Why I built FlockConnect: an interview on isolation and AI

Joshua Updegraff of Kingdom Planning had FlockConnect founder Michael Tribett on his show, the Lead & Deliver Podcast, on October 21, 2026. They talked about the isolation God saved Michael from, the friend who felt connected to no one at church, why he took the first version of FlockConnect offline and started over, whether pastors should use AI to write sermons, and why AI should be the sheepdog, not the shepherd. The conversation below is edited for length and clarity. The full episode releases later this fall.

Who is Michael Tribett?

Joshua: Michael, can you tell us a little about yourself and what brought you here today?

Michael: I'm Michael, and I'm the founder of FlockConnect. I started building FlockConnect about a year ago, and I've intentionally designed it for pastors. I have a heart for pastors, and I have a heart for people in congregations, so I've built FlockConnect with both of those things in mind. It helps pastors be more knowledgeable of their people: who's connected in their congregation, and who needs connecting. And it takes some of those admin tasks off their plate, so they can spend more time with the people in their congregation.

I've been a Christian for ten years. I was saved on a mission trip to Thailand, which is probably another episode all on its own. I'm from Vegas. I was born and raised there, and I came to know the Lord through a church there that sent me on a mission trip. I got to see Christianity in a completely different light, and God used that to reveal himself to me.

I was part of a really, really great community there, very close-knit. Vegas is almost like an unreached people group. I think the last statistic I saw was 92 or 93% of Vegas is unchurched. So very, very few Christians there, and that's about two and a half million people. So the Christian communities that do exist there are usually pretty strong. It's an in-the-trenches-together mentality. If you're a Christian there, you're not a Christian for social reasons, and you're not a Christian because of culture. You're a Christian because of conviction.

I came out of a community like that. After I'd been a Christian for two years, quite a few people in my community told me I should consider going to seminary. In 2018 I moved to the other side of the country, to North Carolina, and pursued my MDiv at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. I graduated in 2022, with a focus on discipleship and missions. I have a huge heart for missionaries, and that guides me in everything I do. It very much guides my convictions, and even the theological design of FlockConnect.

From isolation to faith on a mission trip to Thailand

Joshua: You've said isolation is the same problem God saved you from personally. How does that shape the way you built FlockConnect, and the pressure I'm sure you put on yourself to get it right? Because FlockConnect is really about bringing the flock out of isolation.

Michael: It's a very multifaceted answer. Before I was a Christian, I was very isolated. I had very bad social anxiety, among other issues. This was 2016, so I would have been 24 or 25. I had very few friends, and the friends I did have had moved away by that time in my life. My sister had just moved to Ohio. She was probably my closest friend at that point.

A week or two after she moved, we were on a phone call, and I think she could tell I was really down in the dumps. Really isolated, really sad, depressed. She encouraged me to go to a young adults ministry that met on Tuesday nights. I asked her, "Is it a church thing? Because I really don't want to do something like that." She admitted it was.

So, basically to appease her, I went. I was experiencing social anxiety while I was there. But it was the first time in my life that I saw people together who wanted to be together. They did worship, a short teaching, and a response song. I remember looking around during that response song and thinking, man, these people love something, and I don't love anything.

That drove me to go back the next week, and the next week. The whole goal of that young adults ministry was getting young adults plugged into church communities, and I found out a lot of them went to a church in Vegas called Hope Church. One weekend I decided to go check it out. The sermon series they happened to be doing was called Life as a Jesus Follower. It was talking about community, about going, about missions, all of those things.

A couple of months after that, I found myself on a mission trip to Thailand. Even leading up to it, I remember wanting to pull out. I was going to a country I'd never been to, a whole different culture, and I'd never had a desire to go to Asia at that point in my life. Getting on a plane with twenty-some people I didn't know is really intimidating. But whether it was the Spirit guiding me or God, it really felt like God had put things in place for me to go on this trip. So I went.

There's a church in Thailand with a ministry: an English-speaking school in rural Thailand, right on the border of Laos. There are about 700 kids there, and about 97% of them are Buddhist. Thai teachers who know English teach them English, but they're also teaching them the Bible. It's a very small community of Christians in rural Thailand, surrounded by Buddhists.

I was able to see how Christianity transcends culture. In America we get this idea that Christianity is going to church on Sunday in a suit and tie, maybe having lunch after the service, maybe being in a small group. But for that community in Thailand to survive, for them to really thrive as Christians, they had to do life together every single day. Now that I know the Bible, and the stories in Acts, specifically the Acts 2 church as it's described, I can see that what I saw in Thailand really mimicked it. That really stuck with me.

