Thomas Costello @tkcostello

Your church’s front door isn’t on your church building. It’s in a chat box. People ask AI before they ever pull into your parking lot. They type “recommend a good church near me,” and AI gives them one or two names, not a list of ten links. The churches it names aren’t always the biggest or the best. They’re the ones it can read clearly online. Make sure it knows your church’s name. Have you checked what AI says about your church yet?

Every new technology gets rejected by the church at first. AI is no different. But it’s a tool, not a threat. Like cash, it can be used for good or evil. Churches that ignore it will be left behind.

I asked ChatGPT to recommend a family-friendly church in Honolulu. It gave me two names. Mine was one of them. A few others I asked about didn’t make the list. That’s the new front door for churches. People aren’t just Googling “churches near me” and scrolling through ten links anymore. They’re asking AI for a personal recommendation. And AI doesn’t give a list. It picks one or two. This is growing fast. AI-referred visits to websites jumped 527% in the first half of 2025. 58% of people now rely on AI for recommendations, up from 25% two years ago. And these visitors are ready. AI search traffic converts 4.4x better than regular Google traffic, because someone asking AI for a church isn’t browsing. They’re picking. So why do most churches miss the list? A half-finished Google profile. No FAQ page with clear answers. Six reviews from three years ago. AI reads all of it, and when the data is thin, it recommends someone else. The fix isn’t complicated: Finish your Google profile. Add an FAQ page that answers what guests actually ask. Ask for reviews every month and reply to every one. Then ask AI about your church and see what it says. Try it this week. Ask ChatGPT for a church in your city. Did yours show up?

Pastors: open ChatGPT and ask it to recommend a church in your city. Did yours show up? AI doesn’t give a list of ten links. It gives one or two names.

You smiled through all of Sunday. And then you got in the car. And for the first time all day, it was quiet. That hug that lasted a little too long. The prayer request you can't shake. The family that didn't show up again. You carried all of it. And you were glad to. But hear me on this: you're allowed to set it down today. They've got a Shepherd. So do you. Rest today, Pastor.

The part of this week's message that humbled you is probably the part someone needs most. You know the one. The verse that stopped you mid-study. The point you had to sit with before you could even write it down. It's tempting to polish that part into something smooth and safe before Sunday. Don't. Someone in that room is carrying the same thing you wrestled with this week. And they'll hear it best from a pastor who wrestled too. Preach the part that preached to you first. What's one line from this week's message that hit you before it hit anyone else?

Attendance isn't your church's most important vital sign. I'd argue leadership wellness is, and it's not close. You can fix attendance. You can fix giving. You can fix demographics. You can fix volunteer engagement. None of those fixes hold if the person leading them is already running on empty. 40% of pastors are now at high risk of burnout, up from 11% a decade ago. 65% report real loneliness and isolation. Only about half feel genuinely supported by their own congregation, a number that's dropped sharply in ten years. And almost none of them actually leave. About 1.2% quit in a given year. Which means most boards never get the one data point that would force the conversation. The pastor just keeps showing up, increasingly hollowed out, trying to lead every other vital sign from a place that can't sustain it. I get the instinct to prioritize what you can put in a spreadsheet. Attendance and giving are easier to track, easier to report to the board, easier to feel good about. But a burned-out leader can't execute even a great turnaround plan. What does your church actually track closer: the numbers, or the person leading them?

Look at your pastor's eyes this Sunday. There's a decent chance they're standing up there wanting to walk away. 42% of pastors say they've thought about quitting. Only 1.2% ever actually do. That's not a small group slipping quietly out the back door. That's tens of thousands of people showing up to preach every week while they'd rather be anywhere else. Nobody's resigning. They're just hanging on, one Sunday at a time. The why isn't complicated. Overwhelming pressure. Isolation nobody sees. Church politics seeping in from the culture outside. Roughly half of pastors now say their own congregation doesn't actually have their back, a number that's fallen hard over the last ten years. Here's what boards and elders need to hear. You cannot run a turnaround with an empty tank. A pastor who's burned out isn't choosing not to lead well. There's simply nothing left to lead with. No real sabbatical. No friendships outside the four walls. Expected to pick up the phone no matter the hour. If that's your pastor's life, the 42-to-1.2 gap isn't a statistic out there somewhere. It's hitting your building right now. When's the last time someone looked your pastor in the eyes, asked how they're really doing, and actually waited for the answer?

Everyone asks the pastor how the church is doing. Almost nobody asks how the pastor is doing. And on the rare occasion someone does, how often do they actually stick around long enough to hear the real answer, instead of the reflex one? When's the last time someone looked you in the eyes and really asked how you're doing, and then waited?

Your growing church might actually be dying. Most pastors treat attendance as the ultimate scoreboard. Seats filling up means the church is healthy. Case closed. But here's what that number hides. About 80% of church growth in America is transfer growth, people moving from one church to another down the road. Not lost people meeting Jesus for the first time. So two churches can post the exact same Sunday numbers. One is growing by reaching the unchurched. The other is just the shiny new option in town, recruiting people who were already Christians somewhere else. From the stage, they look identical. Underneath, they're not even playing the same game. Stop celebrating headcount by itself. Start asking the harder number: how many people in your church were unchurched two years ago? If that's close to zero, you're not growing. You're just winning musical chairs with the church down the street. What would that number actually be at yours?

