Mission Yearbook: Author discusses charting faithful future for AI

The “Faithful Futures: Guiding AI with Wisdom and Witness” gathering recently took place at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. Before the gathering, Dr. Bob Johansen, an author and futurist who spoke at the inaugural conference in 2024, offered a talk designed to help people of faith to use artificial intelligence to humanize and re-enchant leadership.

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Photo by Igor Omilaev via Unsplash

Along with Jeremy Kirshbaum and Gabe Cervantes, Johansen wrote “Leaders Make the Future: 10 New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI,” an updated book being distributed to those attending the conference in person. Together with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Office of Innovation, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church and The Episcopal Church sponsored last year’s gathering.

“I’m a humble futurist, but I’m also aware this is a troubling time, but it’s also hopeful,” Johansen said. “People of faith have a role to play in [the use of generative AI] but it will require us to reimagine what we’re all about.”

Johansen used to talk about a VUCA world, for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Now he and others foresee a BANI future, for brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible.

Johansen interspersed his talk with three rounds of questions from online viewers. The first round dealt with how do we frame the BANI future with faith? The second was on how you and the people can you serve cope with and be resilient in an increasingly BANI future. The third was how do you want to be augmented for the future?

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Dr. Bob Johansen (Contributed photo)

The term “VUCA” was framed at the Army War College where Johansen continues to teach. Author Jamais Cascio coined the BANI acronym to describe a world “that will be fraught with tenson,” Johansen said. “How can you have faith in a BANI future?”

He offered examples of brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible reactions. That last one includes voters across the political spectrum who “cannot comprehend why the other side behaves, believes and votes as they do.”

Flipping it over, Johansen explored the manifestations of faith that will be effective in the future of BANI. People of faith can combat brittleness with “a bendable faith, with resilient clarity stories, but nobody can have certainty,” Johansen said. An attentive faith, “with active empathy and kindness for people and communities,” is the antidote for anxiety. Johansen said a neuroflexible faith can overcome nonlinear thinking. He calls that “teaching our brains new tricks,” and said that most leadership teams he works with take improv courses “in a world where you can’t know a definitive way.” Finally, an interconnected faith is an answer in an incomprehensible world. He said his “signature line” is this: “The future will reward clarity, but punish certainty.”

“There’s no certainty in the BANI future. Faith is a lot like clarity, and certainty is a lot like extreme belief,” Johansen said, reminding viewers of Paul Tillich’s quote: “The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty.”

“Faith will be a competitive advantage in this BANI future,” he said, and it ought to be “kind and calm, inspiring trust and courage.”

During the first question-and-answer session, Johansen said the most important strategy for change in the BANI world is cross-generational work. “If you can’t work with kids, you’re going to be out of the game,” he said. “I’m not saying, ‘Just run a better Sunday school.’ I’m saying, ‘Share leadership.’ Create situations where young people, including teenagers, are involved in the leadership of the church and get involved in things more directly.” One advantage to that approach is that many young people grew up with gaming, “which is the learning medium of the future,” he said.

“I am really optimistic about young people if they have hope,” he said.

For the past two years, Johansen said he’s used generative AI on a daily basis. He calls his customized version of ChatGPT “Stretch” “because I want it to stretch my thinking.”

“I don’t use it for answers, for finals or for efficiency, and I don’t trust it,” he said.

But “we can’t just walk away from it,” Johansen said. “We have to learn from it and use it for better purposes.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Yun Kyoung Yang, Editorial Assistant, Korean, Growing Faith Resources, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Andrew Yeager-Buckley, Project Manager II, President’s Office, Administrative Services Group

Let us pray:

Lord, give us the willingness to love others to the point of sharing our faith intimately with them in deed and in words. Help us to appreciate the least of these in our midst. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Doctoral student discusses how preachers can use AI

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Alison Gerber (Screenshot)

Alison Gerber, a doctoral student in homiletics at Baylor University, recently delivered an insightful talk on “Preaching and Artificial Intelligence” as part of the Synod of the Covenant’s Cultivating the Gift of Preaching program. Listen to her conversation with the synod’s executive, the Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick, here.

