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Roy Butler, founding pastor of ShoutChurch in Sierra Vista, Arizona, has published a new book examining how his own use of an AI chatbot gradually changed the way he practiced ministry. The book, "Pastoral Formation in the Age of AI: A Pastor’s Confession, Awakening, and Search for Faithful Clarity," is out now through Christian Faith Publishing.

Butler has spent more than twenty-five years in pastoral ministry and serves as a bivocational pastor, meaning he holds outside work alongside his church leadership duties. According to the announcement, he turned to a chatbot initially to help with sermon preparation and ease the workload of running a congregation. Over time, he writes, that practical arrangement reshaped his pastoral work in ways he didn’t notice until later.

Butler’s path to ministry includes service as a United States Army chaplain, which he has said shaped his approach to leadership and his conviction that faith has to hold up under real-world pressure. He holds degrees from Wayland Baptist University and Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

The book’s central argument, as described in the announcement, is not a rejection of AI tools in ministry but a caution about how easily efficiency can substitute for presence. Butler writes about the distance that can open between a pastor and his congregation when a tool handles work that once required direct engagement, and about the reluctance many church leaders feel to admit they’re struggling. "I realized that somewhere between pursuing efficiency and developing dependence on AI, I had drifted from the very essence of what called me to pastoral ministry in the first place," Butler said in the announcement, describing the book as an invitation to other church leaders to examine their own habits before adopting new tools without reflection.

The subject has drawn wider attention in religious circles recently. A Christianity Today piece published around the same period raised similar concerns about AI’s effect on pastoral authority, arguing that a chatbot trained to mimic a preacher’s voice can reproduce the words without carrying any of the pastoral weight behind them. Butler’s book arrives as part of that broader conversation among church leaders about where automation belongs in ministry and where it doesn’t.

"Pastoral Formation in the Age of AI" is available through major booksellers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. For Studio CarryOnHarry, the more interesting story here isn’t one pastor’s chatbot use — it’s that enough church leaders are having this same experience that it’s becoming its own small genre of confession.

Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.

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Roy Butler has written a book about the moment he noticed his own pastoral voice slipping away, replaced by one shaped through a chatbot. The new release, "Pastoral Formation in the Age of AI: A Pastor’s Confession, Awakening, and Search for Faithful Clarity," is out now through Christian Faith Publishing.

Butler’s account starts in familiar territory for many bivocational clergy: too much to do, and a tool that promised to lighten the load. According to the announcement, he turned to a basic chatbot as a practical workaround to manage an overwhelming workload and sermon-writing demands. gradually, the arrangement transformed his pastoral practice in unanticipated ways, creating distance from the core calling that originally drew him to ministry.

Butler has more than twenty-five years in vocational pastoral ministry. He served as a United States Army chaplain, a role the announcement credits with shaping his approach to leadership under real-world pressure rather than abstraction. He holds degrees from Wayland Baptist University and Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, and he founded ShoutChurch in Sierra Vista, Arizona, where he continues as pastor.

The book, per the publisher’s description, is not an argument against AI in ministry or an endorsement of adopting it without question. It’s framed instead as an examination of the gap that can open between a pastor and a congregation when efficiency starts to substitute for presence, and of the silence that often surrounds that kind of drift before anyone names it. The publisher describes it as offering pastors and congregational leaders a set of questions to sit with, rather than a verdict.

"I realized that somewhere between pursuing efficiency and developing dependence on AI, I had drifted from the very essence of what called me to pastoral ministry in the first place," Butler said in the announcement. "This book is my invitation to other church leaders to pause, reflect, and choose intentional faithfulness over uncritical adoption."

"Pastoral Formation in the Age of AI" is available through major booksellers and online retailers including Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.

Studio CarryOnHarry sees this less as a book about artificial intelligence than as a case study in how any labor-saving habit, adopted with good intentions, can go unexamined for too long in a role built on presence. That’s a question worth more attention across professions that run on burnout, not just the pulpit.

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