What would change if every builder paused to pray before they prompted? James Kelly, founder of FaithTech, believes Christians can build AI differently, and that it starts not with code but with formation in Christ.
FaithTech is a global community of Jesus-following technologists who gather to build technology and think deeply about it, driven by faith. In this episode, recorded on site at the Missional AI 2026 Global Summit in Silicon Valley, James Poulter (JP) talks with James about FaithTech's growth, the identity crisis facing today's builders and his framework for moving from reckless to responsible to redemptive AI.
FaithTech is now active in 50 cities, and James finds the questions AI raises remarkably consistent around the world.
As of 2026, FaithTech has volunteer-led communities in 50 cities, supported by staff across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas, and it's exploring Africa. More than 100 cities are on the waiting list. James sees FaithTech as one small part of a much larger move of God within technology.
What fascinates him most is how consistent tech culture is everywhere. Whether he's in Hong Kong or anywhere else, the way tech thinks transcends geography, and so do the questions about AI. Because AI feels like such a godlike power, people everywhere are asking what they believe about reality and eternity. The difference is in agency: in some regions, people feel AI is out of their control and that they're simply users.
One example: FaithTech's Middle East community is gathering for a crisis-response hackathon themed around bringing redemptive technology in a time of war. Amid confusion, trauma and pain, they're asking what practical role technology can play, including in trauma healing. AI shouldn't be the only answer, James says; God's people must come alongside one another. But where so many are hurting and so few can help, AI can guide people toward healing content and real relationships, helping humans rather than replacing them.
FaithTech grew out of a church plant and a simple discovery: technologists felt misunderstood and underused by the church.
About ten years ago, James and his wife helped plant a church in a Toronto-area neighborhood many people were trying to leave. They weren't trying to revolutionize anything, just to be Jesus to their neighbors. But as James saw systemic problems like generational poverty, he kept asking tech friends for help, and he uncovered a deeper problem.
People in tech told him they felt misunderstood at church. One said, "My pastor keeps yelling at us for being on Facebook. I work at Facebook." Others felt underused. A friend at Google met with her pastor, who asked if she could run the PowerPoint on Sundays, when she could have built something to run the slides for every church in the city.
James had no solutions, so he simply got people in a room. About 30 people met at a coffee shop, and something clicked: those who felt misunderstood didn't anymore, those who felt underused found big problems to solve, and those with problems found hope. Someone suggested a hackathon. James worried it sounded like hacking the CIA until a friend assured him, "No, James, it's for Jesus." That first hackathon showed him what's possible when people build technology grounded in the gospel. Requests poured in from other cities, and his wife courageously encouraged him to quit his recruiting job and go for it.
James admits he isn't a technologist and isn't especially interested in the technology itself. What draws him is the person building it. Because tech has such outsized influence, he believes builders formed in Christ can change the world.
Many developers are facing deep questions about their purpose and future, and James believes this is a profoundly pastoral moment.
Software developers are in an identity crisis, James says. Companies are cutting jobs and hiring fewer new graduates, and students who spent years studying computer science are asking what it all means.
At the same time, AI looks and feels godlike, prompting questions about worship and how the world will end. James points to tech investor Peter Thiel, whose lectures on the Antichrist and the end times have drawn large crowds, as a sign of this moment.
Who will serve people in this crisis? James believes it's the church. For all its problems, it has long pointed people to Jesus and responded to the cultural moments of its time. This AI moment needs prophetic voices pointing toward a redemptive, biblical vision. His first response to people in crisis is to remind them that their identity isn't in what they do but in whose they are. Practical questions about building in the AI age still matter, but that's where the conversation has to start.
FaithTech frames technology in three postures, and James believes a truly redemptive approach changes both how and why we build.
"Human flourishing" has become a popular phrase in AI. James fully supports human flourishing as a biblical vision; we're called to care for the earth and exercise good dominion. But Scripture never treats flourishing as the end goal. When he studied how often the Bible mentions flourishing, he found it calls us to pursue holiness, with flourishing following.
He has spent months in Revelation, including chapter 21's vision of the new heavens and new earth, and its hard truth that not everyone will dwell in God's presence. People can flourish on earth yet not for eternity. So when Christians talk about flourishing, it must be eternal, which means knowing and following Jesus. That makes evangelism and discipleship central.
What about Christians working at Facebook or Google? If you believe the tools you're building lead people away from Christ, James says, either stay with conviction as a missionary and prophetic voice, building differently, or leave. And there's a whole world of tools that directly advance God's mission that remains badly under-resourced.
Pastors can best guide their people through technology by learning alongside the technologists in their own congregations.
Pastors want to call people to repentance, so it's easy to hammer the dangers: social media is addictive, AI is pulling you from Jesus. But the technologists in the pews hear that and feel like they're doing the devil's work. There is a time for caution, James says, but pastors need their technologists' help to communicate it well.
In FaithTech's early days, James tried to explain this to churches himself, and no one listened. Change came when he equipped the builders in those churches to come alongside their pastors and help them think biblically. His advice to pastors: find the technologists in your church and invite them on a journey together to understand a rich theology of technology. You'll learn to teach in a way that truly understands your people.
As AI turns everyone into a builder, more people will wrestle with the impact of what they make, and James believes prayer has to be part of that.
One of the most fascinating shifts, James says, is that everyone is becoming a builder. FaithTech's core audience is exploding. We tend to think the responsibility of a figure like Oppenheimer has nothing to do with us. But if you build an app 15 friends use, it's shaping them, and you're accountable to God for how. Over the next year, he expects many more people to ask deeper questions about what they build, and the church should be ready to answer.
He's hopeful that Christian leaders in rooms of enormous influence will speak up. But at the current pace, with its promises and underlying beliefs, he's not hopeful. After watching a recent AI documentary featuring Tristan Harris, taking 13 pages of notes in the dark, he was struck that the most influential people in tech don't really know where AI is going.
James is growing in conviction that we need to slow down. Not stop building or innovating, but change how we do it. FaithTech teaches steps like lament and discernment before building. And everyday builders matter: Jesus changed the world with twelve unassuming people. James also invites specific prayer for tech leaders like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and for the believers rising up with a vision to bring the gospel into those spheres. He genuinely believes God hears and changes course when we pray.
When someone at his summit talk asked for a simple way to approach all this, James answered: pray before you prompt. It sounds almost too simple, but it's his own practice. Sometimes a pause of a few seconds leads him to go ahead; sometimes God shows him he doesn't know what he's talking about; and sometimes it's something to work out with the Holy Spirit, not a chatbot. Prayer works, he says, and we need to bring it into this AI moment more profoundly.
James shared these ideas on the main stage at the Missional AI 2026 Global Summit in his keynote, "Pray Before You Prompt: Building AI Differently." Watch it in the Missional AI Video Library under Silicon Valley 2026, or in the SV26 Keynotes playlist on YouTube.
Listen to the full episode with James Kelly on the Missional AI Podcast. To get involved with FaithTech, join a local community or add your city to the waiting list at faithtech.com.
Missional AI London returns this July, gathering a global community in central London for a day exploring faith, AI and what it means to live out God's calling in technology. Find out more at missional.ai.
This episode was made possible in partnership with Gloo, the technology platform connecting the faith ecosystem.