Over 60 Percent of German Pastors Use AI, DiRK Survey Finds

Germany's Protestant and Catholic churches are grappling with the same question as newsrooms, law firms and corporations: what to do about employees who have started using chatbots en masse. A new survey shows that among German clergy, the question of whether to use AI has already been answered, even if no shared strategy exists.

The study is called "Digitalisierung im Raum der Kirchen" (DiRK 2026), an interdenominational research project led by Holger Sievert, a communications lecturer at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Cologne. The first results were published in April by Versicherer im Raum der Kirche (VRK), an insurer operating within the church community, and reported by the news agency Evangelischer Pressedienst (epd). Sievert presented a fuller breakdown of the data on May 11, 2026.

What the numbers show

Of the 505 pastors and parish priests who answered questions about generative AI, 62 percent said they use it in some form. The intensity varies widely: only 20 percent use it often, while 42.6 percent use it rarely. One in five respondents has never used tools like ChatGPT, Claude or Mistral, and 15.3 percent said they had only experimented or tried it without regular use.

Eight percent of respondents said outright that they could not imagine working with any generative AI system at all, a smaller group than those who use AI often, which itself shows how quickly these tools have entered day-to-day pastoral practice in recent years.

What clergy use AI for

Among those who use AI, the most common application is writing texts, cited by 62.3 percent of respondents. Close behind is research and information gathering, mentioned by 60.9 percent, followed by translation at 35.2 percent. Respondents also mentioned fact-checking, summarizing texts, generating images and looking for inspiration.

One of the most sensitive areas remains sermon preparation. The questionnaire itself did not include a separate question on the topic, so the exact scale of AI use in sermon writing doesn't emerge directly from the numerical data. Sievert noted, however, that from open-ended answers, the researchers know that sermon writing was a significant part of the broader text-creation category.

From the open-ended answers, however, we know that sermon writing was an important part of text creation - Holger Sievert, head of the DiRK study, Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Cologne

Churches without a digital strategy

The study covered a much broader group than just pastors: a total of 7,178 Protestants and Catholics were surveyed, more than half of whom work professionally in church institutions. Among church employees as a whole, 58 percent already use AI tools or plan to. At the same time, 78 percent have received no AI training at all, and 38 percent use free tools with no visible, binding guidelines.

The study's authors also noted the phenomenon of so-called "Schatten-KI" (shadow AI), unofficially adopted AI use, which applies to one in five respondents. Nearly 20 percent said they would keep using AI tools even if their institution banned it.

Respondents themselves recognize the gap between practice and regulation. The call for binding ethical guidelines on AI use in church institutions scored a high 4.6 on a five-point scale, while the conviction that final responsibility for sensitive decisions should remain with humans scored even higher, at 4.8.

Pragmatism over theology

Sievert summarized the findings as a picture of advancing digitalization in German churches accompanied by a clear lack of strategy. His observations suggest that decisions to adopt digital tools in parishes are driven more by practical considerations, such as available resources or local needs, than by systematic theological reflection on where technical assistance ends and questions of meaning and pastoral care begin.

A further, more in-depth round of analysis on AI use among clergy in Germany is set to be carried out in 2027. Only that follow-up is expected to give a clearer picture of how much generative AI actually shapes sermon content and pastoral practice, rather than just administrative and editorial work.

For readers in Poland, the DiRK study is interesting because it shows a pattern that repeats across many industries: adoption of AI tools outpaces training and internal regulation by years. In Germany, this holds true even in a community that, by definition, raises questions about the limits of technology in the spiritual and ethical sphere.