Why This Conversation Actually Matters
AI isn’t coming for the church. It’s already here — and most church leaders are either ignoring it or panicking about it. Neither response is helpful.
In Episode 278 of The Church Digital Podcast, Jeff Reed sits down with Kenny Jahng, founder of AI for Church Leaders, to cut through the noise. The conversation covers where AI is right now, where it’s headed, and what church leaders should actually do about it. Oh, and there’s bacon involved. Because of course there is.
Who Is Kenny Jahng and Why Should You Listen?
Kenny Jahng isn’t a tech bro trying to sell church leaders on a shiny tool. He’s a ministry-minded communicator who has spent years helping churches think strategically about digital. His work with AI for Church Leaders is specifically focused on equipping pastors, communications directors, and ministry staff to use AI not as a gimmick — but as a genuine ministry multiplier.
That framing matters. A lot of AI conversations start with the tool. Kenny starts with the mission. That’s a different conversation entirely.
The Bacon Principle: Simple Entry Points Win
Here’s the thing about bacon — everyone understands it. It’s accessible. It’s tangible. You don’t need a culinary degree to appreciate it.
That’s essentially Kenny’s approach to AI for ministry leaders. Stop trying to explain the large language model architecture. Start with the thing the average pastor can touch, use, and benefit from this week.
Practical AI adoption in the church doesn’t start with a strategy document. It starts with one staff member using ChatGPT to draft a sermon illustration and saying, “Wait, that actually saved me 45 minutes.” That moment of friction-reduction is the on-ramp.
If you’re a church leader reading this and you haven’t experimented with AI tools yet, start embarrassingly small. Use it to:
- Draft a first pass of your weekly email
- Generate five small group discussion questions from Sunday’s sermon
- Summarize a long ministry report into bullet points
- Brainstorm sermon series titles
Small wins build confidence. Confidence builds culture.
What’s Actually Next in AI?
Kenny and Jeff dig into the trajectory of AI — not in a futurist-fantasy way, but in a “here’s what’s coming down the road in the next 12-24 months” kind of way.
A few themes worth tracking:
AI is getting more conversational and contextual. Tools are moving beyond one-off prompts toward persistent memory and workflow integration. That means your AI assistant will eventually know your church’s voice, your sermon series, your congregation’s demographic — and produce content that actually sounds like you.
Multimodal AI is exploding. Text is just the beginning. Image generation, audio, video — all of it is becoming more accessible. Churches that learn to leverage these tools now will have a massive head start in digital content creation.
The gap between early adopters and late adopters is widening fast. This isn’t meant to induce panic. But the church that starts building AI fluency now is going to be able to reach more people, communicate more clearly, and steward staff time more effectively than the church that waits until AI is unavoidable.
The Real Ministry Question
Here’s where the conversation gets prophetic: AI doesn’t replace the human in ministry. It amplifies whatever’s already there.
If your church has a clear mission, a defined voice, and a heart for reaching people — AI will help you do more of that, faster. If your church is already confused about who it’s trying to reach and why — AI will just help you produce confused content at scale.
“Whatever is true, whatever is noble… think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8) That’s still the filter. AI doesn’t change the standard. It just raises the stakes for having one.
The question isn’t “Should we use AI?” The question is “Are we clear enough on our mission to leverage these tools well?”
Practical Next Steps for Church Leaders
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Listen to the full episode. Kenny and Jeff go deeper than any summary can capture. Subscribe on your platform of choice below.
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Visit AI for Church Leaders. Kenny’s community and resources are specifically built for people in ministry navigating this space. Don’t try to figure this out alone.
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Run one AI experiment this week. Pick one repetitive communication task on your plate and let an AI tool take a first pass at it. See what happens.
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Talk about it with your team. The worst thing you can do is let AI adoption happen randomly across your staff. Get ahead of it with a simple conversation about guidelines and possibilities.
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