Why AI Is Creating Uncertainty (and Freeze) Among Christian Leaders
Artificial intelligence is arriving in ministry and theological education at a moment already marked by exhaustion, rapid change, and limited capacity for reflection. For many Christian leaders, the challenge is not simply deciding whether AI is useful or harmful, but making sense of it at all within a destabilizing cultural context.
Dr. Joel Murphy presented research at the Canadian Church Research Gathering 2025, put on by the Canadian Institute for Empirical Church Research, located at Wycliffe College back in December. He presented on a 2024 research project done by the Futuring Hub which looked at theological educators, administrators, and ministry leaders across Canada and the United States, perspectives towards and use of AI. The data tells a clear story. Leaders are deeply uncertain about AI’s value. They see real possibilities, supporting learning, reducing barriers, assisting with administrative and research tasks, while simultaneously expressing serious concerns about formation, truth, and the erosion of embodied discipleship. This uncertainty is not, in itself, a problem. In fact, it is a theologically appropriate posture.
As theologian Robert Green has argued, technology is best understood along a spectrum of “good,” “neutral,” and “bad,” depending on its capacity to facilitate moral action. AI, like many technologies before it, sits squarely in an ambiguous space. The task of Christian leadership is not to rush toward adoption or retreat into rejection, but to dwell faithfully within that ambiguity through discernment.
The difficulty is that discernment requires time, guidance, and shared frameworks, and the current context often undermines all three. Leaders are navigating AI amid a rapid pace of technological change, over-hyped claims and unclear realities, limited training, uneven digital literacy, and a lack of institutional support or policy. Expectations to “figure it out” arrive alongside already full workloads and emotional fatigue. In such conditions, uncertainty does not mature into thoughtful reflection; it accumulates into overload.
When this happens, leaders experience what many described implicitly in the research: technostress, mistrust, and decision paralysis. Rather than critically engaging AI theologically, leaders adopt a cautious “wait-and-see” posture or quietly avoid engagement altogether. This response is not rooted in fear of technology alone, but in the absence of conditions that support faithful experimentation and learning. Over time, this produces something akin to future shock. Too much change, too little orientation, and a narrowing of imagination.
This matters because avoidance is not neutral. When leaders are unable to engage emerging technologies reflectively, decisions are deferred; conversations stall, and formation is shaped by default rather than discernment. The question, then, is not simply whether AI belongs in Christian contexts, but how leaders might be formed to engage it critically and faithfully despite the pressures of the present moment.
In the next post, we will explore what it could look like to move from this state of uncertainty and freeze toward faithful discernment, and why that shift is fundamentally a matter of formation, not technological expertise.
