Kentucky Baptist resolution asks where AI assistance becomes a substitute for community

Assistance and human community

A resolution in the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s 2026 archive gives churches a concrete distinction to examine: whether an AI tool helps people serve one another or takes the place of a human relationship.

The text, “On Artificial Intelligence and the Beauty of Human Community,” names the convention’s November 10 meeting in Richmond, Kentucky. It allows for AI that augments human activity while opposing its use as a replacement for authentic human connection. Its theological starting point is humanity’s creation in God’s image and the biblical call to love one another. It asks parents, educators, church leaders, technologists and policymakers to examine technology’s effects on relationships. Source: kybaptist.org

The convention’s former proposals page now directs readers to its resolutions database, where the text appears under 2026. The pages reviewed do not provide a vote tally, an implementation timetable or a technical assessment of particular products. The resolution should be read at that stated scope. Source: kybaptist.org Source: kybaptist.org

Following a request for help

For a congregation considering an AI service, the useful question is what changes after the software arrives. Consider two hypothetical uses of a church chatbot. One helps someone find a service time and offers a clear route to a member of staff. Another keeps answering personal questions while leaving no church member aware that someone has asked for help. Both may produce polite, relevant answers. Their consequences for the congregation’s ability to respond could be very different.

A practical review could therefore trace a person’s route through the service. Can they tell when a machine is responding? Can they readily reach a person? Who receives a request that the software cannot responsibly handle? Does the church have enough people available to make that promised handover real? These are editorial applications of the resolution’s concern, not requirements listed in its text.

What a congregation can examine

The same review should consider people who find digital contact easier than approaching a church building. Preserving human community need not mean insisting that every conversation begin face to face. A text exchange with an accountable person can itself be a relationship. The relevant test is whether the technology helps sustain that contact and gives people meaningful choices about how to seek support.

Churches can also examine what they count as success. Faster replies and more conversations may be useful operational measures, but they cannot establish on their own that people are being known or accompanied. A ministry can ask staff and users whether a tool made human help easier to obtain, and record failures as carefully as successes. That would turn the resolution’s relational concern into questions a congregation can actually investigate.