How do people flourish, and how does society mature, when technology is scaling faster than our souls? That's the question Christian leaders around the world are asking, and few people hear it from more places than Samuel Chiang.
Samuel has spent decades at the intersection of mission and innovation. He helped bring the orality movement into global missions, and while leading Seed Company he was already asking in 2016 whether AI and computer vision could help bring Scripture to the Deaf community. Today he serves as special advisor to the Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), a network connected to around 650 million believers.
In this conversation, recorded live at the Missional AI 2026 Global Summit in Santa Clara, California, Josiah talks with Samuel about how pastors around the world have moved from fear toward curiosity, why AI invites the church to recover the full story of the gospel, and the hard question every pastor should ask: how much of my spiritual life am I willing to let AI shape?
Samuel's life has crossed many borders, and so has his habit of using business and technology to solve mission problems.
Samuel jokes that he's a five-time immigrant, with legal status over the years in Taiwan, Canada, the United States, Hong Kong (for 25 years) and, since 2015, the United States again. He's married to Robbie, and they have three grown, married children and three grandchildren. They're the makeup of who he is, he says.
Most people know Samuel for his ministry leadership, but he has also been involved in 16 companies, much of that work focused on solving problems, with profits directed back to causes like Bible translation.
That problem-solving instinct is what first connected Samuel to AI. In 2016, he read that Google's AI had beaten a South Korean champion at the game of Go, with a computer able to think through a hundred million moves in about a second. He went to Seed Company's board with an idea: sign language was something no one had cracked yet. Perhaps AI and computer vision together could help bring Scripture to the Deaf community. Years before generative AI went mainstream, he was already asking how this technology might serve the Great Commission.
Through the World Evangelical Alliance, Samuel hears from Christian leaders across nearly every nation.
After serving as the WEA's Deputy Secretary General, Samuel stepped into his current advisory role following the alliance's 2025 General Assembly, which meets only once every six years. The WEA brings together national evangelical alliances, such as the National Association of Evangelicals in the United States and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, each uniting denominations, churches and organizations to serve the church in their country.
The alliance's history goes back to 1846, and it's still growing. Between 2019 and 2025, the number of countries with registered evangelical alliances rose from 143 to 161. In some countries, governments would rather evangelicals didn't register at all, which is why the WEA also speaks up for religious freedom and the persecuted church. Where the gospel is advancing, Samuel notes, some governments tighten their grip.
Across the world, Christian leaders are moving past fear and asking a deeper question: how does this technology shape our souls?
Samuel answers in layers. At the global level, through the WEA and the Global Pastoral Training Alliance, which connects formal, non-formal and informal theological training and mentoring, conversations with pastors, Christian leaders and even civic leaders keep returning to the same questions. How do humans flourish? And how does society mature when technology is scaling faster than our souls?
Christians tend to get over the hump of fear, he says, because there's always hope in the gospel, and Christians have always adopted new technologies. Once past fear, the real question emerges: how does this technology affect the formation and maturity of our souls?
Among pastors, Samuel has watched a clear shift. The years from 2019 through 2023 were marked by enormous fear, not only in congregations but among pastors themselves, including across East Asia. Around 2024, that began to change. By 2025, people were openly talking about AI, though many still don't know what to do with it.
Responses range widely: from pastors who would let AI write the sermon, to the parishioner who listens and thinks, "My pastor just improved 10x." Did he have help, rather than truly receiving what God's Word was saying? Samuel compares it to Sunday school kids texting each other about their teacher a generation ago; the criticism isn't new, it's just entered the AI era.
Pastors are also deeply concerned for their people's work. Some will need to retrain; others may face layoffs. In certain Asian countries, Samuel says, entire industries may go dark or be greatly diminished as AI takes over human functions. Pastors around the world are grappling with that in real time.
Every context is different, Samuel says, but a few principles can guide any leader learning to live in an AI-infused world.
Samuel borrows a line from FaithTech founder James Kelly: "Pray before prompt." Prayer means collaborating with the triune God, letting the Holy Spirit help us understand who we are before we decide how to prompt the machine.
Every congregation will hold people at every point on the spectrum, from eager explorers to those who are still afraid. A pastoral leader needs to shepherd all of them. It isn't easy, but it's the work.
For the past 50 years or more, Samuel observes, much of the church has preached a two-part gospel: sin and salvation. AI pushes us toward the full, four-part story, from creation to consummation. Genesis 1, "In the beginning, God," lays the foundation for all things, yet it has been largely neglected for decades.
Recovering that story gives pastors and training institutions a whole new way to frame the gospel. It also equips congregations for work. A believer can say, "I know how to handle work, because my pastor has helped me frame my significance, my purpose and my identity in my workplace."
Finally, Samuel urges pastors to decide how far they will let AI intrude into their own spiritual lives. His own desire is to live fully abandoned to God's Word. But if a leader decides that perhaps a third of their spiritual life could be AI-driven, they must ask what it means to let AI intrude on something meant to be formed by God. It's a question every leader needs to keep in mind.
Josiah summed it up: this moment is an invitation from God to step forward not in fear but in wisdom, inviting the Spirit into the question rather than relying on our own understanding, so we can shepherd people well in a rapidly changing world.
Samuel also spoke on the main stage at the Missional AI 2026 Global Summit in his keynote, "Shaping Souls Before Scaling Technology." Watch it in the Missional AI Video Library under Silicon Valley 2026, or in the SV26 Keynotes playlist on YouTube.
Conversations like this happen when we gather in the same room. Join us at Missional AI SFO27, March 30–April 1, 2027, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport. This year's theme is AI in Action: builders, ministry leaders and technologists putting AI to work for the Great Commission, and the stories of what's already working. We're gathering 1,000 people from churches, mission agencies, Bible translation and tech, and we expect to sell out early in 2027.
Early-bird pricing ends December 31. Bring your team and register at missional.ai. While you're there, download Missional AI's free ethical guide to using AI in your ministry and organization.