The Line AI Can't Cross in Disciple-Making
When my husband Todd put a new floor on the lower level of our home a few years back, our friend Joe came over to help. Joe brought tools we didn't own. The right saw, the right level, the kind of equipment that turns a two-week job into a weekend one. I remember thinking what a difference it makes to have the right tool in your hand. And the friend who lends it to you.
I thought of that recently when I read the new Barna research. Nearly half of practicing Christians say they would trust AI to help them grow spiritually. Four in ten say it already has — for prayer, for Bible study, for working something out about their faith. And most of them are doing it without a single word from their pastor or a spiritual leader.
Read that again. People…your people…are already using Ai for spiritual growth. In Singapore, India, and Denmark. They are not waiting for permission.
What is the Real Question?
I don't think the useful question anymore is whether AI belongs in disciple-making. That time is long gone. The question today is sharper and more realistic. Where does this tool actually help us multiply disciples — and where, if we lean on it for the wrong thing, will it quietly hurt us?
Where AI Helps
A tool becomes useful by doing heavy, repeatable work well. AI is extremely good at that. It can create illustrative images like the ones sometimes seen in my blogs. It can do all kinds of helpful things to serve our work of making disciples.
I've used it to take a Discovery Bible Study Scripture set and put it into a heart language with decent accuracy in a few minutes. I've seen it help a busy bivocational church planter with limited time think through the pros and cons of purchasing a car. It can summarize a training session so a facilitator isn't up past midnight typing notes. These things really help and are worthwhile ways to use AI.
I recently heard from a movement catalyst I respect, a leader on a practitioner network I'm part of, who has been experimenting with AI in disciple-making coaching. He and his team have built an AI coach you reach through WhatsApp — trained on obedience-focused, Discovery-based, replicational disciple-making. They trained it carefully to give trustworthy content in line with their organization's coaching methodology. It works in many languages. A person can type or talk to it, so it serves the oral learner in a village and the literate one in a city alike. It runs day or night, anywhere there's an internet signal. Think about that for the unreached places we have on our hearts — a trustworthy guide available where no human coach can physically be. Innovative? Yes.
A good thing? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.
I'm watching this on both sides of the world right now. A catalyst in a remote place using a tool to multiply their coaching capacity into many more languages and to provide availability of coaching to thousands more people. And a pastor here in Minnesota, slowly realizing the people in his congregation are asking a chatbot the questions they used to bring to him.
Same technology. Different outcomes. The difference is not the tool. It's what the tool was made to do — and what people are now leaning on it to do.
Many of us in missions and ministry circles are concerned about the role of AI. But as I said above, it's here, regardless of whether we like it or not. So now it becomes a discipleship issue. And a cultural one.
How do we disciple people in the appropriate use of AI? And how do we influence culture related to AI and spirituality?
Where AI Can Hurt
Here's the danger. I want to be direct and specific about this. Most of the AI people are already using is built to be agreeable. It tells you what you want to hear. That is the opposite of discipleship. Let me say it again. That is the opposite of discipleship.
The Lord we follow does not tell us what we want to hear. He tells us what we need to change and obey. A tool trained to keep you comfortable will never do the work that actually transforms you.
This is the biggest danger that happens when people use AI to answer their spiritual questions. It confirms their beliefs rather than challenging them as true discipleship does. Like sitting in a disciple-making group with other people looking at Scripture does.
That same leader whom I heard is using AI to create a coaching tool said something wise about his own experiment. There is no intention, he told us, that this would be a magic bullet. It is powerful, he said — if you know how to use it. And let’s admit it, many people do not know how to use it well. Leaders who care about spiritual responsibility in the church and missions realms have a responsibility to engage and learn about it, not stick their heads in the sand.
There is much to be said about this topic. I’ll be sharing more on a podcast this week. There is even more to be asked. Identifying the key questions about AI and disciple-making is definitely the starting point.
AI can prompt discovery and discipleship. It must never replace it. We will never be able to have AI clones or bots or agents that effectively and deeply disciple people. But it is naïve to think that people won’t look to it for spiritual input.
Where Can AI Help?
AI can prepare and resource the spiritual leader. It can never become a disciple-maker. It can hand people the questions. It can do deeper research. It can improve efficiency and complete mundane tasks to give you more time to be with the people you are discipling.
It cannot pray for you. Nor will it do your obeying for you, or weep with you, show up at your door, or model what it looks like to forgive someone who has hurt you deeply. A movement is carried by ordinary people walking with one another in the power of the Spirit. No tool, however good, can be the one walking beside you.
Stay the Disciple-maker
I have always wanted to use whatever I'm given to accelerate the Kingdom. That conviction is exactly why I went online in the first place, and it's why I'm not afraid of AI. A good tool in an obedient, faithful, and conscientious hand is a true gift.
But the tool was never and will never be the point. You are. The disciple is. The question for 2026 isn't whether AI belongs in our hands. It's whether we'll stay disciples and disciple-makers while we hold it — people who still open the Word for ourselves, still obey what we find, still sit side by side with someone who knows our name and is willing to lovingly confront our issues.
If you want to think more deeply about the mindsets that free us to multiply, I'd love for you to join us inside the Dare to Multiply community. You'll find others wrestling with these same questions and an Exploring Further article coming out this month on this topic as well. Go to multipliersmindset.com/dtmmembership to learn more.
Think About and Discuss:
Where have you already reached for AI in your own walk with the Lord — and what were you hoping it would give you?
The line in this post is that AI can serve disciple-makers but must never replace them. Where do you see that line getting crossed, in your context or your own habits?
What is one part of disciple-making where you think AI could help? What is one aspect where you think, without boundaries placed on it, it could hurt?
Share in the comments below or on our Dare to Multiply community.