For understanding more about ChatGPT and other Large Language Models, Gerber recommends Ethan Mollick’s book, “Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI.”

Preachers, journalists and others use AI to help them perform mundane tasks. “The way ChatGPT works is it is a program that is fed a ton of text … hundreds of billions of words,” Gerber explained. “For a long time — months — it trains on this text and tries to create text using trial and error.”

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The Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick

Eventually, it provides the next most likely token — a word or part of a word — by working on “statistical probabilities and patterns it has observed in the human language it’s been given. That’s all it’s doing,” Gerber told Hardwick. “It’s not talking in the way we talk. It’s thinking about what’s the next statistically likely bit that I need to output in response to the input it’s been given.”

Hardwick asked: “How do you think about ChatGPT and the struggle preachers need to go through?”

“One of the major features of AI is the quest for efficiency,” Gerber said. “That’s been part of the long tradition of teaching machines to do the work that we do. We’re looking to share the boring tasks we have, the tedious tasks that we have, to be more efficient.”

Gerber cited a study in which preachers claimed it took them 10–15 hours each week to write their sermon. “That’s pretty inefficient work,” she said. But “what if the struggle of writing a sermon, the inefficiency of writing a sermon by a human, is part of the essential nature of preaching?”

Preachers spend “hours and hours” completing their exegesis each week, Hardwick noted, “and maybe 10% is going to make its way into your sermon. The problem is, you don’t know which 10%. God uses that inefficiency not just to craft a sermon, but to craft us so the Word becomes embedded in our lives.”

Some people worry about plagiarism when using ChatGPT as a sermon aid, Gerber said. “Technically, it’s not taking chunks from famous sermons. It’s creating something new,” and thus is not plagiarism.

“But there is the issue of our honesty and integrity as preachers,” Gerber said. Do you just get up and preach that sermon without telling everybody that ChatGPT wrote it?” Gerber asked. “To me, that’s an issue of your honesty and integrity.”

But if the preacher goes to the senior pastor or the session and asks how they’d feel about such a choice during an especially difficult week, “I cannot imagine a session that wouldn’t say, ‘Absolutely!’”

Another ChatGPT caveat is that preachers who study their texts at length are “bursting at the seams with information and joy about this passage from Scripture. Some of that does come out after you preach,” Gerber said. The preacher might continue the conversation over the sermon during coffee hour and Bible study. “I don’t think the sermon really ends when the preacher steps down from the pulpit … When those echoes are going on, I want to bring God’s Word in those moments. I want it to live inside me,” a difficult ask when ChatGPT has crafted the sermon.

ChatGPT also doesn’t know the congregation in the same way the preacher does, and so it may not select biblical texts as well as the preacher can. In fact, ChatGPT sermons selected by AI would rely overwhelmingly on popular Scriptures including John 3:16 and Psalm 23, according to Gerber.

“I think of ChatGPT as an eager but sometimes mistaken intern in my office,” Gerber said. “It’s a collaborator, but one I am thinking cautiously about the information given to me.” Gerber will enter a paragraph into ChatGPT with a blank, then ask it to provide 10 options. “It always gives me the word I have been trying to think of,” she said.

“If ChatGPT can help me get from here to there, more power to it,” Hardwick said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service, Communications (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Aniria Williams, Administrative Support, Annual Giving, Administrative Services Group
Kaden Wood, Business Analyst, Operations, The Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray:

Gracious God, please keep before us the vision of what it means to be disciples. Generations before us have followed your light. May we continue to show love and compassion to people whose voices have long been silent. Amen.

