Six years ago, Missional AI was 45 people on Zoom trying to work out what AI meant for the mission of God. This year, the Global Summit filled a sold-out room in Silicon Valley with 650 people and 30 speakers from around the world, and Biblica has taken up the mantle of stewarding the movement.
In this special episode, James Poulter (JP) sits down with Biblica CEO Geof Morin and Chief Innovation Officer Mark Finzel. They talk about why a 217-year-old ministry has never been about itself, what it means to go "last mile first" and why Missional AI is "not a conference, it's a movement."
Biblica stewards Missional AI because it believes its role is to catalyze what others can do, not to build its own kingdom.
Why would a Bible ministry take on stewarding a global AI summit? Geof remembers the earliest days, when they were still figuring out how to gather people at all. Since then, the wave of AI has arrived, and with it tools Geof believes God is uniquely making available for the mission.
The room isn't mainly technologists, he notes; it's people in mission, ministry and kingdom enterprise, leveraging technology so that "the next possible" can happen. At first, that next possible was only accelerating Bible translation, which has become the movement's original success story. Now it's so much more: evangelism, Bible mobilization and reaching people for the first time.
Biblica, now 217 years old, has never been just about Biblica, Geof says. Its posture has always been collaborative: push some chips to the center of the table and say, take them. That means openly licensed texts, shared technology and honest lessons. "We tried this, don't do that. We'll make the first mistake for you."
What excites him most at the end of this year's summit is not just the buzz or the conversations but the confidence he sees growing in leaders: I've seen what's possible, and I think we can do this.
No single organization can do this alone, and the best ideas often come from unexpected places.
For Mark, being in the room with so many creative people has a huge impact. The reason Biblica invests in this community is simple: it can't do the work alone. Innovation involves many people, and it isn't only digital. Some of the best ideas come from where you least expect them.
Biblica loves to innovate, but it doesn't want to reinvent the wheel when someone else is already working on a problem. Different organizations bring different strengths, and like the body of Christ, they're stronger together.
Biblica is doubling down on reaching the hardest, least-reached places first, and the goal of every language having Scripture is now within reach.
Biblica recently gathered its global team to announce its most ambitious initiative in two centuries: Last Mile First. Echoing Jesus' call to the ends of the earth and Revelation's vision of every tribe, nation and people, it means intentionally going to those who have never been reached.
There's a reason those communities are only now being reached, Geof says: barriers, restrictions and challenges that traditional approaches can't overcome at the scale needed. So the work isn't just building new technology; it's building tools that break down barriers for people waiting for the hope of Jesus.
Mark calls it a huge privilege. Even 15 years ago, people talked about hundreds of years before every language had the Bible. Now every language could have at least a portion of Scripture within our lifetimes, perhaps in as little as seven and a half years.
But translation is only the beginning, Mark says. Having a translation doesn't mean people have it in their hands. The next phase is getting Scripture to people in the format that works best for them, whether visual, audio or text.
There's also a huge need for content and training. Frontline pastors are among the most under-resourced in the world. English speakers have an embarrassment of riches in study Bibles and commentaries, but much of that doesn't exist in other languages. Technology can help bring that content into those languages and into people's hands. "It's almost like God figured it out in advance," Geof says.
The last mile is too hard for anyone to reach alone, which makes generous, collaborative partnership essential.
"It's not just a conference; it's a movement," Geof says, a line that felt prophetic when they first said it a couple of years ago. What happens in the room only matters if it moves forward, through ongoing conversations between people who had never met before. Going to the hardest places on earth on purpose means going with others. To go further, go together.
The heart of collaborative missiology, he says, is simple: get generous with each other and fight for unity. In the book of Acts, the early believers agreed on very little except Jesus, and that was enough.
Biblica has expanded beyond its early alliance work with illumiNations into Close the Bible Gap, the natural next step: getting God's Word into people's hands. It will take technology like we've never seen.
Mark loves the diversity of voices in the room: entrepreneurs, pastors, ministry leaders, artists, large organizations, VCs and small startups. When the MC asked first-time attendees to raise their hands, more than half the room did. That's exactly the goal. The last mile is the hardest place in the world for a reason, and it will take everyone.
Silicon Valley is an epicenter of AI, but the movement must also be fed by builders far beyond the US.
Why Silicon Valley? "We got a really good rate on the hotel," Geof jokes. The real reason is that it remains an epicenter of AI deployment, and having those voices in the room matters. The gospel deserves the best technology available to break down barriers, so that the name of Jesus is known throughout the earth.
Mark adds that Christians are now at the center of AI and, in areas like natural language processing, even leading. For years he lamented that churches were the last to have websites and the last to embrace social media. Now believers are at the table, including industry leaders speaking at the summit.
But the movement can't stay in one place. Biblica's tools, designed for the last mile, are already being used in those places first, and the data shows a massive hunger, not for more tools but for how tools open up the gospel. There are builders elsewhere with perspectives Biblica doesn't have. "This movement has to be fed from outside the borders of the United States of America," Geof says, "because that's where God's going."
Listen to the full episode on the Missional AI Podcast. At missional.ai, you can join the Slack community, download resources and find more episodes.
Partner with Biblica in innovation. Biblica is putting its chips in the center of the table through open licenses, shared technology and lessons learned. If your organization wants to build alongside Biblica to reach the last mile first, explore partnership opportunities at partners.biblica.com.
Save the date: the next Missional AI Global Summit is in San Francisco, March 30–April 1, 2027. Registration opens soon; sign up at missional.ai to be among the first to join us in the room.
This episode was made possible in partnership with Transform Iran and Kairos. Explore Kairos at kairoschat.ai.