Artificial intelligence can generate an answer to a Bible question in seconds. Ligonier Ministries wants its new app to recognize when it needs to stop answering.
As AI tools move into increasingly personal conversations, the ministry’s president and CEO, Chris Larson, is calling for ethical boundaries that protect users and preserve the role of human spiritual care.
“We don’t want it to take the place of a pastor or a local church elder or even a parent,” Larson told Fox News Digital.
The Florida-based ministry, founded by the late theologian R.C. Sproul, developed Grow to help Christians study the Bible and theology. Larson said the app contains 50 years of teaching from more than 800 teachers, grounded in Sproul’s lifetime of work.
Its “intelligent answer assistant” draws from that library to respond to theological questions. But Larson emphasized that access to a vast collection of teaching does not give the technology unlimited authority.
“Now, it’s not trying to pretend it’s a person or anything like that,” he said. “It is just trained on our library, and then helping Christians to trust the answers, and [it] will only go so far.”
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Those limits become especially important when a conversation moves beyond theological study into personal crisis.
According to Larson, Grow directs users who discuss suicide toward crisis resources or other real-world support. He described the assistant as operating within a defined set of boundaries, with human help beyond them.
“And any time that somebody tries to push it beyond the borders, we’re going to deflect or defer to a real human. Imagine that,” Larson said.
His concern extends beyond what a chatbot can do. It reaches the moral assumptions behind its answers.
“I think there’s a real concern today because you have great power that’s been entrusted to these different companies, and they’re not really disclosing their worldview,” he said. “How do they know right from wrong?”
Larson urged developers to establish ethical guidelines and safeguards rather than allowing technological power to outrun responsibility.
Ligonier grounds its approach in the Christian faith. And amid talk of artificial “superintelligence,” Larson pointed to God as the highest intelligence, describing Him as “the one who has created the universe.”
The question facing developers, Larson argued, reaches deeper than the speed or sophistication of their software.
“How are you determining what is right and wrong?”
James Lasher, a seasoned writer and editor at Charisma Media, combines faith and storytelling with a journalism background from Otterbein University and ministry experience in Guatemala and at the LA Dream Center. A Marine Corps and Air Force veteran, he is the author of The Revelation of Jesus: A Common Man’s Commentary and a contributor to Charisma magazine. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
