Missional AI

Wednesday, 15 July 2026

Seeing Again: Chine McDonald

In 1901; The Machine Stops was written; it’s a world driven by technology, the world is held together by the machine. It was over a century ago, and yet it feels prophetic now. The challenge was will humans become machine like.

Machines blur our understanding of what it means to be human and to see God clearly. It’s a commitment to seeing clearly that might help us stay human in this age of AI.

Perhaps AI can help us?

Help us to see creation

Gen 1 isn’t just about creation, it’s about the creator. We encounter a God who has astonishing creativity. He speaks, names, builds, creates, delights. It’s not a functional item, it is a bold creative act. Genesis presents God who doesn’t delight in effienceicy, but creativity. God saw that it was good.

God in each at of creation to enjoy each stage. How can we see creation more deeply.

We are so tempted to fill the time that we have, AI gives us more of it. What would it look like to pause and an enjoy the creation we have. How can we delight more in what God has made.

The objective isn’t just to create, but to marvel in what God has made. We are to marvel and see it.

The Machine Stops is a story about a mother and son living in a world of the machine. The mother has no interest in the machine-less world, she doesn’t want to live outside it. The son, longs for it, he wants to see the stars again.

To be human is to see the beauty of creation and to be in awe of it, and its creator.

God creates. God sees. He saw that it was good.

Perhaps the church isn’t to out-create the machines, but to point to contemplation.

We are made in the image of God who delights in his creation. He doesn’t just create, he beholds.

How do we recover paying attention; not to exploit what we have, but to enjoy and see what has been there all along. It’s an enjoyment of slowing down, just as a child discovers and sees things again and again.

Draw use closer to seeing each other

In The Machine Stops, the people are divided, on their own, they have no personal connection, everything happens through the machine. Everything is mediated through the machine.

There is something different when we meet face to face. We begin to see how God see them. Encounter takes people from targets, users, metrics - encounter reminds us that people are in God’s image. The problem begins when we see people as ’it’ - one dimensional pixelated things.

AI by definition is an ‘it’ - the danger isn’t interacting with it as an ‘it’, the danger is taking how we interact with AI and then applying that way of interaction with people. We stop seeing the image of god in others, we are called to do better.

Every act of evangelism, caring for our neighbour, is an act of seeing the image of God. It’s a refusal to see people by their ‘status’, ‘class’, ‘value to society’.

Enable us to see each other

To be seen is more than to be observed. It is to be known.

Hagar was someone who was discarded by those around her, she is not seen. She was invisible to the world. And as she is discarded to the desert, she is met by ‘the one who sees me’. Zacchaeus isn’t just a tax collector, he is the one who Jesus calls by name.

Perhaps that is the mission in the age of AI? To introduce people to the one who sees them.

Three Ways Christians Can Respond to the AI Moment - Paul Taylor

Haggai 1:1; there are three characters in this opening sentence where God calls these people to rebuild the temple, so that the people can meet with God.

It we are to operate well in this world of AI, we need to think about each of these roles in society.

King

The role of authority and power shapes culture and society. Our kings can be good or bad in our society. There can be many kings in our society, with different powers, and influences.

It’s interesting that Anthropic (acting as King with power) are inviting people of faith into shaping what they do. This hasn’t happened before.

How do we operate within the power that we are given to shape culture for good?

Prophet

No one likes the prophets.

Haggai 1:3–4; are we living in paneled houses while the temple is broken? The prophet challenges and holds those in power to account. The prophet have no power themselves, but they ask questions to those who have authority.

We need people to ask questions, hard questions around human flourishing, in this time. Even if people are not listening, we need their questions as part of the conversation.

Anthropic started by asking “for this to go well, we need to be in it together”

Priest

They step into culture and help people find God in the world. In a culture that is constantly changing how do we help people meet Jesus?

This moment in AI provides an incredible opportunity as we ask ‘what does it mean to be human’?

If we make a direct copy of the Eiffel Tower (same materials, construction methods, weathering, etc) is it the Eiffel Tower? Or is it a replica or it? The Eiffel Tower is a specific thing, in a specific place.

What does it mean to be human, we need to look to Christ.

People are asking the question ‘what does it mean to be human’ - and we have the answer - it’s Jesus! What an opportunity to share Christ.

Postures of Humanity

There are four relationships of a Christian:

with God - the posture of awe

When you go to the ocean or the mountains you can feel small… and that is a good thing. It creates an awe within us that is restorative.

with creation - the posture of agency

We are meant to act in the world. We are made to act that has consequences. If awe makes us feel small, agency makes us feel big.

with ourselves - the posture of identity (ps 139:13)

…

with other people - the posture of intimacy (gen 2:22)

We are not meant to be alone. Our relationships are critical of our experience in life.

As we take these four postures, how does technology help us to flourish in each of these areas rather than to be reduced in this areas?

