Taiwan Church News

3868 Edition

13 ~ 19 April, 2026

Weekly Topical

As Innovative Helper, AI Facilitates Sunday School Ministry to Win the People’s Heart

Reported by Dalul from Tainan

The Education Ministry Committee of Tainan Presbytery held a seminar, entitled as “Applying AI to Design Teaching Materials for Sunday Schools’ Teens and Children,” at Hsin-Fong Church in the afternoon on April 12.

Rev Chen Chia-hong, pastor of Hou-Chia Church, was invited to share his field experiences applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) in church ministry. Rev Wang Tsan-seng, director of Education Ministry Committee of Tainan Presbytery, also witnessed that his ministry among many institutes had been efficiently augmented in recent years due to an innovative application of AI.

Rev Chen pointed out that many people have a prejudice that “AI cannot deliver a good answer”. “In fact, a reliable AI application lies in the details after an order of ‘Prompt’. The more details delivered after a ‘Prompt’ order, the more accurate content of AI would feedback,” he said.

“If teachers wish to design a curriculum for Sunday School children, AI should be clearly prompted to transform those high-level complicated languages into easy-to-grab simple sentences from the perspective of the children.” He emphasized that AI, as a superb powerful device, is like a mini-assistant who can loyally standby to work without break.

In his lecture, Rev Chen showcased how the summary and structure of a long pulpit sermon, after a prompt order via AI, could be delivered within a few minutes, and even shown with a visual presentation. He also shared how to use AI to create hymns, play a passion week melody suitable for the children, generate hymns with catchy lyrics compliant to the Bible verses, and compose a tailor-made lively melody.

“The core of education in the future lies in the concept of made-to-order,” said Rev Chen,“traditional Sunday School curriculum are difficult to meet specific needs of each child, but through AI, teachers can quickly adjust and respond to the personality and capability of individual student. Whether it is changing photos into cartoons, or making gaming or interactive cards, AI can greatly reduce the technical threshold and cost to attract the children.”

In addition to the powerful functions and beautiful images generated by AI, Rev Chen indicated that AI application is very cost-effective to deliver outputs in large quantities. “As a matter of fact, the most expensive and valuable thing is the pious heart emerging in scenarios, like the people praying together or the assembly in praise and worship. The witness of these faithful souls in truth, goodness and beauty are real stuffs that AI cannot do!”

Rev Chen pointed out “the importance of the church fellowship in an AI era does not diminish, but becomes more and more relevant in the dimensions of morality, ethics and community lives. In addition, AI can help church co-workers to spare those repetitive trivial jobs and deliver more time to engage with people on spiritual care and evangelical missions.”

Rev Wang Tsan-seng shared that an AI era is not only a period of time for people to use new tools, but also a further up-grading of the media literacy. In the past, people looked at the clock with pointers, but now they check their watch with digital numbers. “Our tools change as always, but we have to learn the principles behind these new gadgets to serve the public,” he expressed.

“While it is rather difficult to tell AI images/news from truth or fakes, we need to have a dialogic capability to explore and explain what exists behind these AI-generated images and what it wants to say. AI can easily help us sort out massive data or brush up imperfect images, but the subjectivity of value judgment always lies deep in the mind of the people.”

Rev Wang Tsan-seng stressed, “no matter what AI application can play, either as a technological progress or a promotion of institute reform, our goal is to make Christian education ministry no longer a heavy burden for co-workers, apply these new tools efficiently, and witness our evangelical mission in order to lead our next generation walk in faith with amazing wonder and grace.”

Translated by Peter Wolfe