From Avoidance to Discernment: Supporting Faithful Engagement with AI
In the previous post, it was suggested that much of the hesitation Christian leaders feel toward AI is not rooted in fear or resistance, but in uncertainty shaped by a demanding cultural context. Research done by the Futuring Hub seems to affirm this, indicating that leaders can see both the promise and the risk of AI, yet many lack the conditions needed to engage it critically and faithfully. The question, then, is not whether leaders should embrace or reject AI, but how they can be supported to engage it well.
Our research suggests that moving beyond avoidance requires support at the level of formation, not just policy or technical guidance. At the Futuring Hub, this is one reason the Futures-Adaptive Pastoral Competencies Framework was developed. This framework is a set of six competencies intended to strengthen leaders’ capacity to navigate current and future complexity without freezing: practical theological insights, intellectual and cultural humility, adaptive leadership, social and emotional awareness, socio-technological imagination, and futures literacy.
In this framing, critical engagement with AI is less about “keeping up” and more about cultivating the inner and communal capacities needed to discern faithfully. Practical theological insight helps leaders ask formation-level questions, not merely operational ones. Intellectual and cultural humility keeps leaders teachable amid hype and polarized narratives. Adaptive leadership supports experimentation, learning, and course-correction under uncertainty. Social and emotional awareness helps leaders recognize technostress and decision fatigue in themselves and their teams. Socio-technological imagination enables leaders to anticipate second-order effects on community, truth, and discipleship. Futures literacy helps leaders locate AI within broader trajectories of change rather than reacting to each new tool.
In practical terms, this framework points toward modest but meaningful moves: creating shared learning spaces where leaders can reflect together, resourcing AI literacy as formation, and running small, time-bound “faithful experiments” with explicit theological debriefing. The goal is not adoption for its own sake, but disciplined discernment, testing what supports embodied life with God and neighbour, and refusing what deforms it.
Ultimately, supporting Christian leaders to engage AI critically is about cultivating confidence without certainty. Faithful leadership in this moment does not require clear answers, but the courage to remain attentive, reflective, and hopeful, so that AI becomes neither an idol nor a threat to avoid, but a domain for wise discernment in service of the church’s witness and the common good. For leaders looking for practical support, the MacRae Centre and Acadia Divinity College are continuing to develop resources, learning opportunities, and research-based tools to help churches and organizations engage AI both faithfully and critically, resources we encourage leaders to explore and use within their local contexts. You can start with reviewing this Navigating the Future report focused on AI Technology.
Thank you for taking the time to engage this conversation. If there is one simple next step, it is this: choose one concrete area where AI is already present in your ministry context, and begin a shared discernment conversation, not to arrive at immediate answers, but to ask better questions, clarify your theological commitments, and take one faithful step forward together.
As always, we would love to hear from you and your perspective, thoughts, and concerns about AI or any other emerging cultural trends. Please contact us or email Dr. Joel Murphy directly at joel.murphy@acadiau.ca
