Monthly Archives: August 2026

A Pastor’s Personal Statement on Using AI Tools

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I wrote the following statement last November, for my own conscience and for my fellow elders at King’s Church, who read it at that time and gave it their approval. Until now it has been a private document. In recent days, AI companies have begun embedding invisible marks in the text their tools generate, so that such text can later be identified, and the news has many pastors and writers thinking through these questions afresh. It seemed the right time to make this public. Apart from one short addition at the end of section 5, acknowledging that development, the statement appears here exactly as I wrote it on November 19, 2025.

Personal Statement on My Use of AI Tools in Ministry

November 19, 2025

1. My Responsibility before God and His People

God has called me to preach His Word, shepherd His people, and serve His church with integrity. I alone will give an account for what I teach and write. For that reason, anything that appears under my name, whether sermons, articles, books, or public posts, is something I must personally understand, believe, and be willing to stand behind.

No tool, whether a commentary, software, or artificial intelligence, removes that responsibility. I am accountable first to the Lord, then to my fellow elders, and then to the congregation I serve.

I know that many pastors today are thinking through whether to use AI at all, and if so, in what way. Brothers will make different decisions in good conscience. This statement is simply my attempt to set out, before the Lord and before others, the boundaries within which I believe I may rightly make use of these tools.

2. What AI Is to Me

I use AI tools as I would use a fast research assistant, editor, or highly capable secretary. These tools can help me:

  • Clarify wording so that difficult truths are communicated more clearly.
  • Tighten, organize, and refine material I have already studied and thought through.
  • Suggest alternative ways to phrase or illustrate a point.
  • Summarize or structure content that I intend to revise in my own voice.

In that sense, AI functions for me like an elite but fallible secretary that works very quickly, yet must always be checked. In my situation, given the responsibilities God has entrusted to me, it would be poor stewardship to ignore such help altogether, but it would be far worse to rely on it blindly. My task is to supervise its work carefully and to test everything by Scripture.

AI is a tool, not an authority. It does not replace Scripture, personal study, prayer, or the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It does not replace the counsel of godly elders or the wisdom of the Christian tradition. For me, AI now sits in the same common grace category as libraries, software, and reference works, a real help for study and communication, but always subordinate to the Word of God.

3. How I Actually Use AI

In practice, this means:

  • I come with my own convictions, exegesis, outlines, ideas, and often rough wording.
  • I may ask an AI tool to help sharpen an argument, structure an article, improve flow, or assist with grammar and clarity.
  • I always review, edit, and adjust the result so that it truly reflects my theology, tone, and pastoral intent.
  • I do not simply copy and paste material and call it “mine”. I carefully review, understand, and own all I write or preach, knowing I will answer to God and to His people for every word.

In short: I write the content, structure the arguments, and make all theological and editorial decisions. I use AI tools to refine wording, check clarity, and explore alternative phrasings, the same way I might use a thesaurus, grammar checker, or ask a trusted friend for feedback.

If I would not be comfortable preaching a sentence out loud or signing my name under it, I will not keep it, no matter how polished it sounds.

4. What I Will Not Use AI For

To guard my conscience and my ministry, I commit that I will not use AI tools to:

  • Fabricate academic work, qualifications, or original research and present it as if I did it myself.
  • Preach sermons I have not personally studied, prayed over, and shaped with my own mind and heart before God.
  • Manufacture “spiritual experiences” or emotional manipulation for effect.
  • Replace Scripture, confessions, or sound theology with whatever happens to sound clever or impressive.

AI may help with form, but it does not decide the substance. That belongs to God’s Word. Like any other tool that comes to us through God’s common grace, it can be used wisely to serve the church or carelessly in a way that confuses or misleads. My aim is to use it in a way that honors Christ and genuinely helps His people.

5. Truth, Transparency, and Trust

If a church member, elder, or friend ever asks whether I use AI in my work, I want to be able to answer peacefully and plainly:

“Yes, I do use AI tools as a helper in my writing and preparation. They assist me with clarity, structure, and wording. But I study the Scriptures, check the content, and only publish what I truly believe and am willing to stand behind. I am responsible for every word you hear or read from me.”

I do not believe using modern tools is dishonest in itself. Dishonesty would be pretending I had done work I did not do, or preaching what I do not understand or believe. My aim is to walk in the light, not to hide.