In the three fold model of prophet, priest, king in society, what role are we serving in? Jesus serves in these roles.

Culture needs the church to show up in these roles. When the church is at its best, this is what we are called to do. Follow Jesus in these areas.

Creating in the Age of AI – Kevin Bennett

A category error?

Our understanding of AI has been shaped by Hollywood.

So much about AI is about prediction, it’s all maths under the hood. But prediction has limits.

It is a simulation. We have intelligence and we have tried to reverse engineer that and then encode that models.

Simulation != consciousness. This is a wrestle; philosophers have written at length and come down to that we don’t know what that is is… but AI does not have consciousness, it has calculations.

Work is not the product of the fall, that came in Gen 2. God then equips us for this work. Adam was given what was needed.

We have to put AI in the right box, and we need to put ourselves in the right box. We are different.

AI & Creativity

Ideation -> Drafting -> Finalisation

Where we put AI in this matters– we are exploring that.

Where is the virtuous median between these things?

Enduring Value in the Age of AI

Have we have commoditisation creation, AI generation means that creation is not special?

People can recreate your product overnight, where is the value?

Character, calling, concision, courage, community and trust are unique.

Enduing value isn’t going to come from your codebase or features.

You need to have a good product, but build what can’t be copied.

AI isn’t God, but could be an idol

Your value is unity? No God made you in his image

A secular world view is not enough for Christians as we engage with technology. We can be pro-technology. We can be pro-human. Christianity is strong enough to hold a flourishing of

Algorithms - the spirit
Calculation - calling
Preciction - prophetic imagination

Panel discussion (Daniel Jones: Stewardship, Luke Wilkinson: Raiser, Antonio Cappelletti: Christian Aid, Kit Powney: Tearfund)

The Machines are Taking Over – Heinz Oldewage (CV)

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by what is going on, there is so much we are not in control of, it can feel that ‘the machines are taking over’– what is our posture in light of this?

March 1961 in Life Magazine - this was the headline. This isn’t new. There is nothing new under the sun.

We march backwards in the future - Marshall McLuhan

We use the understanding of the past to define and shape our understanding of the present and future.

If you main questions about AI is ‘what does it say?’ then trust is based on it’s output. Will it generate the passage correctly, will it generate correct pastoral response, will it give a response we can stand behind. Is this the correct framing? Is this too narrow?

1440 - Guttenburg develops movable type for the printing press. The church response was a reaction against it– the church was scared that it would be the businesses that would take over the bible creation, they wouldn’t care about the quality of the manuscripts, it would be just for profits, and the spiritual discipline of producing manuscripts would be lost. Were they right? To some extent, yes! The early days were wild west. Accuracy was a mess, etc.

But what emerged around the press was new possibilities that had never been possible before. Concordances, polyglot bibles, tracts, scripture engagement grew out of it. There was a new layer of spiritual discipline that wasn’t possible before.

Being worried about ‘accuracy’ is fair in the world of AI. We need to be aware of it. But maybe the real value from AI is going to come from outside that space.

The risk lives in your category; the revolutions lives outside of it.

We shouldn’t lose sight of our worries and concerns. But we also need to be looking beyond them.

Pay attention to the noise; if the real impact of tech in your org is unfolding in a space that you are not paying attention to you won’t see the impact of it. You’ll work against it. If your practice starts becoming - “what are people doing that we didn’t intend”, we’re going to start seeing the value.

Prioritise exposure; give what you have got to your people so they can engage with it and figure it out. Let people innovate on it. Learn from them. Innovate with them.

Panel Discussion (Sara-Louise Martin: FDE, Charlene Peters Chen, Jed Francis, Hugh Chichester)

Open Innovation - Joshua Seale

When we leave our silos, lay aside our egos, and building together what we make is greater than the sum of its parts.

What would it mean if we were to be radically generous with what God has given us?

Biblica steward 100+ language and there has been a move towards releasing some of these under a creative commons license. Progress is currently at 60% heading towards 95%.

It does no good to have these translations sat of shelves, no one use them. The app project to get each of these translations into easy access digital form.

The Biblica Study Bible, 4 years to produce, but once it was open it up it took two ears for it to be translated into 17 languages and implement into a API/Chatbot

Missional AI; a movement not a conference– growing a community that learns and grows together.

The Middle James Poulter

We’re in the middle of the ride that just won’t stop. What are we going to do about it?! It feels so much.

Every tech revolution goes through three points

We always feel like the end of nigh…

It’s in the wrestling where things get interesting. We have to confront what is happening. To explore it. To dig into it.

We are at the arrival of ‘seemingly conscious AI’ - it is inevitable and unwelcome - Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI

When we treat things as conscious it doesn’t matter if they are or not. We start thinking about things differently. We treat then differently. We need to think differently.

Acts 2 People - the spirit is the helper to help us discern the times.

We get to bend the future, because we are in the middle

Post changelog

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