Written by Charles Anyimi
“Human beings, however, not only choose, but in their hearts are capable of deciding.”
– Pope Francis, Address to the G7 Session on Artificial Intelligence, Borgo Egnazia, Italy, June 14, 2024
In my previous post, I introduced a single sorting question to help mission-driven teams navigate the noise of modern technology: Is this task pattern-based, or is it presence-based?
It’s fair to say that a mental model is only useful if it holds true in the real world. But when I work with organizations and ask them to apply this filter, there is sometimes an unspoken hesitation. Teams are drowning in administrative drag, yet they are jittery about handing any of it over to a machine … an “AI”.
For years, my daily routine was translating complex enterprise capabilities into actual, usable relief. The gap between what a tool can do and what a team will actually adopt is almost always a confidence problem.
Here’s how we break through that gridlock: 86 percent of churches already use church management software. You already trust software with your member database, your giving records, and your event calendar. Adding a layer to automate workflows on top of that data is the next step on a path you are already walking.
Let’s hold up our filter against a hidden burden that eats days of staff capacity: document processing.
Every mission-driven organization runs on documents nobody has the time to read. Meeting minutes, insurance renewals, 40-page denominational policy updates, or six different vendor bids for a new HVAC system.
Reading a dense policy update to find the three clauses that affect your staff is pattern work. Feed that document into a basic AI tool, and it will extract and summarize the details for you in thirty seconds. It can build a comparison table of those six HVAC bids before you finish your second cup of lukewarm breakroom coffee.
The machine reads the documents and pulls out the patterns. But deciding which vendor you actually trust to work on your building? Deciding how that policy change impacts your unique congregation? That requires human judgment, historical context, and discernment. That is presence work. You need to own that.
The guiding rule for this transition is a true partnership: The pattern machine produces the first draft. You produce the final word.
OK, let’s go to work: Beyond scheduling and emails, what is the most tedious, document-heavy process currently slowing down your operations team? Share it in the comments below.
Leave a Reply