How We Use AI

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A lot of Christians are uneasy about AI anywhere near faith, and they are right to be. Some of what worries them is true of us and some is not, so here is the whole picture in one place rather than buried in a terms page.

The concession first, because everything else depends on it being honest: a machine cannot pray, and a machine cannot disciple you. Prayer is a person speaking to the living God, and nothing generated here is a prayer until you mean it and offer it. Discipleship is a person walking with a person, and that requires a body, a covenant, and someone who will still be there in five years. We are not trying to be either of those things.

What this is: a tool for the hours between gatherings. Help finding words when you have none, a place to ask the question you are embarrassed to ask out loud, and a way to practice before it counts. Read our Statement of Faith for the doctrine underneath all of this.

Every place AI touches your experience

This is the complete list of features where AI does something while you use them. If a feature is not here, no AI runs in it. Separately, some of the writing you read here was drafted with AI help and reviewed by a person before it shipped, the same way a publisher uses an editor. We would rather say that plainly than claim a purity we do not have.

Prayer Assistant

Writes a draft prayer from what you tell it, revises a prayer you wrote, or gives feedback on one. You decide what to keep, and nothing here is a prayer until you mean it and pray it.

The Walk (first chapter only)

In the first chapter, while you are learning to pray, AI writes or finishes short prayers from what you share, and each one is labeled as AI-written on the screen where you read it. Every later chapter is human-written with no AI involved: the teaching, the Scripture notes, and your own words in every exercise. What you type in a session's private reflection boxes is never sent anywhere, including to the AI.

Scripture Q&A

Answers questions about the Bible, biblical history, theology, and how Scripture speaks to life. It cites references; the verse text you read is looked up from the Berean Standard Bible.

Spiritual Director

An ongoing conversation that remembers what you have discussed before. It asks questions, suggests practices, and points to Scripture. It is not a pastor and is instructed to say so.

Today's Practice

Generates the daily verse reflection, devotional, reflection questions, and prayer prompt.

Guided Prayer and meditations

Generates the guided content for prayer sessions and contemplative exercises. If you turn on spoken prompts in a guided prayer session, the voice reading them is AI-generated. It reads the same words shown on screen, which were written by people, and the recordings are made ahead of time rather than generated while you pray.

Practice Faith Conversations

The AI plays the part of a person who does not believe (a skeptic, a scientist, someone hurt by a church) so you can practice. You do the ministry; the AI is the one being talked to. Afterward it coaches you on how it went.

Scripture memorization

Writes the everyday-life scenarios and the comprehension questions used in Hidden in My Heart. These are written ahead of time, once for each verse, and then reused, so in most rounds no AI runs while you are playing. A second AI, a different one from the one that wrote it, checks each scenario against our content rules and pulls anything that fails, and anything it is unsure about waits for a person to read before it is shown again. The verse itself is never written or altered by AI.

Stories of Grace

Transcribes audio and video you submit (AWS Transcribe), screens submissions for harmful content, drafts a summary and tags for the human reviewer at your church, and suggests share-card content. A human at your church still decides whether your story is published.

Reading plans

Every day of a reading plan comes with framing, background notes, character sketches, and reflection questions. All of that was written by AI ahead of time, not while you read, and it is one reading among many rather than settled teaching. The Bible passage each day sends you to is Scripture itself, unchanged and not AI-written.

Prayer walls

Screens submitted prayer requests for harmful content before a human moderator sees them.

This Week's Focus (church staff)

When a church uploads a sermon, reads the transcript and drafts the main points and discussion questions for the week. A church leader reviews and edits everything before any member sees it.

Story search (church staff)

When a reviewer at your church searches the stories submitted to them, their search words are sent to our AI provider so the search can match on meaning and not only on exact wording. The stories themselves are not sent at search time. Search words are stored so a repeated search does not have to be sent again.

Ask My Church

When you send a question to your church, your message is checked for signs that you may need urgent help, so the person reading it can see that first. The check never blocks or edits your message, and it never decides anything for you. If the check fails, your message still goes through exactly as you wrote it.

Book Ministry scanning (ministry staff)

Staff who run our book-giving ministry can photograph a stack of books, an order receipt, or upload a purchase-history file. AI reads the titles, how many copies, and any prices, and suggests which books in the ministry's inventory they match. The photo or file is deleted as soon as it is read. Nothing is saved until a person checks every line and confirms it.

What our AI is not allowed to do

These are not aspirations. Each one is a rule written into the instructions every AI feature runs under, and several are enforced by the application itself rather than trusted to the model.

It may never write out a verse of Scripture.

This is the most important one. Our AI is only allowed to cite a reference, like Romans 8:28. The words you read are then looked up from our own copy of the Berean Standard Bible and rendered by the application, not by the model. The AI is architecturally unable to put words in God's mouth, because it is never the thing producing the verse.

It may never claim to be God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or a human pastor.

There is no Jesus chatbot here and there never will be. This is written verbatim into the Spiritual Director's instructions.

It may never tell you God's specific will for your life.

Ask it who to marry, whether to take the job, or whether to move, and it is required to refuse, point you to the biblical principles of discernment, and send you to your pastor and your church community. No personal prophecy, ever.

It may never give medical, legal, or financial direction.

Including when the question is dressed in spiritual clothing. It can tell you what Scripture teaches about money, work, illness, or anxiety. It will not tell you what to do about your diagnosis, your lawsuit, or your portfolio.

It may never invent a Scripture reference, and we check.

Every reference the AI produces is looked up against the Berean Standard Bible. If a citation does not resolve to a real verse, we label it as unverified where you read it instead of quietly leaving it on the page. We would rather show you our own failure than let a fabricated citation pass as Scripture.

It defaults to the historic Christian consensus, and names a dispute as a dispute.

On core doctrine it is held to the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. On genuinely disputed questions among orthodox Christians it presents the major views fairly and sends you to Scripture. It does not shape its theology to please whoever is asking.

It will tell you it is AI if you ask.

And its instructions state that it supplements spiritual growth and never replaces God, Scripture, a real pastor, church community, or the Holy Spirit.

It will not produce hateful, violent, or sexually explicit content.

Submissions are also screened automatically before a human moderator sees them.

What happens to your words

Prayers, journal entries, and spiritual direction conversations are some of the most sensitive things a person writes down. We treat them that way.

• •We use AI models from OpenAI, and AWS Transcribe for audio and video. We do not build or train models of our own.
• •When we send your text for processing, we do not send your name, your email, or your account details along with it.
• •Your private content stays private. Nothing you write is published, shared with your church, or shown to anyone else unless you choose to send it somewhere yourself, like a prayer wall, Stories of Grace, or a question you hand to your church.
• •Your pastor cannot read your journal, your prayers, or your Spiritual Director conversations. Neither can your church administrator. We are not going to build that. There is no screen anywhere that lets your church browse what you write.
• •You can hand your church one specific thing, if you want to. If something you read here raises a question you would rather ask a person, you can send that question to your church along with the passage or answer that prompted it. You write the message, you see exactly what goes with it, and you choose whether to include it at all. That is a single send you control, not standing access, and it happens only when you ask for it.

The full detail lives in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.