How church leaders can combat the confusion of AI media
by Priscilla Roxburgh
When Instagram first released its photo filters over a decade ago, we had fun playing around with colour contrasts and enhancing our otherwise slightly muted holiday photos. Flash forward 14 years and we see images that cause us to thumb stop as we doom scroll - wait... is that the Pope in a Balenciaga-style white puffer jacket? The journey from the seemingly innocuous IG-style photo filters to apps that tweaked selfies, algorithms that swung elections and now AI-driven images that place people in situations completely removed from the truth - has quietly laid a foundation of distrust.
As a leader with strong Gen Z and Gen Alpha representation on a Sunday, whose native tongue is tech, how do we navigate a field littered with half-truths and outright lies, whilst helping young people build belief and grow in discernment?
Build a voice of credibility
Our voice carries beyond Sunday. It impacts 1-to-1 conversations, closed-door meetings, leaders’ gatherings, and pastoral sessions. Does what we say in a preach carry the same weight as we do in our off-stage conversations? Are we able to do what we said we will? Can we back our stories with documented facts? Leaders are only 1 or 2 embellished stories away from having their whole ministry come crumbling down. Young people can sniff out a 🧢 a mile away. (If you didn't know what 🧢 stands for, click here).
Credibility in what we say doesn’t come from what we wear, or how we speak but comes from Scripture. So fundamentally we have to help our young people get familiar with the Bible — not in tweetable, Instagrammable quotes but familiarity with the context, the flipping back and forth through the Old and New Testaments. Let's never let go of the sacred at the expense of relevancy - but work within the tension of the two.
Build a voice of authenticity
What young people are looking for these days is raw data. Last week my 12-year-old son and I both consumed the same story. It was one of a teenage girl assaulting a teacher in a playground - except he watched it as a viral video sent on a Whatsapp group and I read it as a news story on our local newspaper's website. In the swing from over-filtered images, I think we will find more people looking for something real, something authentic and we have an opportunity here to bring our true selves to the platforms that we have been afforded. Authenticity isn't necessarily about over-sharing or being deeply vulnerable to a room full of now bewildered people - it is maturely serving the people in front of us. It is in the consistency of the inner man and public persona that we find ourselves seeping authenticity in everything we do. There are some wonderful women and men within our sphere who model this well and I love looking at ways I can learn from them.
Build the voices of accountability
To nurture credibility and authenticity, we desperately need relationships around us that not only build and encourage but can call us out in the most grace-filled ways. I'm so grateful for friends and family who have nudged me towards the truth with quiet words, and gentle conversations. Conversations that call out behaviour and attitudes are difficult but the aim should always be restoration and building up. Truly accountable relationships - you know the ones that take years to cultivate - are a worthy investment when growing in leadership capability.
In addition, I have recently been challenged to bring in a more diverse set of voices into my world - voices that are younger, voices from a different cultural or educational experience to mine and be humbly open to fresh insight while leaning into the Holy Spirit's gift of discernment to shape my views.
And so, while social media platforms frantically race to develop systems to accurately authenticate users (looking at you here, Twitter's blue tick), I would deeply encourage us to be stewards of the truth, across all our communication channels of preaching, teaching, youth groups, weekly bulletins, social media - so that when our Gen Zs and Gen As are swinging between disbelief in everything to absorbing it all at face value, we are presenting them with something that is credible, authentic and surrounded by the safety of accountable living.
Priscilla Roxburgh is a communications specialist and works for the Emergencies Partnership at the British Red Cross. She also serves on the leadership team at Citygate Church, Bournemouth.