The people filling the pews are outrunning the people behind the pulpit when it comes to artificial intelligence — and the gap is bigger than you might expect.
“Ask people yes-or-no whether they use AI, and the average pastor and the average American look about the same,” said Daniel Copeland, vice president of research at Barna Group. “It’s frequency of use where the difference actually shows up.”
That’s the through-line of Barna’s newest research on faith and AI, released July 21 as part of the multi-year State of the Church initiative with faith-technology platform Gloo. And once you get past the yes/no question, the numbers separate quickly.
Forty-four percent of practicing Christians say they use AI “very often” or “often” in their personal lives, compared to 31% of US adults overall and 29% of non-practicing Christians. At work, 39% of practicing Christians use AI often or very often, versus 26% of US adults nationally.
Pastors, surveyed separately, aren’t keeping pace. Just 16% say they use AI “often” in their personal lives, and only 24% report using it often or very often at work — well behind the congregants they’re leading.
“Pastors understand that AI is out there, but they’re not immersed in it the way their engaged congregants may be,” Copeland added. “The danger for pastors is underestimating just how normal AI is for the people around them. For most practicing Christians, AI isn’t for occasional use. It’s already woven into how they work, learn and make decisions.”
Related: Should AI Be Used as a Spiritual Growth Tool?
What Christians are actually asking AI to do sounds a lot like what everyone else asks it to do: look something up, learn a task, sharpen a piece of writing, get advice on a decision. Interpreting scripture and seeking spiritual guidance sit much further down the list.
Even so, nearly half of practicing Christians told Barna they’d trust AI with their own spiritual growth — a striking answer given how few actually turn to it that way. Only about a third have asked AI for spiritual guidance or Bible-related questions in the past month.
One in three practicing Christians want their pastor’s perspective on how to navigate AI. Just 12% of pastors say they feel ready to give it.
That gap isn’t a call for pastors to become technology experts overnight, Copeland argues: “The better move is for pastors to double down on what they already do well: teaching people how to engage scripture, building real relationships, making space for analog discipleship. That’s what people can lean on when AI gives them an answer that’s incomplete, misleading or just wrong.”
Movieguide® has followed Barna’s work on this question since the organization first signaled its intent to study AI’s impact on ministry back in 2023, when CEO David Kinnaman warned that “digital Babylon moves at the pace of fiber optics.” Three years later, the pace hasn’t slowed — but a picture is forming of how faithful families are actually using these tools.
That picture came into sharper focus last month when Barna reported that most Protestant pastors already use AI, though mostly for behind-the-scenes work: sermon prep, graphic design, administrative tasks. The new data adds the other half of the story. Congregants aren’t just using AI more often — they’re using it in the messier, more personal spaces where a pastor’s voice used to be the first call.
For Christian families, that’s the practical takeaway. AI is already sitting in the room during decisions about work, parenting, relationships and faith. The question isn’t whether believers will use it, but whether they’ll bring the same discernment to a chatbot’s answer that they’d bring to any other source claiming to know what’s true.
Copeland’s read on the moment lands close to that. The questions people bring to AI, he noted, often surface before they ever reach a pastor. Christian leaders paying attention gain a clearer view of where people are stuck — and one more reason to keep showing up in person for exactly those moments.
That’s not a technology problem. It’s a shepherding one.
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