On top of that, God was chiseling down my social anxiety while I was on that trip. The American team was just so welcoming. I felt like I was part of a family, like they were really welcoming me into their lives. Seeing that transparency, that unfiltered emotion, was so eye-opening to me.

By the time the trip was coming to an end, I was literally sitting on a bridge in rural Thailand, looking over this beautiful river. Two of my new friends were sitting on both sides of me, in some theological discussion, and I had no idea what they were talking about. I was really getting in my head, thinking, man, this is about to come to an end. I'm going back to Vegas in two days, and I'm going to be alone again. Then I started getting tunnel vision, everything started to get quiet, and I felt complete peace. I felt God tell me, "Michael, you're never going to be alone again. I'm always going to be with you." And at that point I was like, this is real.

It was a moment that completely changed the trajectory of everything. When I came back, the leader of that trip, Scott Worthington, started discipling me. He's now the head pastor of Hope Church in Vegas. Wonderful man. At first we met up once a week and worked out together once a week. He started inviting me into his home and his family. Soon we were working out together every day, talking about struggles, and he was challenging me to change my way of thinking. It was so, so good and helpful.

On top of that, I got really close with a lot of other guys at the church and really fell into community. I was completely transformed. I learned so much, through formal discipleship but also through the informal discipleship of being surrounded by others who are on this journey to be more like Christ. It changed everything for me.

The friend who felt connected to no one at church

Michael: So when I made the decision in 2018 to leave that super impactful, close community and move to North Carolina for seminary, I had a lot of expectations of what it was going to be like. I was thinking everyone was going to be very close-knit. And I realized that in the South, you really have to fight to get past surface-level Christianity, and really strive to cultivate meaningful conversations and meaningful relationships with people. I was not expecting that.

Joshua: Just to let you know, that's not just the South. That's 90% of American Christianity, which is why your company is so important.

Michael: My wife and I got married in 2020. She's also from Vegas, from that same community, and she loves cultivating relationships and making sure people are connected. She shares that same heart. We got married right at the height of COVID, so she came into our church in a really weird season. We weren't meeting in person. Sometimes we were meeting outside. It was a strange time.

Our church in Rolesville, North Carolina, is called Exchange Church. It's a wonderful church. It's on the smaller side, and compared to the other churches I've experienced in this area, it's pretty close-knit. We tend to all know each other pretty well, and we're welcoming.

But even there, in 2021, one of my best friends, someone I'd been in a small group with for two to three years at that point, called me one night. He said, "Michael, I don't feel connected to anyone. You and Melanie are the only two people at our church I really feel connected to." By that time, he told me, he had decided he was going to start checking out other churches.

That really broke my heart. My wife and I talked about it and tried to process it. I shared that news with our pastors, and they were pretty shocked as well. And I just started brainstorming: there has to be a better way for us to be aware of who is feeling isolated, and who isn't connected.

In 2021 I didn't have the background in Christian tech yet, and I didn't have the resources to start building something. But I started developing my theological convictions at that time. One of my closest friends, John Mosley, goes to Exchange Church too, and I was processing it with him. He has a huge heart for getting people connected. He was on the connections team at that point, and he shared a study with me that was kind of mind-blowing. It's a study I quote on the homepage of FlockConnect.

It was pretty much found in the study that if somebody gets seven or more connections in their church within the first six months, it's very high likelihood, almost like 100% likelihood, that after two years they're still going to be at that church, and they're going to be very involved. On the flip side of that, if you have two or fewer connections, it's almost 100% likelihood that you will leave that church within two years.

(Editor's note: The study is Win and Charles Arn's 1984 research on new church members. Read what the 7-friend study does and does not show.)

So, man, connections in church. Sermons are important. Worship is important. But the community is key. And you see that in Acts. Who knows what access the early church had to instruments, or what music they were playing? I'm sure they were playing some sort of music together, but we don't really know. What we do know is they were gathering. They were living life together, day by day, in these tight-knit communities where they knew each other's struggles. They knew one another. That's something I want the modern church to try to emulate, and that study just stuck with me.

Why Christian tech misses horizontal relationships

Michael: I was a high school teacher through the course of seminary. My last semester, I decided to quit teaching and focus on seminary. When I graduated in 2022, I was like, okay, what's next? I went into seminary never planning to become a pastor. I went to develop better skills and a better understanding of Christ and theology, so that I could disciple others well.

