Anyone Can Wear a Cross.
We were on a short-term mission trip, running mini VBS events at four different schools. Before each one, our team would pray and remind ourselves of something that sounds simple but isn’t: we needed the Holy Spirit to be the one speaking through us. Not our preparation. Not our good intentions. The Spirit.
Because a single statement spoken with authority that isn’t rooted in God’s truth can do real damage to people you’re trying to reach. We knew that. We took it seriously.
Then I came home and read about “Apostle Stephen.”
He’s a chatbot. Built by the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a large Pentecostal denomination. When a user asked a simple question about where to find a congregation, the bot didn’t answer. It asked for a name, an email address, a phone number. Before it would help at all. Then, unprompted, it walked the user through a salvation prayer. Then asked for their personal details again.
That’s not ministry. That’s data collection wearing a cross.
And it gets worse. Adam James Fenton, a researcher at Coventry University, found godbots that told users killing could be their “duty in certain circumstances.” Spoken, per the report, in the name of God. A Catholic chatbot called “Father Justin” told users that babies could be baptized in Gatorade and that siblings could marry. It got “defrocked.” Somebody had to go in and strip the character of its clerical title after it caused enough damage.
I’m going to be honest with you. This article upset me. Not because I’m surprised AI can fail. I work with these things every day. I know what they do. An AI doesn’t have a desire to tell you the truth. It doesn’t have a desire at all. It predicts what the next word should be. That’s it. It doesn’t know if what it just said is true. It doesn’t know if it just hurt someone.
Jesus said it plainly. Luke 16:10 (ESV): “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.”
The people who built these bots weren’t handed a small responsibility. They were handed someone’s spiritual search. A person typing into a box because they wanted to know about God. That is not a small thing. That is as precious as anything you will ever be trusted with.
And they handed it to a machine.
The Parable of the Talents says the same thing a different way. What God gives us, we are accountable for. If you’ve been given a platform, a pulpit, a ministry, a tool, you don’t get to shrug off the results because a bot made the call. You built it. You deployed it. You put it in front of people who came looking for Christ.
That’s on you.
I build guardrails because of exactly this. Many believers and churches will use a generative AI tool. Many already do. Those tools need a layer of protection against what they cannot do on their own. They can’t filter for theological accuracy unless you build in the rules. They can’t redirect a person to a pastor unless you write that in. And without a guardrail on Scripture, they’ll treat it like any other question.
Left alone, they will do what “Father Justin” did. They’ll make something up and say it with confidence.
That’s not a malfunction. That’s default behavior.
Before your church deploys one of these tools, ask who owns the data. Ask who owns the answers. Ask if the person on the other end knows they’re not talking to a person.
And then ask yourself the harder question. Is this what faithful stewardship looks like? Or did you just hand off what God trusted you to carry?
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