A 1-Hour Training

AI for Christian Leaders

Hosted by Don Barger

Director of Innovation & AI Strategy  |  IMB

How to use AI tools safely and ethically in ministry — what to do, what to avoid, and which tools are worth your time.

View the Agenda ↓
Don Barger

About Me

Don Barger

Director of Innovation & AI Strategy  ·  IMB

I lead AI strategy and innovation at the International Mission Board, where I also lead the digital engagement, digital communities, and innovation incubator teams. My team builds AI tools that equip 3,500+ global workers in the field every day.

This session isn't a slide deck about what AI could do — it's three years of lessons from shipping production AI tools for ministry leaders. The shortcuts that work. The mistakes that cost the most. The ethical lines worth holding when nobody's watching.

Today's Session

60-Minute Agenda

1
Welcome & Why Now 0:00 – 0:05  ·  5 min

Why this conversation matters for the church right now. Where AI is, where it's going, and why Christian leaders need to be in the room.

  • The landscape today — what's real vs. hype
  • What's at stake when leaders sit it out
  • Two questions every leader has to answer

This isn't a futurist talk. AI is already in your church — staff using ChatGPT for emails, volunteers drafting Bible studies with Claude, members using AI for their devotional time. The question isn't "should we engage" — your people already are.

The question for leaders is: what posture will you take? Ignore it and your community gets shaped by tools whose ethics no one is examining. Embrace it uncritically and you risk replacing irreducibly human ministry with machine output. Both extremes lose.

The two questions every Christian leader needs to answer right now:

  • Where does AI sharpen the work? (Research, drafting, organization, accessibility, translation.)
  • Where would using AI undermine the work? (Pastoral presence, prayer, spiritual formation, relational discipleship.)

Today is about giving you the framework — and the rules — to answer those questions for yourself.

2
Safety: What to Never Do 0:05 – 0:20  ·  15 min

The non-negotiables. The things that, done once, can't be undone — and how to set up safer habits from day one.

  • Privacy: what never goes into a public AI tool
  • Sensitive data: field worker names, locations, security-related details
  • Hallucinations: when AI confidently makes things up — and how to spot it
  • Account hygiene: shared logins, free tiers, where your data goes

Treat any free AI tool the same way you'd treat a Facebook post: public, indexed, and possibly used to train future models. That mental model gets 80% of safety right.

Privacy — what never goes into a public AI tool:

  • Personal info about congregants (names, prayer requests, counseling notes)
  • Field worker names, locations, or anything tied to closed-country security
  • Financial data — donor records, salary info, budget specifics
  • Legal, HR, or disciplinary matters of any kind
  • Anything you wouldn't paste into a public Slack channel

Hallucinations are the second-biggest landmine. AI tools will confidently produce: scripture references that don't exist, quotes from theologians who never said those words, historical "facts" that are inverted. Default rule: verify every cited source before you repeat it. If AI says "as Augustine wrote in Confessions Book III…", look it up before you preach it.

The "stop, think, ask" rule: Before every send/paste into AI, ask "would I be OK if this prompt and response showed up on a public bulletin board?" If no — don't send.

Account hygiene: Don't share logins. Don't use the church's account for personal queries. If a tool is free and powerful, your data is the price.

3
Ethics: The Harder Questions 0:20 – 0:35  ·  15 min

Beyond "is it safe?" — when should you use AI, and when shouldn't you? A scriptural and pastoral lens.

  • Authenticity: AI-written sermons, prayers, devotionals — where's the line?
  • Transparency: when to disclose, when it doesn't matter
  • Discipleship: AI as tool vs. AI as replacement for relationship
  • Stewardship: time saved, attention freed — what fills the gap?

Safety is mostly about rules. Ethics is about character — what kind of leader do you want to be when this technology becomes ambient?

Authenticity — the sermon question. Asking AI to write your sermon for you crosses a line. Asking AI to help you research, organize, or sharpen a sermon you wrestle with yourself is different. Test: did the Spirit shape this through me, or did I just paste it? If you couldn't preach it without notes you didn't write, something's off.

Transparency — when to disclose. If AI generated the content, say so. If AI helped you organize or research, you don't need to footnote every step — the same way you don't cite Wikipedia for general knowledge. The line: would your hearers feel deceived if they knew? If yes, disclose.

Discipleship — the relational test. AI can summarize a book, draft a study guide, generate a discussion question. AI cannot sit with someone in grief. AI cannot pray with intent. AI cannot read the room. Use AI for the work that scales; protect the work that doesn't.

Stewardship — time vs. attention. Every hour AI saves you is an hour you can spend on something else. The question isn't "can AI free up my time?" — it's "what will I do with the freed time?" If the answer is "more presence with people who need it" — beautiful. If it's "more screen time, more output, more burnout-by-leverage" — pause.

4
Tools Worth Your Time 0:35 – 0:50  ·  15 min

A demo + tour of three AI tools built for ministry leaders specifically — not retrofits of secular tools, but ones designed with this community in mind.

