Yet another major technological advance is here—the widespread use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

For some time, our team has been using the phrase “digital Babylon” to describe our complex, algorithm-driven, always-connected culture. Just a few years ago, in our book Faith for Exiles, my co-author Mark Matlock and I asserted that “screens disciple.” At the time, we wrote, “Digital Babylon moves at the pace of fiber optics, and the idol is fitting in and being up to speed.”

We couldn’t have known just how much the pace would quicken. Since then, the world has navigated a pandemic that accelerated the forces of digitization—and isolation—in our culture.

Now, society is recognizing that the once far-off possibilities of artificial intelligence have rapidly become the reality of our present.

As never before, Christian leaders and the people they serve are wrestling with what it means to follow Jesus in the digital age. It’s increasingly essential to know how to live what our friend Andy Crouch calls “a tech-wise life.” These are just some of the reasons I believe that understanding what AI means for ministry will be vitally important to the future of the Church and our communities.