My wife really encouraged me to pursue tech. She works at Red Hat, which is one of the biggest open-source technology companies in the world, and it's based in Raleigh. She's really familiar with the tech world, what makes somebody successful in tech and what makes someone hate their job in tech, and she saw a lot of potential in me to really excel there. So I started to look into Christian tech jobs specifically, and I fell into a role at one of the largest Christian tech companies in the world. I worked there for about three years. I learned a lot there. I learned both the good and the bad. I got to work with a lot of customers and really understand what they were looking for. I was also able to see the product side: where these products are lacking, and what pastors truly need to feed their sheep, to protect their sheep, to know their sheep.

Over the course of those three years, I really saw that Christian tech is lacking. It's not providing pastors with true pastoral tools. The products and companies that exist are really good at data management, marketing, worship and services. But they're really lacking what I call the horizontal plane of communication: the members, the health of the members, the connections of the members. Really good at vertical communication. Really bad at horizontal communication.

So in 2025, just over a year ago, I decided I was going to step away from that job, for a multitude of reasons. One of those reasons was health related. Stress. I developed shingles. It wasn't the best environment for me to be in. So I stepped away from that role. I stepped into being a full-time dad, and building FlockConnect full time. I started prototyping, and I started sharing those early prototypes with close pastor friends and church planters, about 30 different pastors. Every single one of them was like, I need this. I needed this. Don't stop building this, please. That really motivated me to keep building it, refining it, and taking away certain features I was thinking of.

Then in May of this year, after I went through an accelerator program with Missional Labs and got to present my idea at the Missional AI conference in Silicon Valley, I decided I was going to start building it again from scratch. I knew everything I had learned, and I had a very clear vision of what I wanted it to be for pastors. I've been building it since then. I have a date, November 10, when I hope the whole product, and the ideas behind it, will be available for pastors to start using.

Why FlockConnect started over from scratch

Joshua: Take us to that summit moment. Two months later, like you said, you decided to take version one completely offline and rebuild it, basically from scratch, with a more precise vision of what you wanted it to be. What did that decision feel like, and how were you sure it was the right call in the moment? That's a bold move when you have a bunch of pastors saying this is exactly what we need.

Michael: It wasn't something I wanted to do. At that point, it wasn't even something I thought I needed to do. It was this kind of aching, this groaning in my spirit. I could keep building it like this, putting these puzzle pieces together, but I felt like the architecture I had built FlockConnect on was not sustainable.

To give you an idea of my initial build process, I originally started with a vibe-coding product called Lovable. I built the prototype on Lovable, and that's what I was showing pastors. At some point it quickly, completely outgrew Lovable. Lovable is not sustainable for creating a product that needs to be secure for pastors. Member data is extremely important, and I didn't have confidence in Lovable to build something a customer should pay for. I think it's good for prototyping things, maybe getting out an MVP. But for actually bringing church membership information into a product, this was not good.

So I started trying to take what I'd built in Lovable, transfer it over to Claude Code, and refine it there. After tinkering with it for a few months, I was running into a lot of issues. The original architecture was kind of puzzle-pieced together, held together by duct tape, basically. It wasn't sustainable.

That's when I was like, okay, I need to rebuild this, and I need to rebuild it right. Data is so, so important for the church especially. If we're building for the church, we should be building it to the absolute highest standards possible. I'm very convicted, as a builder and as a designer, to strive for perfection in what I put out. If I'm presenting this to God, I want to say, God, this is my best offering. I don't want to string something together and get it out just for the sake of getting it out, or build for the sake of building. I want it to be convictionally designed, intentionally designed, secure, all those things.

So I had to take a step back and pause what I was doing. I needed to spec this out properly and start building it from scratch. I now knew what I needed to know to design the product that is going to be best for pastors, so they can use it to help achieve the Great Commission. It was a hard choice. It was a scary choice. It almost felt like, man, I just wasted all this time. But in reality I had gained all this amazing data, all this amazing knowledge, so that I can start building the perfect product for pastors.

Joshua: I get it. I spent close to fifteen years in kitchens, then two years in retirement consulting, and then stepped into leadership in a corporate role. Through those transitions it felt like failure. What was all that for? But through those seasons, it wasn't failure. It was data collection and information gathering. As I've been building Kingdom Planning and the podcast, the Lord has kept showing me that through all those seasons, he was giving me the skills and the tools I need to succeed in this season, in what he's called me to do.

