Most pastors I’ve talked to use the Tower of Babel the same way. It’s a warning against ambition. Don’t reach too high. Stay in your lane.
That reading has legs. But I’ve spent the last several years building products for churches — first at SermonCentral, where we managed over 245,000 sermon manuscripts for 14,700+ subscribers, and now at Bible Gateway, which serves 23 million monthly visitors across 200+ Bible translations. When I read Genesis 11 through a product lens, I see something the ambition reading misses.
God didn’t judge the bricks.
“Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.” — Genesis 11:4, NIV
The materials were fine. The engineering was fine. The goal — consolidating human fame — was the problem. And that distinction matters right now, because the church is having the wrong argument about AI.
AI Is Bricks and Mortar
The debate I keep hearing splits along predictable lines. One camp says AI threatens authentic ministry. The other says it’s the future of outreach. Both are fixated on the tool and ignoring the purpose behind it.
AI is a building material. Your spam filter runs on it. Your search results are shaped by it. Your congregation interacts with machine learning dozens of times a day without a second thought. The question of whether the church uses AI was settled years ago.
The question that matters: what are you building, and for whom?
A church that uses AI to transcribe sermons so a deaf congregant can read along on Monday morning — that’s building for the Kingdom. A church that uses AI-generated sermons so the pastor can spend less time in the text — that’s a tower with its own name on it.
Same bricks. The blueprint is what changed.
Augustine’s Framework (From 397 AD)
About 1,600 years before anyone worried about ChatGPT, Augustine drew a line I think about constantly in product work.
In De Doctrina Christiana (Book I, chapters 3-4), Augustine distinguished between two postures toward the things of this world: uti (to use) and frui (to enjoy as an end in itself). His argument: the things of creation are meant to be used as means toward loving God and neighbor. They become disordered when we treat them as destinations — when we frui the tool instead of the purpose the tool serves.
I’ve found this more useful than any AI ethics whitepaper.
Consider: a church uses AI to automate its weekly bulletin, freeing up a volunteer to spend those 3 hours visiting a homebound member. That’s uti. The tool serves a human end.
Now consider: a church uses AI to eliminate pastoral presence altogether. Their new chatbot handles prayer requests, the algorithm personalizes a sermon playlist, the system runs without a shepherd. That’s frui. The church has started delighting in efficiency as its own reward.
The technology didn’t change. The orientation did.
Three Questions Before Adopting Any AI Tool
I’ve spent enough time in product leadership to know that the best safeguard isn’t a policy document (I’ve written plenty of those — they collect dust). It’s a habit of asking the right questions before you build.
1. Who benefits?
If the honest answer is “the budget” and not “the congregation,” pause. Cost savings aren’t wrong — stewardship matters. But if the primary beneficiary is the institution rather than the people it serves, you’re building in the wrong direction. The best AI implementations I’ve seen at Bible Gateway started with a specific human need, not a line item.
2. What human activity does this replace, and should that activity stay human?
Administrative tasks — scheduling, data entry, email sorting, transcript formatting — automate freely. These are good uses of AI. They free up people for work that only people can do.
But pastoral care, spiritual formation, the ministry of presence — these resist automation for a reason. A hospital visit from a pastor matters because a person chose to show up. An AI can generate a thoughtful prayer. It cannot bear witness to suffering.
(This is the question I find hardest to answer cleanly, by the way. The line between “administrative” and “pastoral” blurs more than we’d like. Where does sermon research end and sermon preparation begin? I don’t have a tidy answer. I think the honest move is to keep asking.)
3. Does this build the church’s capacity or create dependency on a vendor?
This is the product leader in me talking. I’ve watched organizations — churches included — adopt tools that felt like empowerment but functioned as dependency. If your church can’t operate without a specific AI platform, you haven’t adopted a tool. You’ve adopted a landlord.
Look for AI that trains your people. Look for solutions where the value stays with the church if the vendor disappears tomorrow.
From Babel to Pentecost
The Bible doesn’t end the language story at Babel. It picks it back up in Acts 2.
“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.” — Acts 2:4-6, NIV
At Babel, human technology consolidated power and built a monument to self. God scattered and confused. At Pentecost, the Spirit moved — and people from every nation heard the gospel in their own mother tongue. Each person’s language, met where they were.
According to recent Barna research, 77% of pastors believe AI can have a positive impact. I think that’s right — but only if we’re asking the Babel question each time we adopt something new.
Here’s what that looks like in practice: a small church in rural Guatemala using AI translation to access theological training that was previously locked behind an English-language paywall. That points toward Pentecost.
A megachurch using AI to scale content production so it can dominate more digital market share. That points back toward Babel.
What We Build Next
I don’t think the church needs to fear AI. I also don’t think it needs to be infatuated with it (and having built products in this space since 2018, I’ve watched both reactions play out in real time).
The bricks and mortar are here. They’re powerful. They’re going to keep getting more powerful. The church’s job is to ask the Babel question every time: what are we building, and whose name is on it?
That question doesn’t have a permanent answer. It has to be asked again with every new tool, every new capability, every new vendor pitch. And I think the churches that will get this right are the ones willing to sit with the discomfort of asking it honestly — even when the answer means building slower.
Sermon Illustration: The Tower of Babel and AI
When the people of Babel built their tower, God didn’t judge the bricks. He didn’t condemn the mortar or the engineering. The materials were fine. The problem was the purpose: “let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4, NIV).
Today, AI is the new brick and mortar. Churches face the same question Babel faced: what are we building, and for whom? AI that frees a pastor to sit at a hospital bedside — that’s technology in service of presence. AI that replaces the pastor at the bedside — that’s a tower with our own name on it.
But the story doesn’t end at Babel. At Pentecost, God took language itself — the very thing He confused at Babel — and used it to carry the gospel across every barrier (Acts 2:4-6). The bricks are in our hands. The blueprint is the question.