AI and the Great Commission: Evangelism, Formation, and the Limits of Technology

The Rev. Dr. Ronald Moore

Nov 17, 2025

Some questions arrive like a spark in dry grass — they do not burn immediately, but they smolder until the wind shifts. Artificial intelligence and the Great Commission is one of those questions. It is not going away, and it will not remain theoretical. It presses on the Church whether we are ready or not.

The Christian Today article linked above asks in a straightforward way whether AI can—or should—assist the Church in proclaiming the Gospel. The conversation it reflects is already happening across denominations, missions agencies, seminaries, and even informal forums of scholars and clergy. Some welcome AI as the next great technological multiplier for evangelism, a tool that can translate Scripture, answer questions, and reach into regions too dangerous for missionaries. Others fear that delegating spiritual work to machines cheapens the Gospel and erodes the personal, incarnational nature of Christian witness.

Both instincts contain truth. Both contain danger. But the real question is not whether AI can help the Church. The real question is what the Church believes the Great Commission actually is.

The Great Commission Is Personal, Not Merely Informational

At its core, the Great Commission is not the mass distribution of spiritual data. It is the making of disciples — whole persons who turn from sin, trust in Christ, and are formed by Word and Sacrament into the likeness of the Son. Information matters. Teaching matters. But every generation of Christians has had to resist the temptation to reduce evangelism to information delivery.

The printing press made this mistake possible on a global scale. The radio and television age repeated it. The internet amplified it. Now AI tempts us to imagine that the Gospel, if packaged and delivered with enough technological sophistication, will accomplish its work without the human face, the human voice, the human life behind it.

But Christianity is stubbornly incarnational. The Gospel did not come as a principle. It came as a Person. Discipleship spread not through machines but through men and women who embodied the faith before others. We may distribute information by proxy. But we cannot delegate incarnation.

Any technology, no matter how advanced, will always reach the limit where only a living Christian can go further.

A Tool, Not a Replacement

A sober view sees AI not as a rival to human witness but as a tool that can extend, support, and multiply it — provided we do not surrender the essential task.

AI can:

·         Translate Scripture into languages that have no Bible

·         Provide baseline explanations of Christian doctrine

·         Generate resources for missionaries and pastors in under-resourced regions

·         Help seekers ask questions anonymously in places where public interest in Christianity is dangerous

·         Assist disabled or isolated individuals in accessing teaching they might never hear

These are extraordinary gifts, if used rightly.

But AI cannot:

·         Preach repentance with authority

·         Administer Sacraments

·         Shepherd souls

·         Share in suffering

·         Model holiness

·         Love

·         Die for the truth

·         Live a life that points to Christ

And because it cannot do these things, it cannot fulfill the Great Commission. It can only assist those who do.

The danger is not that AI will replace Christian witness. The danger is that the Church will permit it to become a substitute for the costly, slow, relational labor of disciple-making. Tools become idols when they relieve us of duties we were commanded to bear.

The Church’s Deeper Crisis Isn’t Technological

What the Christian Today article reveals—without explicitly stating it—is that much of the Church’s anxiety around AI stems not from the technology itself but from our own spiritual anemia. Many churches hope that AI will revitalize evangelism because human evangelists have grown timid. Many hope that AI will teach doctrine because clergy formation has weakened. Many hope that AI will sustain the Great Commission because Western Christians have lost confidence in their own calling.

But the Great Commission does not falter because of technological change. It falters when the Church forgets that Christ Himself promised to be with us “unto the end of the world.”

Technology does not create courage, conviction, discipline, or awe. It merely amplifies the presence or absence of those things.

If a church is spiritually vibrant, AI will serve it well. If a church is spiritually hollow, AI will make the hollowness more obvious.

The Proper Christian Posture: Discernment, Not Panic

There are two errors Christians must avoid:

1. Technological Luddism:Rejecting every new tool out of fear that modernity will corrupt the Gospel.

2. Technological Utopianism:Believing that tools themselves can accomplish what only the Holy Spirit can do.

The correct path is neither rejection nor surrender. It is discernment — a virtue older than the printing press and wiser than our assumptions about the future. Christians have always adapted technology without allowing it to rewrite theology.

The question is not whether AI will reshape the world. It will.

The question is whether the Church will approach it with seriousness, prayer, and doctrinal clarity — or whether we will let Silicon Valley shape the disciples our Lord commanded us to make.

A Final Word

AI will become part of the mission landscape. It already has. But its proper role is always secondary, assistive, and subordinate to the living witness of the Church. The Gospel spread without machines. It transformed continents through uneducated fishermen and faithful widows. Technology can accelerate the reach of the message, but it cannot replace the messenger.

The Church must not fear AI. But neither must we enthrone it.

The Great Commission belongs to the Body of Christ — to real men and women who kneel, pray, preach, baptize, teach, and love. AI may carry our words, but it cannot carry our cross.

And the cross, not the algorithm, is still the power of God unto salvation.