9 out of 10 churches that close their doors are sitting in communities that are growing. The people were there the whole time. They just never walked through the door. Every closing church blames the same thing: a shrinking community. The data says otherwise. And it gets worse. Even churches that are growing usually aren't reaching anyone new. Most of that growth is transfer growth, people moving from one church to another down the road. A church can look healthy on a Sunday headcount and still be dying underneath it. Same believers. Just reshuffled from three other churches nearby. The thing that actually predicts decline isn't your zip code. It's whether anyone new walking in wasn't already a Christian somewhere else. Stop asking if your area is growing. Ask how many people in your church were unchurched two years ago. If you don't already know that number, that's the real answer to why you're struggling.

Pastors, it's easy to prep a sermon like a presentation. Find the points. Build the outline. Get ready to deliver. But before you stand in front of your church this Sunday, let the same words that will challenge them challenge you first. Before you open the Word to your congregation, let it open you first.

The best thing we'll ever build as a pastor isn't a program. It's culture. Programs come and go. Series end. Events wrap up. Buildings get old. But a culture of generosity. Of belonging. Of radical welcome. That's what outlasts all of it. It gets into the DNA of our church. It shapes how people treat each other on Tuesday, not just Sunday. It becomes the thing new people feel before they can even explain why they keep coming back. That's what great leadership actually builds. Keep building it.

Before you defend your church's invisibility as conviction, try this. Pull out your phone. Search "church near me" for your own town. What would you actually find?

Pastors hate marketing. I get it. I used to be one of them. We're trained to distrust anything that smells like promotion. Growth numbers feel worldly. Staying small feels holy. If you're not chasing a crowd, you must be doing it right. I planted a church on that exact belief. 15 people. Faithful. Unadvertised. Invisible. I called it purity. It wasn't purity. It was a locked door, and nobody outside those 15 knew the address. Somewhere in that city, a hurting family searched for a church that Sunday. We never showed up. Not because God didn't want them there. Because we never made it possible for them to find us. And I've watched the same pattern in church after church since. The ones that stayed small weren't always the most faithful ones. A lot of them were just the least findable ones. The ones that grew hadn't sold out. They'd simply done the work of being seen. Here's the part that's hard to sit with. "We don't need marketing, God will bring the people" isn't always faith. Sometimes it's an excuse wearing faith's clothes, protecting a church from ever having to change. Before you defend your church's invisibility as conviction, try this. Pull out your phone. Search "church near me" for your own town. See if you show up. What would you actually find if you searched for your own church right now?

What if "we don't need marketing, God will bring the people" isn't faith? What if it's just an excuse dressed up as conviction, protecting your church from ever having to change?

1 in 3 new churches don't survive. And it's not because the preaching was bad. Most people assume it's theology. Or burnout. Or the money running out. Here's the real number, from a Leadership Network and LifeWay Research study: about 68% of church plants make it to year four. The other third quietly fold. A lot of them weren't bad churches. I planted one in 2007. Good preaching. Real community. 15 faithful people who showed up every week. It almost became a statistic too. Not because it wasn't good. Because nobody outside those 15 could find it. That's the part nobody talks about. It's not always a preaching problem. It's not always a money problem either. A huge chunk of failed church plants were simply invisible. If your church is small right now, ask the hard question. Are you the remnant? Or are you just findable to no one? Would your church survive to year four? Or has nobody outside your building found you yet?

1 in 3 new churches don't survive. What if yours could be one of them, not because the preaching failed, but because nobody outside your building ever knew you existed?

We took a church from 30 to 150. Here's the exact playbook. Not tips. This is what we actually did in Madison, Wisconsin. Most church marketing advice stops at "get a nicer website." That's step one of three. Miss the other two and you'll get a visitor once and never again. Step 1: Get findable. Open your phone. Search "church near me" plus your town. Not your church's name, you already know that one works. Type what a stranger types. If you're not in the first few results, that's the whole problem, in 60 seconds, on your own screen. Step 2: Get dead serious about follow-up. This is the one nobody puts in the church marketing books. When someone visits, don't let them slip out the back door and vanish. We built a real process, not a hope. Visitor count went up. The percentage who stuck went up. Both at the same time. Step 3: Put real money behind it. We ran Facebook ads. We got the Google Ad Grant, up to $10,000 a month in free search advertising Google gives to nonprofits. Most pastors have never even heard of it. We used every dollar. Findable gets a family in the room once. Follow-up is why they come back. Money just makes sure more families get the chance in the first place. Which one is your church skipping? Findable, follow-up, or funding it. Tell me below.

What if the reason your church isn't growing has nothing to do with your preaching? It might be that people can't find you online, nobody follows up when they visit, or you've never put a dollar behind reaching new families. Most churches are only fixing the first one.