Pastors overwhelmingly find use for AI but are more skeptical about it than are congregants
Most common uses are for brainstorming and creation of visual materials
The vast majority of American Protestant pastors are using artificial intelligence in their work — but only about a fourth of them are using it in the writing or editing of sermons.
These details on the pastoral use of AI comes from the Barna Group, a for-profit nonpartisan organization that follows trends related to faith and culture. Barna’s study of pastoral AI use comes from its ongoing State of the Church initiative along with Gloo, which provides services to churches and other faith-based organizations such as schools. Numbers on AI use and perspectives come from surveys conducted among 1,514 U.S. adults last November and 442 pastors in December.
Only 13 percent of the pastors interviewed said they don’t use AI at all. The most common AI use by pastors is for brainstorming and generation of ideas: An even 50 percent use it for that purpose.
Other common uses for AI by pastors include:
🟪 Graphic design or visual creation, 37 percent.
🟪 Research of Biblical or theological topics, 36 percent.
🟪 Generating discussion questions or small-group materials, 34 percent.
🟪 Administrative tasks such as scheduling, email and document preparation, 34 percent.
🟪 Social-media or communications content, 28 percent.
The percentage using it in the editing or writing of sermons was 24 percent — double what it was a year and a half earlier.
Barna’s report did not further provide details about how the pastors use AI for editing and writing sermons. But a strong majority, 71 percent, of pastors said that they were “cautious” about the use of AI in their work. A large minority say they have negative feelings about AI use, as 40 percent said they were “conflicted” and an identical amount said they were “skeptical.” Almost a third, 30 percent, said they were “distrustful” of AI, and a small proportion, 9 percent, said they were fearful.
In general, pastoral attitudes toward AI were were more negative than those of practicing Christians in the survey. About 36 percent of practicing Christians said they were “cautious” of AI, or about half the rate for pastors. Fewer practicing Christians also said they were “conflicted” (18 percent) or “skeptical” (25 percent).
Ironically, more practicing Christians, about 19 percent, double the pastors’ rate, described themselves as “fearful.”
Barna’s analysis of this survey and others about pastoral job satisfaction suggested that pastors are using AI the most for the tasks where they find the least personal satisfaction:
When asked to identify which parts of their work they enjoy most, enjoy least, and find most time-consuming, pastors reveal a persistent mismatch: the tasks they find most meaningful — preaching and teaching, discipling believers, developing leaders — are not the ones consuming the most hours. Organizing church events, volunteer and staff management, and administrative work collectively dominate pastors’ calendars, despite ranking low on their list of what they find fulfilling. AI, as pastors are currently deploying it, maps directly onto that gap.
The use of graphic design reflects a related reality. For many smaller churches that lack the budget or staff to support dedicated communications roles, AI appears to be filling a gap that would otherwise go unfilled. Visual content creation has become an essential part of how churches communicate, and AI has made it accessible to ministry leaders who would otherwise have to go without.