Few fields are developing as rapidly today as artificial intelligence. AI can process data, create content, assist with healthcare, and support everyday life. It can even chat with us and answer questions, seeming almost all-knowing and all-powerful. But how can we tell whether the answers AI gives us are right or wrong?
1. The Risks of the AI Age
AI may appear able to do almost anything, yet serious risks lie beneath the surface. Many people worry that AI will cause unemployment. But there is an even greater danger, rooted in the logic of AI algorithms: feeding. AI depends on data supplied by human beings. Existing data is full of bias, error, and falsehood, so how could everything AI produces be correct?
People feed AI, and AI in turn feeds people. Its algorithms are highly skilled at catering to our preferences. Once they know what we like, they keep sending us more of it; once they know the answer we want, they readily provide it. As AI increasingly indulges human desires, people become more dependent on it and less willing to think and discern. A familiar saying tells us that company shapes character. If people are accompanied by AI systems for long periods, they may also become increasingly machine-like. That is a sobering prospect. What should we do?
2. An Unchanging Pattern
In 2 Timothy 2:2, the apostle Paul tells his younger co-worker Timothy: “The things you have heard me say ... entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”
In the face of the challenges of his own time, Paul gave Timothy advice that was simple yet full of wisdom: develop people who can teach others. Two thousand years later, these words still carry great power and can help us respond to the risks of the AI age.
If we do not intentionally develop others and receive the nourishment of God’s Word together, people will instead be accompanied and fed by AI. Only the presence of real people and grounding in truth can allow one life to influence another and protect people from being misled by AI.
The question is: how can we accompany and develop people consistently and effectively? The pattern in 2 Timothy 2:2 gives us an answer. Four generations are present in this verse:
First generation: Paul
Paul is the apostle and pioneer who planted the church.
Second generation: Timothy
Timothy is the younger church co-worker.
Third generation: reliable people
These are the people Timothy must identify and develop.
Fourth generation: others
These are the people whom the third generation will develop in turn.
This is a picture of a four-generation relay. Paul passes the baton of equipping disciples to Timothy and instructs Timothy to find reliable people who can receive it and then pass it on to others.
The Lord’s Great Commission requires more than leading people to faith; we must also develop people who can teach others. This is a multiplying strategy for discipleship and passing on the mission. How, then, can EFCCA put this strategy into practice?
3. A Journey of Four Generations Walking Together
Teaching God’s Word and nurturing spiritual growth can take place through one-to-one companionship. This is a journey in which four generations walk together. Our church established the cross-cultural congregation to provide a stronger setting for developing the younger generation, to welcome more young people to hear and believe the gospel, and to enable generations to walk together.
First, Timothy learns from Paul: the first and second generations walk together. Every young person at EFCCA should seek a spiritual elder in this church who can be their Paul. These elders may not know AI as well as younger people do, but they possess lives and wisdom shaped by the Lord.
Second, co-workers in the cross-cultural congregation should accompany the young people around them: the second and third generations walk together. Find a companion in the cross-cultural congregation, read the Bible together, build a genuine relationship, and practise living out God’s Word.
Finally, the third generation accompanies the fourth. Young people in the cross-cultural congregation can serve as mentors in the English congregation or as teachers in children’s ministry, accompanying EFCCA’s teenagers and children—the fourth generation.
May EFCCA’s young generation no longer become people who stare at their phones with heads bowed under the control of algorithms. May they instead be filled with God’s Word and become faithful soldiers of Christ who use every tool, including AI, to proclaim the gospel.
Beginning today, may every person at EFCCA read the Bible daily and accompany and develop others. As we live out God’s Word together, may we use its truth and wisdom to guide AI rather than be guided by it, and may our lives bear witness to four generations walking together in the relay of the Great Commission.
Pastor Yongjun Dong
September 2026