Who Cares for the Caregivers?
"My wife was my best friend… she was my ONLY friend."
This confession from a pastor in a recent Barna panel discussion on Healthy Relationships stopped me in my tracks. It perfectly captures a reality many of us know too well: ministry can be profoundly isolating, even as we're surrounded by people every day.
If we have healthy relationships with those closest to us, that’s amazing and the data shows that it can significantly impact how supported one might feel in their calling. However, we also know that ministry brings unique pressures that strain even the strongest of relationships and often it is in the home where the fissures cause the most‘seepage’. Something I can attest to personally. Those serving in the widest spectrum of ministry leadership from congregation to private practice to hospital corridors: We're not immune to the loneliness epidemic we're trying to address. The Christian stigma around mental health struggles makes it even harder for ministry leaders to seek support when we need it most. That’s why conferences like the Ministry Mental Health Summit and Church Mental Health Summit (coming this October) are so important!
What’s even more interesting (as I went on a deep dive on this recently - essentially catching up on a bunch of content that I had saved in my “watch later” folder): as we wrestle with our own loneliness, a seismic shift is happening in how people seek connection and care. According to the Harvard Business Review, companionship and therapy have become the #1 use of AI in 2025 (up from #2 in 2024), and the implications for our ministries are profound (if you can’t access HBR, you might glean enough from this article in Forbes).
This was noted in a lecture from Calvin Institute for Christian Worship by sociologist Felicia Wu Song where she also shared some striking trends that made it feel even worse:
3 out of 4 teens have used an AI companion
1 in 3 turned to them for serious conversations—choosing AI over human friends
1 in 3 rate these AI interactions as satisfying or MORE satisfying than real-life friendships
(You can read the full report where this data comes from HERE.)
But here's the troubling reality: those most likely to rely on AI companions are young people with lower incomes and less education—the very people who may see artificial connection as their only option. While not to diminish the argument Song makes for inequities in the world, I’d also argue as a parent to two adult Gen Zs that I can imagine that the anonymity and accessibility of AI makes it more appealing. This is a generation that seems to avoid all personal human contact rejecting all incoming phone calls, preferring self-checkouts, and avoiding small talk like the plague.
So as we become concerned about our young people and many others, the common argument for AI companions is that they're "better than nothing." But as Dr. Song powerfully argues in her lecture, this creates a dangerous two-tiered system where human contact becomes a luxury good available only to those who can afford it. But also if we continue to imagine that AI is “shame free” and “anonymous,” we need to recognize that AI is not private - our interactions are going somewhere and bias still exists in the system. More importantly, transformation happens when someone who could judge you or decide to dismiss you or ignore you… doesn’t… but is kind and compassionate and holds space for you. You just can’t experience that with an AI. You need to be SEEN BY ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. That is the gift of the psychospiritual care provider, the pastor, or the grocery store clerk, or person on the other end of the telephone even. Human connection is key!
I loved that Song closes her lecture with a brief reflection using the work of Cole Arthur Riley, author of This Here Flesh who offers a beautiful image: God as seamstress, making clothes for Adam and Eve after the fall.
“On the day the world began to die, God became a seamstress. This is the moment in the Bible that I wish we talked about more often.
When Eve and Adam eat from the tree, and decay and despair begin to creep in, when they learn to hide from their own bodies, when they learn to hide from each other—no one ever told me the story of a God who kneels and makes clothes out of animal skin for them.”
Sometimes, Song states: "you can't talk someone into believing their dignity. You do what you can to make a person feel unashamed of themselves."
This is our calling in an age of artificial companions—to offer the irreplaceable gift of human recognition, dignity, and genuine care.
As AI companions proliferate, our role becomes more crucial, not less. We're called to:
Acknowledge our own struggles with loneliness and isolation and seek support as needed;
Create spaces for genuine human connection;
Resist the two-tiered system that relegates the vulnerable to artificial care;
Model what it means to be truly seen and valued as Jesus did; and,
Invest in the "connective labor" that transforms lives
The loneliness epidemic isn't going away, and AI companions aren't the solution. But we have something irreplaceable to offer: the ministry of genuine human presence in the name of Jesus.
In an age of artificial everything, authentic ministry matters more than ever.
Yours, Ministry Leader, is the work of connection.