by Grace Thornton, The Baptist Paper

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Bryan Jones said just a few days ago he cut his finger open; then he got out his phone, took a picture of it, and asked AI what he needed to do.

“It was able to tell me, ‘You need to go to the doctor, and you will probably need three stitches,’” he said. “So I went to the doctor, and they gave me three stitches.”

The number of things AI can do is “just incredible,” said Jones, executive director of NorthStar Church Network, noting that he also had used it to explain his bloodwork results to him after a doctor appointment.

But he added that with AI, in the same vein as the Jurassic Park way of thinking, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

How to use AI effectively and with integrity in ministry was the topic of Jones’ Learning Lab at BGAV’s annual meeting Nov. 11. He said 45% of church leaders are at least experimenting with it, and most are using it to help them refine sermons.

Jones said one way NorthStar churches are approaching AI is to have a brainstorming group that shares ideas, such as how to use AI to handle repetitive tasks. They also talk about ethical issues such as how much a pastor should use AI to help with a sermon.

“I could upload five of my sermons that I’ve preached in the past and say, ‘Write a sermon on John 3:16 in my voice,’ and it will take all the ways I’ve written before and make it sound like me, and probably the congregation wouldn’t know the difference,” he said.

But he noted that again the question lies in just because you can, should you?

“I think one of the big ethical things is that you don’t abuse it and secondly that you’re authentic and true — AI is not the Holy Spirit, so you need to still do the work for that,” Jones said.

He also discussed some of the real-life AI-related issues church leaders encounter from their congregation — such as when someone says their son thinks AI is his girlfriend or when a church member says they’re using AI as their counselor.

Gary Long, BGAV’s chief marketing officer, said these types of issues are right at the heart of what churches are facing today, and that’s why BGAV decided to move from breakout sessions to a Learning Lab model for this year’s annual meeting.

“The gist of it is really simple — our previous breakout model always had a bunch of things that were important to our churches but not foundational,” he said. “We really wanted to change that to feature things that would help our churches and answer the questions they were asking.”

Topics included transforming your church’s hunger ministry to a collaborative community, discipleship, religious liberty, navigating uncertain times and talking to children about death. Some labs were offered in person, and others were hosted online.

Each lab included hands-on activities, real-world examples from a church or ministry, practical tools and the offer of follow-up coaching.

Paul Maconochie, team leader at Uptick, offered a deeper look at how a church can move into a season of thriving.

During his Learning Lab offered Nov. 10 and then again online Nov. 11, he said a pastor who wants to encourage his church to make changes might have an uphill battle, but a few questions can help turn the tide.

“We can look at life in three dimensions — up, in, and out,” Maconochie said.

He used the example of a men’s Bible study that has been meeting for years but isn’t reaching out.

“If you try to change it, you may have a fight on your hands,” Maconochie said.

But if “up, in, and out” become a guiding tool for the church, three questions can help encourage the group to consider who they are and what they’re doing.

“You could say, ‘If you want to do that group that’s great, but is there an upward, inward, and outward dimension?’ Upward is probably present with the Bible study. Inward is probably there with fellowship,” he said. “But is there an outward dimension?”

Maconochie’s lab, “Seven Jesus-Shaped Practices for a Thriving Church,” which he co-led with Impact Missions’ Kristen Curtis, served as an introduction to a 14-month cohort process Uptick makes available to churches.

“We’ve had the benefit of seeing a huge range of different kinds of church — urban, suburban, rural, small, large,” he said.

In addition to Learning Labs, this year’s annual meeting also offered the option of attending Insight Sessions, 45-minute presentations on focused topics. These ranged from a session on why sabbaticals are important to one on how to protect the vulnerable.

To see the full list of Learning Labs and Insight Sessions, visit meeting.bgav.org/schedule2025.

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