  • FaithBot.io — conversational AI for ministry questions
  • FaithBot.tools — focused tools for sermon prep, study, and discipleship
  • sermon.donbarger.com — guided 6-step sermon prep, bilingual EN/ES
  • donbarger.com — frameworks, articles, and ongoing resources
FaithBot.io ↗ FaithBot.tools ↗ Sermon Tools ↗ donbarger.com ↗

Three resources worth bookmarking — chosen because they're built for this community, not retrofitted from the consumer or enterprise world.

FaithBot.io — A conversational AI tuned for ministry questions. Ask it about scripture interpretation, theology, sermon prep, or pastoral care scenarios. It's designed to be your study partner, not a sermon-writer-replacement. Free to try.

FaithBot.tools — Focused tools for specific ministry tasks: sermon outline generation, Bible study guide creation, discussion question generation, scripture cross-references. Each tool is single-purpose, which makes it easier to use ethically (the tool's intent is visible).

donbarger.com — Where Don writes about AI and ministry on an ongoing basis. The blog covers frameworks, tool reviews, and real case studies from working with the IMB and other ministry organizations. Subscribe to the newsletter for one well-considered post per week.

What we'll demo live: a sermon-prep workflow (prompt → outline → draft → critique loop), a discipleship study generation, and a "stress-test my position" prompt where you ask AI to make the strongest case against your own view — a remarkable tool for theological humility.

5
Q&A and Next Steps 0:50 – 1:00  ·  10 min

Open conversation. Bring your hardest case, your most uncertain decision, your "is this OK?" question. Plus three concrete next steps you can take this week.

  • Pick one tool to try — and one rule to set first
  • Identify a teammate to do this with you
  • Schedule a 30-day check-in to evaluate honestly

The single biggest mistake leaders make: they leave training like this and either (a) try to adopt everything at once, or (b) decide it's overwhelming and adopt nothing. Both fail. Pick one tool, set one rule, and revisit in 30 days.

This week — three concrete moves:

  • Pick one task you do every week that AI could meaningfully sharpen: sermon research, weekly bulletin drafting, meeting follow-up emails, a Bible study guide. Just one.
  • Set one rule before you start: "I will not paste anything sensitive" or "I will verify every scripture reference" or "I will disclose to my team that AI helped on this." One rule, written down.
  • Find one teammate to do this alongside you. Honest check-ins beat solo experimentation. Schedule 15 minutes 30 days from today to evaluate: did this serve the work, or just my comfort?

The 30-day check questions:

  • Did this tool let me do better work, or just faster work?
  • Did anything feel off — disclosure, authenticity, dependency?
  • What rule would I add now that I've actually used it?

Bring the hardest "is this OK?" question to the live Q&A. Specific cases beat abstract rules every time.

The Two Frames

Safe + Ethical, in Plain English

🛡️ Safety

Practical rules that protect your people, your data, and your work — before anything else.

  • Never paste sensitive data (names, locations, financials) into a public AI tool
  • Never trust AI output without verifying — especially scripture references and historical claims
  • Never use AI for legal, medical, or counseling advice
  • Treat free tools as public — assume your inputs are stored and may train models
  • Use enterprise / paid tiers for anything ministry-sensitive
  • Set a personal "stop, think, ask" rule before sending anything sensitive

⚖️ Ethics

The harder questions — about authenticity, integrity, and what AI changes about the call to lead.

  • Disclose when AI helped — your congregation deserves honesty
  • Use AI to sharpen your thinking, not replace it
  • Keep the parts only you can do: presence, prayer, pastoral judgment
  • Review AI output the way you'd review a research assistant's draft
  • Don't outsource the irreducibly relational
  • Ask: "Does this serve the people I'm called to, or just my efficiency?"

From Today

Tools & Resources

🙏

FaithBot.io

Conversational AI for ministry — ask questions about scripture, theology, and discipleship from a trusted source built for this community.

faithbot.io ↗
🛠️

FaithBot.tools

Focused AI tools for ministry leaders — sermon prep, Bible study generation, and pastoral writing aids that respect the work.

faithbot.tools ↗
📜

Sermon Tools

AI-assisted sermon prep — guided 6-step research, sermon shaping, and evaluation. Bilingual English / Spanish.

sermon.donbarger.com ↗
📚

donbarger.com

Don's frameworks, articles, and ongoing writing on AI in ministry — context for the decisions you're making this week.

donbarger.com ↗
🤖

Chipp.AI

No-code AI agent builder — create, deploy, and share custom AI tools for your ministry without writing a line of code. Powered by Claude, GPT, and Gemini.

chipp.ai ↗
💼

Microsoft Copilot

AI built into Microsoft 365 — Excel formula generation, Teams meeting summaries, Outlook reply drafting, and Word document transformation.

Click to learn more ↗

Partner With Us

This training, the FaithBot tools, and the AI ministry work behind them are offered freely — made possible by donors who believe technology in the right hands serves the gospel. If today helped, please consider becoming a monthly supporter.

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