Before the tool, a few decisions

Hannah runs the kids team at Riverside. On Monday she needed a new sign-in sheet for the preschool room, so she opened a chat assistant on her phone, pasted in the children’s names with their allergies and who could pick them up, and asked for a table. It took a minute, and the table was good.

On Wednesday Dana sat down to write to Dora, whose mother was getting worse. Dana didn’t know what to say and asked the same kind of tool. The note it wrote was gentle and well put. Dana changed two words and sent it. Dora wrote back that it had meant the world, and Dana read that twice and felt a little sick.

On Saturday night Nate went looking for the source of a line in Sunday’s sermon, a moving sentence from Augustine that an assistant had offered up that week. Augustine never wrote it.

All three were trying to serve well with the time they had. Riverside had never said what serving well looks like with these tools.

It’s already in your church

Barna’s research with Gloo this year found that most pastors already use AI in their ministry. Your staff and volunteers have the same assistants on the same phones. So AI came into most churches without a meeting or a vote, one helpful minute at a time.

Why the decisions come first

A better tool wouldn’t have helped anyone at Riverside. Hannah’s list of children now sits in a personal account, under terms she never read, and depending on the account it may be kept or used to train the model. Dora believes Dana found those words. Nate nearly told the whole church something false, with confidence, from the pulpit.

Each of those needs a decision only the church can make, and Scripture has been ready for it a long time: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Four decisions

Who decides. A person reads everything AI produces, and the person who approves it answers for it. AI may suggest. When it disagrees with a person, the person’s judgment stands, with no explanation owed. “The AI said so” is never a reason at your church.

What is never handed over. Pastoral care. Counsel. Discipline. Who leads. The safety of children. What the church teaches. Of those who shepherd, Hebrews says “they watch for your souls, as they that must give account” (13:17). A tool can’t give an account.

What never goes in. Children’s details, prayer requests, health, giving and family situations stay out of any tool the church hasn’t approved. Counseling notes, confessions and reports of abuse stay out of every tool.

What it’s for. Ask of each new use whether it fits what your church believes, serves a goal you can name, and gives people more time with people. A use that can’t answer those questions waits.

Under those decisions Hannah still gets her table. She builds it blank and fills in the names herself. Dana’s next note to Dora is shorter and a little clumsy, and it sounds like Dana. Nate still uses an assistant to organize research, and checks every source against the book.

Four things to try this month, whatever you use

1. Ask who’s already using it. Ask staff and volunteers, without blame, which tools they use and what they’ve pasted in.
2. Write down what never goes in. One list on one page. Start with children, prayer requests, counseling and giving.
3. Name one person. Someone keeps a short list of the tools your church has approved and takes questions about the rest.
4. Put a name on everything. Before anything AI helped with goes out, one person reads every word and checks every quotation and verse.

How Trellis does it

Trellis is the software a church like Riverside uses to run its week: groups, serving, worship planning, email, giving, sign-ups and kids check-in, with one record for every person. Trellis includes an AI assistant called Silas, so we had to make these same decisions for our own product.

After group, Dana can write a few lines about the night. Silas turns them into attendance, notes and prayer requests for Dana to check, and nothing is saved until Dana says so. Silas sends no messages and makes no decisions about anyone.

Silas stays off until an administrator at your church turns him on, and each task sends him only what that task needs. What he reads goes to Anthropic, the company whose AI model he runs on, and Anthropic doesn’t use it to train AI.

Silas does read some sensitive things, including prayer requests a leader mentions in a write-up. How Trellis uses AI lists exactly what he reads for each task.

We also wrote an AI policy your church can adapt. It’s free, whether or not you use Trellis.

From the Trellis team

Riverside and its people are made up. The week is one more churches recognize every month.