Naming the Discomfort: A First Inventory

It is important to explore our own feelings and experience before providing care for others. A note in entering this practice: we are often much better at withholding judgement for others while being our own harshest critics. Be kind to yourself. Start by mapping where AI already touches your ministry. Then note where we experience unsettling.

Where it already is

• Where has AI already entered my ministry, whether I invited it or not, sermon drafting, study prep, email and newsletters, social media, scheduling, transcription of meetings, note-taking after visits, translation, benevolence screening, task automation, security cameras, the search engine I use to answer a parishioner's question?

• Which of these did I choose deliberately, and which arrived by default in software I already use?

• Where might my staff, council, or denomination already be using AI in ways that touch the people we serve, without my knowing the details?

Where it Unsettles Us

• When I imagine using AI to help write a sermon, funeral homily, a wedding blessing, a note to a grieving family, a casual response to an email, where exactly is my personal boundary? What is worth protecting? Why?

• Is my discomfort strongest around using AI within a particular act (sermon, pastoral care, prayer, confession, baptism, eucharist litany) or a particular relationship (a specific person, group of people)?

• Which discomforts are about the technology, and which are really about my competence, my job security, my sense of being needed, my fear of being replaced, my faithfulness?

• If AI use was substituted by a published commentary, a colleague, an fiction book, a piece of art, would it change your personal boundary? Why or why not?

Where it Helps Us

• Where do I feel the opposite of discomfort, relief, excitement, amazement, and does that ease deserve examination too?