This is something I'm writing about in my upcoming book, Entrusted. It's so easy to lose the fact that we are stewards of what we are given, not owners. At the end of the day, God owns it. We are called to steward it. And when we start making the decisions owners make, rather than the decisions stewards make, that's when we run into problems.

A lot of people in your situation would have said, I'll do this for the first few dozen clients, get the capital, then hire a software engineer to rebuild it into something more sustainable. That would have been the easy route. You didn't take it.

Why FlockConnect says no to investors

Michael: I want to speak into that. My wife is our sole provider right now. I'm not the breadwinner. I'm trying to build this in a way that is not influenced by the idea that I'm building it to make money, or to get rich quick, or to sell it off to a company or get private equity. I'm building it because I truly think it's going to help pastors. And that's it.

If God blesses it, and it's like, hey, you can make your career out of this, praise God. If God decides, hey, this isn't actually going to be good for the kingdom, let's just stop it, then okay, praise God. I want to see it as a journey of self-transformation, and of being able to serve the church in the capacity it needs to be served, without any motivation from money.

And that's hard, especially because I want to provide for my family. I want my wife to not have to work. I want to provide. I've had to tell myself, and stop myself sometimes. I've had investors reach out to me, and I've had to say no. I've had other founders reach out wanting to do partnerships, but I disagreed with their approach or their technology, and I've had to say no. That's really hard.

And with version one, the prototype I had built, I had six churches on it and a church network in Mexico using it. I had to tell them, hey, this is not good enough. I'm going to stop it. I'm going to rebuild this, and hopefully you start using it again. There were easier paths I could have taken. But man, if we're providing a service, if we're providing a product to the kingdom, it needs to be as perfect as we're able to make it. Through the strength God provides us, through the resources God provides us, it needs to be as perfect as possible. Not rushed, and not for money. The motivation should always be the Great Commission.

Joshua: It's difficult. When you're a guy, I think it's especially difficult, because you're expected to be the provider. You have to constantly be in prayer: is this an opportunity that presented itself because the Lord presented it to me, or is it one I want to pursue because, if I take it, money would not be the resistance it is right now? It's a very difficult balance, and I applaud you for not taking the easy path.

AI should be the sheepdog, not the shepherd

Joshua: A lot of pastors and ministries, and Christians in general, cringe when they hear the term AI, especially in a ministry context. But you have a very specific view of AI. Your framing is that AI is the sheepdog, not the shepherd. Where did that language come from, and how does it protect us from using AI in an unethical way? Ethical implementation of AI is surely needed in the Christian sphere.

Michael: The sheepdog, not the shepherd, is about how FlockConnect uses AI to help pastors. The integration with AI is extremely limited. It does not do generative AI. It doesn't do anything a pastor should be doing. There are very hard parameters set up on that, and a lot of them are outlined on my website.

But in terms of everyday AI use, for me specifically, as a CEO and founder: man, it's so easy to just have it do almost everything for you, to automate everything for you. In the building of FlockConnect, the designing of FlockConnect, the direction of FlockConnect, I'm guiding the AI. I'm not letting the AI guide me. And I think pastors should really think about that too. I don't think AI should be avoided, but I do think AI needs to be used wisely, specifically by pastors.

Should pastors use AI to write sermons?

Michael: There's a Christian tech company trying to develop and push AI that is kind of limited, with guardrails on it. Honestly, I don't know if that's even necessary. I think what's better is that we disciple people well, so they understand: if I'm going to use AI, I use it in these ways, and I don't use it in these ways. Pastors should be an example of that. Hey, I use AI to take all of this data and look for patterns, but I'm not using it to write my sermon. Because if I use AI to write my sermon, where is the hard work within me? I might be able to read what it produced, maybe even written better than I could do myself. But I'm not wrestling in the production of this sermon. It's not affecting my own soul in the ways it needs to be.

Sometimes with AI, it's so easy to produce something that we don't stop to think: does this thing that's being produced even need to exist? Or am I doing it just for the sake of doing it? One of my favorite books is Jurassic Park, and there's a line in there spoken by Malcolm. He essentially says just because we can doesn't mean we should. Just because they could recreate dinosaurs didn't mean they should. In the same sense, just because we can have AI write a sermon doesn't mean we should. Just because we can have AI create artwork doesn't mean we should.

