One of the most seductive promises of AI is that you can do more without adding more people, more hours, or more resources. A task that once took a team can sometimes be handled by one person. Research that took days can take minutes. A first draft that consumed hours can appear almost instantly.
For a business leader, that sounds like good news. And often it is. But as we explored last time, AI doesn’t just change what we can do. It can shape how we think and lead. And one of the clearest ways it is doing that is through capacity. It creates a question we don’t ask often enough: Just because I can do more, does that mean I am called to do more?
For most of history, leaders faced fixed limits. Only so many hours. Only so many people, so much expertise, so much money. Those limits forced leaders to make tradeoffs, and tradeoffs required discernment. AI is quietly removing some of those limits. That opens up real possibilities for growth, innovation, and service. But it also creates a quiet pressure to fill whatever new capacity shows up. Slowly, the question changes from “What has God called me to do?” to “What can I now do?”
Those are not the same questions. The gap between them is where good leaders can mistake busyness for faithfulness.
God may give you the ability to do something without assigning it to you. David had both the ability and the desire to build the temple, but God gave that job to Solomon instead (1 Chronicles 28:2–7). Scripture reminds us that faithfulness isn’t measured by how much we can accomplish, but by how we use what we’ve been given for the purposes God intends.
Imagine AI shows you that a new market could bring in significant revenue. The numbers are compelling. Your team even has the capacity to pursue it without hiring anyone. On paper, saying yes looks obvious.
But what if pursuing it would pull your leadership team away from the people you are already responsible for? What if it would compromise a commitment you’ve made or God has given you a different priority for this season? The question isn’t whether the opportunity is good. It is whether it is yours to pursue.
This also changes how we think about productivity. If AI saves a leader ten hours a week, the default response might be to find ten more hours of work. But perhaps those hours should be invested in developing people, strengthening relationships, thinking strategically, resting, or simply being more present with the people God has entrusted to that leader.
Because the goal isn’t to become a leader who can do more. It’s to become a leader who is faithful with more.
Next time, we’ll look at why AI’s ability to give you an instant answer can quietly work against the patience wise decisions actually require.
p.s. In Kingdom Factor Cohort (KFC), we regularly wrestle with questions like this alongside other Christian business leaders. Sometimes the most important leadership decision is deciding what not to pursue.
Here’s the entire Godly Leadership in the AI Age mini-series:
- Part 1: Beyond Human Leadership: Becoming Godly Leaders in the AI Age
- (This is Part 2)
- Part 3: What Joshua 9 Teaches Us About AI and Wisdom
- Part 4: Data Tells You What’s Likely. Who Tells You What’s Faithful?
- Part 5:
- Part 6:
“I’m also intrigued by your phrase “seeking permission.” It sounds like there was a discernment process around whether you should depart from the usual template, rather than simply asking whether AI could help you do it.” ~ What a great question, and you have landed on precisely what my worry was. Before I could clarify my objective, I needed to ask the priest leading the service what her needs were. The priest is working on a growing rural parish programme that required change because our church attendance has declined significantly over the last 20+ years, and we are reaching critically low levels to survive in small communities. So I had some insight into what she might like, but no permission in case it caused disruption to the few who find change more difficult. The few whose beliefs are more rigid and less malleable. My priest is very busy, and I was concerned about giving her more work, so I needed to make a decision reflecting intention. However, I was still uncertain of the intention. Miraculously, I received a timely response just when I needed it, where she gave her blessing to the more radical reengineering of the structure. I felt the release/reduction of stress (adrenaline) and felt the serotonin (calm), which led to a more relaxing Saturday evening. Those decisions seeking wisdom are a mix of ingrained, energy-conserving, habitual (wired) reactions and more demanding, effortful needs that require the prefrontal cortex. I believe that God let my work flow, knowing my brain, mind and body; as he says in scripture, Jesus died to take my anxiety away. I used AI in the process to build my skills, work more rapidly, create capacity to think of some added value and support my decision-making. The human (me was in control of my thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions, and AI allowed me to harvest the fruit for sharing.
What a great example that the AI didn’t determine the intention. You had to discern the intention first, seek permission from the person responsible, and then decide how to use the additional capacity AI gave you.
Your description of AI as helping you “harvest the fruit” captures something important about the relationship between human judgment and AI. The tool can accelerate the work, generate possibilities, and free up capacity, but it doesn’t remove the need for wisdom about what should actually be done.
The temptation with AI is often to resolve uncertainty by generating more information or more options. But sometimes the next step isn’t more information. It’s waiting, asking, listening, and discerning.
That’s an important part of being a godly leader in an AI age: knowing when to use the machine to accelerate the work, and when to slow down enough to listen for the wisdom that the machine can’t provide.
I’m enjoying this series, Mun-Wai and your article is thought-provoking with respect to what AI and the role it serves for humans is all about: why entrepreneurs do what they do and how they feel their worth- is it through a kind of hero busyness mentality, or is it by focusing on the objective function (complexity/quality of the variables in the model), discerning the key variables to focus on and then having great awareness of the constraints and limits. Yesterday I created a harvest prayer for our service today, which was more lateral than the usual deviation from the norm. I was apprehensive about creating something new and excited at the same time. I allocated myself 4 hours, and I would have needed the full four hours if I had started from scratch. Within two hours, I used my priest’s suggested inputs and then, using my AI agents, entered my objective function/goal.
After about 10 iterations, I landed on something which felt warming and exciting in my stomach. I felt some dopamine and serotonin bio/chemicals firing. I still had two full hours (capacity) to spare. I was able to nip out to the shops and buy some props to enhance the delivery and interactions, and make a phone call to ask a friend if they would like to attend; they could. I was really pleased. I felt some Oxytocin fire as she sounded so pleased to be invited. Today I delivered the prayer, and several people approached me to say how much they enjoyed it, and I was quietly delighted. I realised that although I had been a little worried that no one would join in, they had, as they realised the part they were to play; my thoughts of failure calmed, and my belief that God was guiding me was cemented. I don’t think this means I will get it right every time, yet I do think God was saying it’s OK to veer away from the normal doctrinal template, make mistakes if needed and that by seeking permission, others can also be seeded, nurtured, and grow. Thank you, AI. I was able to do more to satisfy my goal and objective, and more meant greater quality and value in the delivery, not something else entirely.
I like the distinction you’re making between doing more and creating more value towards the objective you’ve discerned.
What struck me in your story is that AI didn’t change the goal. You had already decided what you were trying to create, the inputs were there, and you had given yourself a four-hour window. AI simply changed what was possible within that constraint. And importantly, you didn’t use the two hours you saved to create another task. You used them to enhance the experience, connect with someone, and prepare more intentionally for the people you were serving.
That is very different from the “I have more capacity, so I need to fill it” mindset I was getting at in the article.
I’m also intrigued by your phrase “seeking permission.” It sounds like there was a discernment process around whether you should depart from the usual template, rather than simply asking whether AI could help you do it.
Do you think that discernment has to happen before we bring AI into the process, or can AI itself sometimes help us discover what God may be inviting us to do?