for the contractors I needed. I even had AI turn specific latitude and longitude coordinates into measurements for the project. The work that would have taken me hours on the phone and banging away on a calculator was reduced to just minutes.
Then there’s my professional life, where I use AI daily. As SVP of Customer Experience at Pushpay, customer retention is obviously high on my list of priorities—so I’ve created a Gemini Gem that acts as my retention analyst, which provides quick answers and prepares reports for me. Additionally, my team has deployed new AI capabilities that automate some of our high-volume, low-complexity tasks that previously ate up a lot of our support staff’s time. We’re also using AI to help our Customer Success Managers identify when one of our church partners might need support, and to prioritize those issues for immediate resolution.
It’s strange, isn’t it? How AI feels like the new normal? Most of us already have personal and professional AI implementations.
At the same time, however, we’re still feeling out the degree to which we’re comfortable using AI. I’ve bumped against this a couple times over the past year: how much am I willing to offload and trust my tasks to AI? It’s a complicated, nuanced, and deeply personal decision that we’re all navigating.
But as complicated as our individual decisions about AI may be, that dynamic’s even more complicated for churches.
Understandable hesitations
The Church has always been grounded in connection, both with our communities and our faith. That’s why—perhaps more than in any other aspect of a disciples’ life—we expect authenticity from the Church. Which is why AI is such a tricky subject for ministry.
The main objection I hear about AI in the Church is sermon creation. People want to sit down on Sunday and know they’re hearing authentic messages from their pastors. It needs to be bible-based, from their heart and in their words.
Because AI is so new and so suddenly prevalent in our lives, church leaders need to be more careful than most about leaning on AI. Losing the human element of ministry, that X factor that makes your message resonate in the hearts of your congregation, is a real risk for pastors who begin relying more and more on AI.
Additionally, I’ve heard congregations express concern about automating certain types of outreach, like care pastoring or thank-you sentiments. Individuals and families expect that these deeply personal messages will be warm and authentic, as opposed to AI-triggered, generic, and anonymous.
It’s a difficult time for churches, no doubt about it. There are so many traps churches can fall into with AI. But an informed and conscientious leadership team can still use AI to great effect, without compromising their message.
AI that supports—not replaces—connection
AI should never shape your message. It can, however, direct your message and efforts toward maximum impact for your ministry.
A major benefit for churches is AI’s capability to gather information from multiple systems, quickly identify patterns, and then propose actions. This eliminates the guesswork from directing resources and effort toward certain families, groups, or ministries. AI can automatically sift through your data, detect disengagement patterns, then direct your outreach efforts toward in-need congregants on a case-by-case basis.
Then there’s generosity—which I believe is an outcome of connection with the church. AI helps with this in a couple ways: the tools can automate administrative tasks, freeing up your staff to build those core connections that fuel generosity. Additionally, AI provides fast, comprehensive insights to help staff members know who to minister to and how. This data-driven approach leads to targeted, relevant conversations with congregants that make a real impact, as opposed to a “general appeal” approach to ministering.
The spirit behind Pushpay’s AI solutions
Walk through any of our Pushpay offices, and you’ll meet dozens of extremely talented and passionate people who have a real heart for the Church.
That heart bleeds into our approach to AI tools. Everything we’re developing reflects the unique needs of the Church. Internally, we want to leverage the capabilities of AI to rapidly meet the shifting needs of ministries. We recently deployed Genny, our AI assistant, to be the first interaction with customers, providing quick answers when available. But we still firmly believe in a ‘human in the loop’ model: AI can handle the low-value needs of our customers twenty-four-seven, which in turn frees our staff to be attentive during key moments of need and truth.
For churches, we believe AI can provide a boost to human connection in critical moments through fast insights and critical suggestions. These tools can spot a couple on the verge of slipping away from your ministry, then flag them for your staff to re-engage before they’ve snuck all the way out the back door.
All this is to say, I believe in AI. The potential is incredible for the Kingdom, and the industry is only scratching the surface of possible church applications.
But at the same time, now and forever moving forward, any AI tool Pushpay develops will not be designed to replace human connection. The heart of ministry, the message, that sense of community can’t be replaced by an algorithm. That’s what you’re here for.