Added August 2026: Since writing this, AI companies have begun embedding machine-readable marks in the text their tools generate, so that assisted text can be identified even after it is copied elsewhere. I welcome this. A mark indicating that a tool helped me with wording confirms nothing beyond what I have stated here openly. Transparency of this kind is a friend to honest men, and I am glad to see the whole conversation moved further into the light.

6. Invitation to Accountability

I welcome the oversight of my fellow elders and the honest questions of God’s people. If there is ever a concern about how I am using these tools, I am willing to:

  • Explain my process.
  • Adjust my practices if my brothers in leadership judge that something is unwise.

The best way to picture this in my study is simple. I sit at a large wooden desk with an open Bible, my confessions, and my library around me. AI is nothing more than a readily available world class secretary at a desk nearby in the study, fast and capable, but always fallible and always checked. I lead. I decide. I am accountable before the Lord for every word. Everything I write or preach under my name is mine before Him, and I will answer to Him for it.

John Samson

Pastor-Teacher, King’s Church, Peoria, Arizona

Election and Human Responsibility – John Macarthur

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Questioner: Did God indeed choose whom He would save before the foundation of the world? And if He did, how are those who do not believe responsible and held accountable for their unbelief?

John MacArthur: First of all, yes, God did predestine those who were to believe before the world began, because that’s exactly what the Bible says. You were chosen before the foundation of the world. Your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life before the foundation of the world. Predestination is a word in Ephesians chapter 1. We were predestined to be in Christ.

So yes, we have to understand God is God, and God is the one who ordains everything. And God is not a spectator. God is the one who acts. He doesn’t react. So the Bible is crystal clear. He chose Israel: Israel, His chosen people out of all the nations of the world. And He chose His church. He tells the apostles to go into a certain city. He said, “Because I have many people in that city.” Well, the gospel hadn’t even been there, but He knew who the people were that were chosen.

So yes, God chooses. That is clear in Scripture. Secondly, sinners are responsible for their unbelief. That is clear in the Bible. Jesus says, “Why will you die? Because you don’t believe in Me.” That’s clear responsibility. So you say, “Well, how do those go together?” And I say, “I don’t know. I have no idea.” But is it possible that the mind of God is beyond mine? Or does everything have to be understandable to me? Can I leave a little room for an infinite mind that may be able to grasp things that are beyond my understanding?

So throughout all the years that I’ve taught the Bible, I can teach without hesitation that God predestines people to salvation. That’s the only way they could be saved, because they’re dead in trespasses and sin. They don’t have the power to believe or the will to believe. So the Lord has to awaken the sinner and grant him the repentance and faith to be saved. At the same time that I believe that is a sovereign work of God, I also believe that it is not apart from faith, and that the sinner must believe.

How God harmonizes those two things is beyond me. And that’s very comfortable for me. And I’ll tell you why: I don’t want a God who fits perfectly into my own understanding.

Let me give you another illustration of this. If I ask you, “Who lives your Christian life? Is it you, or is it God?”

Questioner: Both.

John MacArthur: “What do you mean? How can it be both?”

Questioner: “I’m going to work out my salvation with fear and trembling, for it’s Christ who works in me.”

John MacArthur: “Yeah, but is it Him or you? So when something good goes, it’s Him, and when something bad goes, it’s you?”

So let me ask you another question. Who wrote the book of Romans? “Paul.” Paul? “The Holy Spirit.” Are you having trouble with this question? Yeah, exactly.

So it was all the Holy Spirit. Every word was inspired by God, and it was all out of Paul’s vocabulary and Paul’s mind. Any time you step into the world of God interacting with man, you are going to have this massive apparent paradox, because the infinite cannot be reduced to the finite mind.

The good news is God has chosen His elect, and they will be saved. Also, the good news is anyone who comes to Christ to believe and repent will be saved. You don’t have to find out if you’re elect. You come. And that’s where the harmonizing comes. But every doctrine, every major doctrine in the Bible that relates between God and man, has this strange reality: this is something beyond my comprehension.

Questioner: And I think you just answered it, Pastor John, but to the person asking, “Well, how do I know if I’m one of the chosen, one of the elect, one of the predestined?” you would say, “Have you come to Christ?” Would that be your response?

John MacArthur: Yeah.

Questioner: Yellow stripes, right?

John MacArthur: Right. So the way you know you’re elect is you repent and come to Christ. And He calls sinners to come. So come.

Questioner: Love it. No, that’s so helpful. Thank you so much.