Humans are designed to create. I very much believe that's an essential part of what it is to be human. When you take away the ability to create, or even dampen that process of creating, it takes away from our humanity. It takes away from the way God designed us.

So as pastors, if you're using AI, maybe you're using it to create a graphic for an event that's coming up. Something a pastor should ask is: if me using AI is taking away from somebody's ability to create this, should I be doing it? Stop and ask yourself: am I going to hinder or dampen the human experience for the sake of saving time, or for the sake of producing this thing? Or is me doing this going to enrich the human experience? On all sides: the person using the AI, and the audience as well.

Joshua: I run through the logic of trust but verify. Trust the output you're given, but verify the information. The mistakes AI makes are called hallucinations, and a lot of people will post things or send emails or put out resources without verifying that the information in them is actually correct. That's the dangerous thing.

I use AI a lot, because it does make marketing a lot easier. It's great for brainstorming post ideas. Or if I'm reading a passage of Scripture and it really spoke to me, I'll ask how it connects with Kingdom Planning, and it gives me breakdowns I would never have thought of. It's teaching me that the Word of God speaks into every situation, whether we notice it or not. But we have to be very careful that we're not replacing the discernment of the Holy Spirit with AI, which is what it can sometimes seem like people are doing.

Disciple the person, not the algorithm

Michael: I want to say one other thing. I've heard it used throughout some Christian tech circles: we need to disciple the algorithm. No. That is not who we need to be discipling. We need to be discipling the person.

I'm not about censorship at all. I actually love reading and watching content produced by atheists. I have very strong theological convictions and a very strong theological foundation, and if anything, that content usually strengthens my stance. But it also challenges me to think critically.

We need to disciple the person, not the algorithm, because if we disciple the algorithm, what that essentially is, is censorship. It creates a false sense that the person using that discipled AI can just blindly trust it, and they don't develop the skills of discernment and critical thinking, to be challenged and to really wrestle with an answer. I love using all the different LLMs, like Claude and ChatGPT, and I love reading the answers they give sometimes, because I'm like, okay, that's actually wrong, and I know that's wrong, and this is why I know it's wrong. But I'm able to do that because I've been discipled well. So we need to not censor. We need to disciple, so people are able to discern truth from lies, so they can use these tools well.

Joshua: I love that. Don't disciple the AI. Disciple the people. That is exactly right. Before AI, people were already lacking the ability to think critically for themselves, and now it's accelerated even more, because everyone is depending on AI to think for them. Especially in the church, we need to not live in the bubble. Like Christ said, live in the world but not of the world. We expose ourselves to different ideas and different conversations while maintaining the convictions of the kingdom.

When I was working in kitchens, there was a guy I talked to every day who was an atheist. We'd sit down and have theological discussions for two hours at a time, and sometimes we'd get animated. But at the end of those conversations we'd get up, hug each other, and say, see you tomorrow. If I hadn't had that relationship, a lot of the theology I believe now, I wouldn't have been able to verbalize or argue for. A lot of Christians are really good at telling you what you shouldn't do and what you should believe. But when you ask them why, they're not able to tell you. So don't lose your critical thinking because AI has made it easier not to have to think at all.

Books and podcasts on AI and faith

Michael: There are three resources I want to share that really come to mind. One is The AI Apocalypse, a book from The Gospel Coalition. Each chapter has a different author, so you get different perspectives, but it's very theologically strong and very relevant to the conversation we're having right now.

There's a podcast that's kind of a sister to that book, called Silicon Spiritualities. The host is Christopher Watkin. Highly recommend it. There have been a lot of really helpful guests on that show who have challenged the way I think about AI.

The third is The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman. It's been one of the most impactful Christian books I've ever read. It's very short, maybe 90 pages, the perfect length for a Christian book. The idea is to focus on three people so that they can focus on three people, in terms of discipling, and that being the master plan of evangelism. Because through discipleship is how we mold people and their souls, point them to Christ and make them more like Christ, so they can go out and do the same.

If we focus on things like that, if we empower people, like you empowering people to steward well, or FlockConnect empowering pastors to focus on discipleship more, that's how we fulfill the Great Commission, so we're not focused on all these worldly things. Not that those things aren't important. They are important. They are stressful. They're sometimes worthy of our attention. But Christ has to be the center and the motivator behind all the things we do.

What's coming to FlockConnect on November 10

Joshua: Version two is coming out in November. Where can people find it when it does?

