The Idolatry of Efficiency: Why the Church Must Look Beyond the AI Prompt

The Idolatry of Efficiency: Why the Church Must Look Beyond the AI Prompt

Two decades ago, the Church approached social media as a neutral instrument, a tool to be wielded for outreach and engagement. We asked how to use it, rarely what it would do to us. The result, as many now recognize, was a spiritual landscape reshaped by loneliness and polarization, consequences we saw only after the platforms had already taken root. Author and pastor Carey Nieuwhof warns that history is repeating itself with artificial intelligence, but the stakes may be even higher.

In his forthcoming book, AI and the Future Church, Nieuwhof argues that the current Christian conversation—focused on prompts, productivity, and automation—misses the deeper spiritual question. “I think we’re having the wrong conversation about artificial intelligence,” he told RELEVANT. “Most of us are talking about what agent do you use? What prompts do you use? The bigger question is about the impact of artificial intelligence.” Nieuwhof’s own research shifted his gaze from the tool to the cultural acceleration it enables, a transformation he believes could be, in the words of Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, “10 times faster” than previous technological shifts. For a community called to be slow to speak and quick to listen, this speed presents not just a logistical challenge, but a spiritual one.