New Book by Army Chaplain Turned Pastor Examines How AI Crept Into His Ministry

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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.

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