AI in Preaching, Liturgy and Christian Community

Technology and the People of God 

The rise of any new technology evokes varied responses. Some are early adopters, eager to explore the potential. Others adopt later as the tools become mainstream. And there are always those who find change overwhelming, especially as keeping up with new developments often feels harder with age. 

The relationship between faith and technology is long and complex. The printing press enabled widespread access to Scripture and fuelled the Reformation. Mass media gave rise to televangelism and mega-churches. The internet and social media fractured religious discourse into digital tribes and echo chambers. Now, artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how we live, think, and worship. 

For the Uniting Church, with its deep commitments to communal discernment, justice, and embodied worship, witness and service, the emergence of AI poses both opportunities and profound challenges. 

What AI Can Offer in Worship and Preaching 

1. Efficiency and Support for Ministry 
AI can quickly generate sermon outlines, edit manuscripts, develop liturgical prayers, and even offer hymn suggestions. For smaller congregations or ministers juggling multiple congregations, this can be a time saver. It can free up time for pastoral care, missional participation, and community building. 

2. Access and Creativity 
Congregations with limited resources may find in AI a partner that brings drafting agendas for church council, offering new ideas to the table, or exploring new pathways and processes fit for context and community. It can contextualise and draft events and even prayers for particular occasions, or open up insights from global theological sources otherwise hard to access. 

3. Training and Education 
AI tools can be used in theological formation. As one recent study notes, “AI-mediated dialogic simulations may enrich theological education by exposing students to diverse perspectives” (Papakostas et al., Religions, 2025). 

4. Inclusion 
With proper user guidance, AI could help generate liturgies in multiple languages, or draft worship resources that are more accessible to diverse learning and cultural contexts. 

Risks and Realities 

1. Theological and Spiritual Depth 
Preaching and prayer are not simply about delivering well-crafted words and ideas. It is Spirit-inspired, shaped by consciousness and communal discernment, and always open to an encounter with God. AI can generate polished text, but it cannot embody lament, joy, confession, or prophetic passion; it cannot love as Christ loves. As Tony Reinke asks, “In a world where AI can do everything we can do, but better, why do we need authors, scholars, ministers and pastors, evangelists, theologians, or Bible commentators at all?” (Authentic Preaching in the Age of AI, 2024). 

2. Dependence and Commodification 
There is a temptation to outsource too much. If worship becomes content production, the church risks commodifying God’s word and mission as well as losing the “work of the people” (leitourgia) that makes worship transformative. 

3. Bias and Control 
AI systems are trained on datasets curated by corporations with their own political, social and economic interests. Which theologies, perspectives, or cultural assumptions are being amplified — and which are being silenced? For the Uniting Church, which values intercultural diversity and the voices of First Peoples, and discernment that includes the marginalised, this presents a challenge. 

4. Environmental Stewardship 
AI Expansion is an environmental justice issue in our own backyard. Sydney’s data centres already consume nearly 10 gigalitres of water annually — almost 2% of the city’s supply. Projections suggest this could rise to 25% of Sydney’s drinking water by 2035 (ABC News, 27 Aug 2025). Training a single large AI model can consume millions of litres of water and hundreds of tonnes of carbon emissions (Li et al., arXiv, 2023). In a time of climate crisis, how can churches embrace AI without grappling with its ecological footprint? 

Theological Reflections 

1. Imago Dei and Creatureliness 
The Uniting Church affirms that humanity is created in the image of God, relational and embodied. AI reminds us of human limits, but the danger is forgetting that being human is more than efficiency or productivity and complex data articulations. 

2. Kingdom and Empire 
The Basis of Union calls the Church to witness to Christ, which is different to powers that threaten to destroy human community and diminish the whole creation. The concentration of power in a few tech corporations, with influence/control greater than many nation-states, echoes biblical critiques of empire. The church must ask: does AI serve the Kin(g)dom of God, or reinforce systems of domination and control, which could be exploitative? 

3. Worship as Communal Participation 
AI can draft prayers, but it cannot gather around the Lord’s Table, baptise, or embody the messy, grace-filled reality of community. Even when worship feels ordinary or unpolished, it reflects the Triune God’s interdependent life reflected in us as the body of Christ. True worship resists the individualism and commodification of our age, but opens us to transcendence, transformation and deep communion in and with God and all creation.