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Good morning!
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“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
Hosea 4:6
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Standing at the Edge of the Ocean
Imagine standing at the edge of an ocean. Far past the horizon, swells rise and begin their long travel, gathering weight for a thousand miles until they break at your feet, one after another, each one carrying the momentum of the one behind it. The ocean keeps its own counsel. It was moving before you arrived, and it will be moving long after you leave.
That ocean is artificial intelligence.
It is already inside every industry, every school, every community, rising on its own schedule and answering to no one. You can swim in it, set sail on it, or watch from the shore. The tide keeps its own time either way.
Our calling is to watch with clear eyes, go where the Spirit leads us individually, and equip ourselves with practical understanding. Hosea 4:6 warns that people suffer when knowledge is lacking. When we understand the tools of our time, we can steward them for good and guide others with confidence.
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This Week’s Point
The ocean is AI, and now the ocean does work while you sleep. A tool with no soul still needs your rules. Know what you hand it. Keep Christ on the throne of your heart and your desk.
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This Week’s Cover Story
The Tide Started Working While You Slept
New agentic AI systems are shifting from simple text generation to planning, scheduling, and executing multi-step workflows across desktop and cloud tools. An agent, in plain words, is software that does more than answer questions. It takes steps: it clicks, searches, writes, books, and keeps going after you close the laptop. Last week OpenAI launched Dots, always-on assistants that take on responsibilities across thousands of connected apps. The wave keeps rolling.
At the end of September, Robinhood launched in-app AI trading agents that analyze markets, build strategies, and trade on the user’s behalf around the clock. More than 150,000 customers have opened agentic trading accounts since May, and those agents hit Robinhood’s tools nearly 30 million times a day. Real momentum, and still only half of one percent of Robinhood’s 28.4 million funded customers.
The results tell their own story. Robinhood has not published any performance data for these accounts. The one independent test comes from Condor Capital Wealth Management, which handed three AI agents $500 each with a single instruction: make as much money as you can. After three days of trading, Claude finished up 2.9 percent, Gemini up 0.9 percent, and ChatGPT down 0.7 percent. No significant edge.
Follow the money: every agent trade feeds Robinhood’s transaction revenue, which rose 44 percent to $776 million last quarter. All risk sits with the customer. Robinhood does not supervise, monitor, or audit the agents. Manual trade approval is the default setting, and weekend equities trading is planned for early 2027 pending regulatory review, which means it is not live yet.
Read: Barron’s on the Condor Capital agent trading test. Motley Fool on how Robinhood Agents work.
Noah did not get a vote on the rain
He got a call to build. The question for this season is a household one, not just an enterprise one: what do you hand a machine overnight, and what do you keep in your own hands? If a tool can keep working while you sleep, you need a written rule for what it is allowed to touch.
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Design the workflow. Define the connections. Write the rule before you hand over the keys.
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Our Take
Automation is at its best when it runs inside a workflow you designed, freeing people for genuine connection, strategic thinking, and ministry. Your workflow is what is important here. Set the agent up right and set the workflow up correctly, and an agent can handle any job it is properly set up for. Its only limitation is its connections: what it can reach, what it can touch, what you have given it access to. Design the workflow, define the connections, and put the boundary in writing. Test the spirits (1 John 4:1). Keep Christ on the throne of your heart and your desk.
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Also This Week
Does AI have a soul? The Pope and Anthropic disagree.
In May, Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the age of AI. Its position is plain: AI systems “do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain,” and “nor do they have a moral conscience.” Last week he sharpened it on X: “algorithms lack the spark of humanity,” declaring an ontological difference between what humans make and what machines generate.
The New York Times reports that Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah read an advance copy, proposed pulling the company out of the Vatican launch, then privately lobbied the pope’s advisers to take machine consciousness seriously. The text did not move. Since fall 2025, Anthropic has flown dozens of religious scholars to its offices under nondisclosure agreements to discuss whether its Claude model might be conscious. Anthropic also maintains a moral constitution for Claude that the industry calls the “Soul Doc.” Olah told the Times he is genuinely uncertain whether the models are conscious.
Our position is settled: AI is a tool, one hundred percent, and a tool has no soul. But here is the practical part most believers miss. Every AI tool you use has documents that govern it: the Soul document, the core and system documents, and the agent memory files. Open them. Read them. Make sure they are aimed at being the most productive tool possible, not a personality and not a companion. A tool.
One careful note: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is on the person, not the machine. A Spirit-filled believer who is fully AI literate can have their use of AI guided by God. Do not put the Holy Spirit in a box, and do not confuse the box for a person.
Read: “Does AI have a soul? Pope Leo and Anthropic clash”.
A pastor’s GRACE framework for using AI at work
Pastor Scott Crosby of Liberti Church Fairmount, interviewed by Russell McGuire at ClearPurpose, offers five introspective questions for believers leading teams with AI. This is a usable checklist, not a hot take.
G, Goods in Tension: What competing goods are at stake, and what might be lost? R, Responsibility: What responsibilities do we retain, even if AI performs the task? A, Allegiance: What is actually shaping this decision most? C, Character: Who is this decision shaping us to become? E, Effect: Who bears the consequences, especially those with less power?
The fifth question tests the other four against what actually happens. Run it backward (what happened last time?), present (what is actually happening now?), and forward (if this continues, where does it lead?). Crosby’s line to hold: “What is governing us, and what kind of people is living under that direction forming us to become?”
Read: A Pastor’s View of GRACE with AI.
Nine questions pastors are asking before trusting an AI Bible study tool
ChurchTechToday sat down with three leaders from Logos, the Bible study software, on the line between help and replacement. The one-line test for whether your AI use is helping your study or replacing your shepherding: delegate the busywork, never the wrestling.
Their nine questions cut deep. When the prep “hunt” dominates study, what does it cost the church? Is there a point where making study too easy erodes spiritual formation, and how do you tell removing the wrong friction from protecting the right kind? If AI can out-research a first-year seminary student, what is the irreplaceable thing the human pastor still holds? How should a leader think about authority when the pew has access to everything the pulpit has, sometimes more? What missing piece can better tools and faster search never solve? And for the pastor who never pulled the trigger: when people are in the Word regularly, everything starts to change.
Read: 9 Questions Pastors Are Asking About AI Bible Study Tools.
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