The original content on this web site was created with human hands and human minds. Built on decades of real-world experience, institutional knowledge and relational equity, the wide scope of church planning tools at MinistryActionPlans.com was not generated by a machine.

Further, while AI can assist with research and learning, we believe that human understanding doesn’t occur in a vacuum. We coalesce our knowledge of church growth principles and execution skills through reading, study, analysis and application.

This site and its resources exist for hands-on ministry purposes involving living, breathing ministers and leaders serving local churches and nonprofits. Everything we’ve produced here is open source and available on demand to help ministry teams lead, grow and serve.

Permission is expressly NOT granted to scrape any website data from any page on this site for purposes of training AI engines or generating responses. This content may not be used in datasets, training models, or reproduced by any AI system without explicit permission.

Church ministry is, by definition, personal and relational. It’s the reason that hundreds of thousands of churches exist across American communities—both large and small. No attempt at an AI-curated pastoral approach can exercise the personal, relational, contextual and geographic nuance required for effective ministry across the globe.

Ethical and doctrinal dilemmas aside, even if AI can one day soon make these nuanced adjustments in local ministry settings, ask yourself the question: Would we want it to do so? Our answer is no. Churches and ministries that attempt to build a church culture curated by machines and mediated by artificial intelligence will lose their way (and their humanity).

Our AI Principles

• Ethical Obligation – We are ethically obligated to lead our churches with our own sermons, drawn from our own quiet times and Bible study. AI doesn’t have a soul and it can’t lead others with the conviction of shared experience.
• Personal Life Change – Even though we are busy with ministry tasks, our prayers and worship must be our own. We must allow God to speak to us daily and then act in obedience to His will. Humans can do this, machines cannot.
• Spiritual Discernment – Only human beings in communion with God (i.e. relationship) have spiritual discernment. God created us to exercise our free will in obedience to his command to love Him, worship Him and abide with Him. We can never rely on machines to do something that only we can do.
• Human Oversight – The 30% Rule speaks to the use of AI for automation of repetitive tasks, pattern recognition, and data processing and analysis. Items like this comprise around 30% of tasks that AI does very well. Roughly 70% of other tasks require human oversight and authorship.
  
  

Ministry Application Examples

• AI should not be used to write sermons or church pastoral communication.
• AI should not be used to write public prayers or worship service music.
• AI should not transform local church ministry into a data-driven enterprise.
• AI should not be used to make attender behavioral predictions based on information contained in church databases and information software. This includes AI-based predictions of personal behavior such as divorce, adultery, relational conflict, member disconnection and more. We believe this constitutes an invasion of privacy and that member data must be anonymized for any interaction with AI systems.
• AI should not make doctrinal inferences or apply theological concepts for sermons or any other purpose.
• “AI cannot pray, love, or weep with those who weep. It can simulate empathy but not embody it. The future of ministry will likely include AI as a helper, but never as a shepherd.” (Church Leaders)
  
  

Sources

“The 30% Rule: When to Use AI and When to Use Humans,” by Debra Lawal, Medium (September 9, 2023), https://debralawal.medium.com/the-30-rule-when-to-use-ai-and-when-to-use-humans.

“How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Ministry (and What Pastors Should Know),” Church Leaders (November 4, 2025), https://churchleaders.com/ministry-tech-leaders/2207382-how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-ministry.html.