The 5 Stages of Building With AI
Hey friend!
You type a request into ChatGPT and it gives you a decent answer. You feel like you're using AI.
You are. But... that's Stage 2 of 5.
Most church staff stop right there.
They never see what Stages 3, 4, and 5 actually look like.
Today I want to walk you through all 5 stages if AI fluency, so you know exactly where you stand and what comes next.
Stage 1 is learning the words.
Every new tool comes with its own language, and AI is no different. Words like prompt, model, agent, and automation get thrown around like everyone already knows what they mean.
You don't need a computer science degree. You need about 20 words, defined in plain English, so you can sit in a staff meeting and follow the whole conversation. I built that list for you. It's waiting below, once you get through the other 4 stages.
Stage 2 is prompting, and it's where you already live.
A prompt is a request. You type it, AI answers it. "Give me 5 sermon illustration ideas about grace." "Write a caption for Sunday's Instagram post." That's prompting.
Prompting works. It also has a limit. Every answer comes back generic, because AI doesn't know anything about your church yet. It only knows words.
Stage 3 is context, and this is where answers start sounding like you.
Context means you tell AI who you are before you ask it anything. You describe your denomination, your congregation size, your recent sermon topics. You paste in a few of your own past emails.
Do this once and every answer afterward gets sharper. You aren't explaining your whole church from scratch in every new chat.
Stage 4 is connection, and this is where AI finishes tasks on its own.
At Stage 4, AI is connected straight into your inbox, your calendar, or your church database. It drafts the actual follow-up email in your actual inbox, ready for you to send. It checks your actual calendar and books the meeting.
Stage 5 is automation, and this is what people mean by an AI employee.
Automation means AI runs the task on a schedule, without you asking each time. One Instagram creator posted a walkthrough of building exactly this: an AI agent that reads a church's inbox every morning, sorts every message, drafts a reply for each one, and hands the pastor a simple list. Send this one. Edit that one. 10 minutes, and the inbox that used to eat the whole morning is done before the coffee is.
A good Stage 5 setup keeps a person checking the work before it goes out. That's a safety habit worth keeping no matter how far you go.
5 stages: vocabulary, prompting, context, connection, automation. Prompting is only Stage 2.
This week, try this: pick one task you repeat every week, a follow-up email, a volunteer reminder, a social caption. Walk it through the stages in order. Prompt it first. Add context second. Connect a tool third. Automate it only once the first 3 steps already work.
BTW: Reply and tell me which stage you're stuck on. I read every one.
Here's one resource which ties all 5 stages together that might be helpful for you and your staff: a glossary of 25 key AI terms, defined in plain English, organized to match the stages above. Print it, save it, hand it to your staff.