New features of One Great Hour of Sharing Leader’s Guide

New Ideas for Interpretation and Promotion One Great Hour of Sharing Leader’s Guide has everything you need to plan, prepare and sustain a successful offering season. But this year we have packed some extra goodies into it to make things even easier for you! Fish Box Liturgy Everyone loves the fish box coin bank, and if they are part of your standing order, included on page eleven is liturgy to use when handing out these fish boxes and receiving them as part of a worship service or even outside of worship.  Ways to Use Fish Boxes Check out these great ideas from other congregations. There are so many different ways you can use fish boxes in your congregation even if you have no children. See page ten for all the ideas.  Tell us how you use your fish boxes!  How is One Great Hour of Sharing Used? See your gifts in action! There is great mission and ministry being done with your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing. Learn about all of the ways your gifts support our partners around the world on page five. Download the Leader's Guide Thank you for generously supporting the Churchwide Special Offerings.  If you have any questions, reply to this email or call us at (800) 728-7228, Ext. 5047.

If this email was forwarded to you, sign up for our list.  Is this offering not one you are passionate about? Update your preferences to receive emails for the offerings you care about most. Worried you'll miss out on something? We will send out reminders that the season is approaching and give you an opportunity to change your mind about each offering's emails.  Copyright © 2026 Special Offerings, All rights reserved.

Where Belief Meets Story: 2026 Festival of Faith & Writing

Stories shape us. They spark imagination, deepen empathy, and open windows into the mystery of belief. At the 2026 Festival of Faith & Writing, you’ll experience three unforgettable days where readers, writers, and seekers gather to explore how words illuminate the world and our place within it. More than just a literary conference, the Festival of Faith & Writing is designed to foster meaningful dialogue across diverse perspectives, offering an array of lectures, readings, conversations, and performances. Sessions are presented by both emerging and long-celebrated storytellers from various mediums—including books, podcasts, journalism, and film—who explore matters of faith with creativity and insight. The 2026 speaker roster includes Laurie Halse Anderson, Scott Erickson, Ross Gay, Karina Yan Glaser, Eliza Griswold, Astead Herndon, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ariel Lawhon, Nicholas Ma, Hillary McBride, Andrew Peterson, Neal Shusterman, Barbara Brown Taylor, and dozens more. There’s truly something for everyone at the Festival. Don’t miss your chance to be part of this extraordinary community—curious minds and creative voices eager to swap stories, discover new favorites, and celebrate the power of words together. Register today Whether you’re a reader, writer, teacher, student, or simply someone who can’t resist a good story, you’ll find a warm welcome and plenty of kindred spirits at this biennial celebration.

Copyright (C) 2026 RNS. All rights reserved.

Mission Yearbook: Video explores how faith is part of repair

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Oak Grove Presbyterian Church's communion set (All photos by Rich Copley)

“God emptied God’s self in the form of Jesus — and it cost God something,” says the Rev. Dr. Bart Roush, pastor and head of staff at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, Minnesota. For Roush, this theological truth challenges Christians to consider what repairing historic harms might cost them. “We’re on board with food pantries and diaper drives,” he says, “but that doesn’t change systems. Repair asks more of us.”

Roush is featured in the fourth episode in the series "Zero to One: A Congregation’s Journey to Repair," which explores the spiritual heart of this congregation’s reparative work, delving into how theology, discipleship and trust in God have shaped the congregation’s decision to surrender wealth as an act of justice.

The series, which documents Oak Grove’s journey toward restorative action, began with questions about history, systemic racism and white privilege. By episode 4, the focus shifts to the deeper motivations behind repair: the faith that calls Christians to act, accepting that their actions will cost them something.

Sue Greimel, a ruling elder at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church, connects the church’s decision to surrender $267,000 to the concept of atonement. “I wondered what I would have done if I had seen Jesus being treated that way,” she says. “Would I have spoken up? Restorative action feels similar — it’s painful, but it’s right.”

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The Rev. Dr. Bart Roush presides over communion at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, Minnesota.

The Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam, director of the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, reframes reparations not as charity, but as theological surrender. “The act of surrendering is a spiritual discipline that allows people to realize that you are not a benefactor, a philanthropist, a donor or a giver,” says Ross-Allam, “but you are a recipient of a debt, and that debt must be paid.”