Michael: FlockConnect.com. There are multiple tiers. The first is called Starter, and it helps pastors and small group leaders log their conversations, so pastors are aware of the needs of the people in their congregation. It also gives pastors the ability to assign small group leaders care reports. The small group leader fills out a report on the people they're entrusted with, so the pastor can then look at those reports.

November 10 is when I will be launching Collie. Collie is the AI integration in FlockConnect, and it's designed to be the sheepdog for the shepherd. It will never message someone in your church on your behalf. It will give pastors red flags, things they need to look at: if it's seeing a dip in attendance, or some sort of pattern starting to build that needs the pastor's attention. It's also agentic, so a pastor can talk with Collie to work in FlockConnect and make FlockConnect an even easier experience.

(Editor's note: Collie works on the pastor's command. Nothing reaches a member or a connected system, and no care record is created, until a person approves it. How Collie works and what it will never do.)

On top of that, there's going to be a relationship tracking feature integrated into FlockConnect, to help make sure people are connected. As part of that, there's an assessment a pastor can send to people in their church individually. The pastor can completely customize the questions, or use a predetermined template of questions intentionally designed to help capture who's connected and who's not. The goal is for pastors to know, and for people to be known.

(Editor's note: Relationship tracking and the assessment are still being built. They come after November 10.)

Joshua: Love that. It's been a pleasure to have you on today, Michael. And for everyone listening: this week, step back so you can see more clearly. Ask the Lord where you could lead more courageously, and ask him to give you the strength to steward faithfully under Christ's authority.

More from Kingdom Planning

After the recording, Joshua mentioned that Kingdom Planning has a whole program on implementing AI ethically. The prices on its website are mainly for businesses. Churches and nonprofits get a sliding scale on all of Kingdom Planning's services, because not every church can afford the same amount, and Joshua's vision is to help the church and other organizations grow, not to make money hand over fist.

If your church is working out how to use AI well, you can learn more at ai.kingdomplanning.org, and about Kingdom Planning's wider work at kingdomplanning.org.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Michael Tribett start FlockConnect?

One of my best friends called me one night and said, "Michael, I don't feel connected to anyone," and he had decided to start checking out other churches. That really broke my heart, and I started brainstorming: there has to be a better way for us to be aware of who is feeling isolated and who isn't connected. Christian tech is really good at vertical communication and really bad at horizontal communication, the connections of the members.

Why did FlockConnect take its first version offline?

I felt like the architecture I had built FlockConnect on was not sustainable. It was puzzle-pieced together, held together by duct tape, basically, and if we're building for the church, we should be building it to the absolute highest standards possible. I had six churches on it and a church network in Mexico using it, and I had to tell them, this is not good enough, I'm going to rebuild this.

What does it mean that AI is the sheepdog, not the shepherd?

It's about how FlockConnect uses AI to help pastors. The integration with AI is extremely limited, and it doesn't do anything a pastor should be doing. Collie is designed to be the sheepdog for the shepherd, and it will never message someone in your church on your behalf.

Should pastors use AI to write sermons?

I don't think AI should be avoided, but I do think AI needs to be used wisely, specifically by pastors. I use AI to look for patterns, but I'm not using it to write my sermon, because if I use AI to write my sermon, where is the hard work within me? I'm not wrestling in the production of that sermon, and it's not affecting my own soul in the ways it needs to be.

What does disciple the person, not the algorithm mean?

Some Christian tech circles say we need to disciple the algorithm, and that is not who we need to be discipling. If we disciple the algorithm, what that essentially is, is censorship, and people end up blindly trusting it instead of developing discernment and critical thinking. We need to disciple the person, so people are able to discern truth from lies and use these tools well.

What books and podcasts on AI and faith does Michael Tribett recommend?

The AI Apocalypse, a book from The Gospel Coalition where each chapter has a different author, and Silicon Spiritualities, a podcast hosted by Christopher Watkin that's kind of a sister to that book. The third is The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman, one of the most impactful Christian books I've ever read.

About the author

I am Michael Tribett, the founder of FlockConnect, the first purpose-built Church Relationship Management (ChRM) platform. I hold a Master of Divinity in Christian Ministry from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and live in Raleigh, North Carolina. FlockConnect participated in the Missional Labs Faith and AI Accelerator during the winter and spring of 2026 and is an official Planning Center integration partner.

How this was written: built only from Michael Tribett's own recorded and written words, arranged with AI, then edited by him until it read as his. How FlockConnect uses AI