This surrender, Oak Grove leaders emphasize, must come without strings. Greimel recalls discussions within the finance committee about how the funds would be used. “I was relieved to say, ‘I don’t care.’ It’s not our job to decide. We’re trusting God and the trustees to do what’s right.”

Becky Dop, ruling elder at Oak Grove, shares how the process helped her confront assumptions rooted in white privilege. “We think we know best,” she says. “But it was freeing to realize we don’t. That’s not humility — it’s truth.”

The episode also includes reflections from Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart, synod executive of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, and the Rev. Gregory Bentley, who along with Street-Stewart served as Co-Moderator of the 224th General Assembly (2020). Both speak to the spiritual imperative of justice. “I can’t imagine following Jesus without being committed to this work,” Bentley says. “It’s what he was committed to.”

Bentley describes a future where resources are shared equitably, and where compassion — not competition — guides our relationships. “We must disabuse ourselves of the myth of scarcity,” he says. “There is enough for everyone.”

Street-Stewart, a member of the Delaware Nanticoke tribe and a longtime advocate for Indigenous justice, reminds viewers that justice is always possible. “Our ancestors prayed for it even in the midst of genocide,” she says. “And they gave thanks for the world the Creator had given them.”

The voices in “How is faith part of repair?” testify to how reparations is not just a political or economic issue, but also a spiritual witness.

Watch the full series and learn more here. Read the series introduction here.

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Communications (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Caralee Wheeler, Program Associate, Development Office, The Presbyterian Foundation
John Wilkinson, Director, Stewardship & Funds Development, Administrative Services Group

Let us pray:

Loving God, thank you for continuing to move in our lives; for sending us and for sending others to us. Bless all who you call to serve, whether down the street or across the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Ministry Matters - Building for 2026: Strategy and Soul

A Word from the Editor  January brings that familiar tension: the fresh energy of a new year colliding with the reality that you're still tired from December, and your congregation might be too. This is when well-meaning planning retreats can feel more exhausting than energizing, and when "building community" has become such a buzzword that it's lost all meaning.  This month, we're offering tools that acknowledge where we actually are in 2026. Strategic planning needs to be adaptive, not rigid—because none of us can predict what next quarter will bring. And community formation needs to go deeper than programming, addressing the real loneliness epidemic even in our churches. These resources are designed to help you lead with both clarity and compassion as you navigate the year ahead.  —Cameron  From vision to action: Adaptive planning for uncertain times by Ministry Matters "Five-year plans don't work when you can't predict next quarter. Learn how to adapt frameworks like a strategic cascade for church contexts, moving from compelling vision to executable quarterly priorities without getting paralyzed by uncertainty. This practical approach helps you answer: Where will we focus? How will we win? What do we actually need to make it happen?"  Learn More Right Questions to ask as the new year begins by Lovett H. Weems Jr. "Before rushing into 2026 planning, ask the diagnostic questions that reveal what's actually working. Lovett Weems offers seven essential questions about first-time guests, volunteers, community change, glimpses of vitality, finances, and new people that will give you the clarity you need to plan wisely."  Read Now What questions will guide your church's path forward this year? Beyond Christian nationalism by Justin Coleman "Christian nationalism did not arise because Christians suddenly became too political. It arose because Christian spirituality became too thin. That distinction matters. It reframes the problem in a way that neither excuses nor simplifies what we are facing." Continue Reading

Lovett H. Weems, Jr. equips church leaders with field-tested questions organized into 14 categories to navigate personnel challenges, expand ministry impact, and make better decisions in any denominational setting. Leading scholars and practitioners from Duke Divinity School explore how Trinitarian theology provides vital resources for contemporary ministry challenges—from worship and preaching to climate crisis and church renewal—demonstrating that the ancient Nicene confession remains powerfully relevant for twenty-first century faith and practice. Twenty-four ready-to-use sermon series from diverse preachers offer fresh themes, focus Scriptures, sermon starters, and creative ideas for extending each topic into worship, education, and outreach—saving pastors valuable preparation time while bringing meaningful depth to the pulpit year-round.