Jeri-Lynne Bouterse remembers when the conversation began. She was sitting at the dinner table with her family and was lamenting that there wasn’t enough time during her 20-hour work week at Washington Presbytery where she is the interim executive presbyter to get everything completed.
“Dealing with the polity and making decisions about how to move forward and accomplish the things I need to do, I just don’t have enough time,” she recalled saying.
Sitting at the table was her son, Brian Heath, a computer program developer who is proficient in things like artificial intelligence. Realizing he could be of great assistance to his mother, he volunteered to create a personal AI for Jeri-Lynne, one that included the Presbyterian Book of Order, Book of Confessions and presbytery minutes, all of which would now be at her fingertips.
“I was able to start answering questions and do things at a much faster rate,” she said. “And as I thought about this, I thought this could be valuable to other people as well.”
And, in June of 2025, the Presbyterian Virtual Assistant was born. In the months following that initial personal AI creation, the program has morphed into a resource that 25 of the 39 congregations in Washington Presbytery are using, which includes nearly 100 individual users. The documents in the PVA now also include by-laws and policies and can be personalized for individual congregations and people so that they are only referencing files specific to their church.
“Our goal is to try to address the declining resources – both human and financial in our mid councils and congregations,” Jeri-Lynne said. “PVA is a way to assist us in doing the things we’re called to do and minimize our administrative role. It gives us the ability to quickly access polity documents and church resources to get answers more quickly so we can spend more time with people, building relationships and doing the ministry that we all love.”
“That’s how we see it. We had to find a way to be able to handle all the work we had with the reduced number of people, volunteers and paid staff. How do we handle everything and do it well?”
Since Washington Presbytery began offering the PVA to its congregations in January of 2026, it has been holding regular online and in-person training sessions to help people understand the program’s uses. To date, 64 percent of the people who signed up to use PVA are doing so regularly, and nearly 1,000 conversations have been had using the program.
“It’s really exceeded what our expectations were at this point,” Jeri-Lynne admitted.
The presbytery’s commissioned ruling elder training team is also planning to use the PVA and will offer training on it so the CREs can use it in their congregations. This involves church leaders inside and outside of Washington Presbytery in mid councils like Redstone and Upper Ohio Valley.
Jeri-Lynne has also expanded the reach of PVA to the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), having met with the stated clerk of the denomination, Jihyun Oh, and others about PVA’s uses and how it can be beneficial to them.
“There may be some possible pilot groups outside of the norm that might be able to use it, like some of our non-English speaking congregations and presbyteries,” Jeri-Lynne explained. “We’ve found that it’s a good language translator. Our New Worshiping Community is Haitian-Creole speaking, so the pastor uses it to translate the worship service. It helps her to create her worship bulletin each week.
“Many of our EPs (executive presbyters) are using it, especially within the Synod of the Trinity. We’re trying our best to give access to many kinds of groups so that it assists us in our development. Users bring questions such as, ‘Can I do this?’ or ‘How does that work?’ With this feedback we’re able to tweak and improve the quality of the instrument.”
“Our goal is to get as many users as possible. We’re excited that the PCUSA representatives from the national office seemed interested in it as a possible tool for the denomination in the future. Perhaps this can be a tool that will be able to be used by all of our churches nationally and our mid councils.”
By being able to upload documents related to a specific church or mid council, it allows the PVA to search for related information to answer a question. That makes it a game-changer for users.
“This was designed to try to be a helpful tool for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” Jeri-Lynne said. “Since it’s so strongly centered in our reformed theology and our polity, it is unique to other large AI models which could be providing resources contrary to our polity and theology.”
A Fit for the Future Grant from the Synod of the Trinity has helped Washington Presbytery not only develop the PVA program but is also making access to it free for users for the time being.
“It is because of the Synod’s generous Fit for the Future Grant that we have been able to develop and implement it,” Jeri-Lynne said. “They are the reason this exists. We had the idea and we developed it, but it wouldn’t have happened without that grant.”
In the future, paid subscriptions to the PVA will likely be how people can access the program. (Anyone interested in learning more about or getting a subscription to the PVA should contact the developer, Brian Heath, by email at brian@heathanalytics.com.)
The time-saving ways to use the PVA are endless. Jeri-Lynne described a scenario where an entire congregation could have its own area in the PVA that would include just its own church’s files. Each person in the church through their own computer would have access to the national church’s documents as well, like the Book of Order, enabling those in the congregation to search its files plus denominational ones to find answers to governing questions or whatever the topic of discussion is.
“At a session meeting, it’s a very quick tool if you hit a polity question like, ‘How do we sell our manse?’” Jeri-Lynne said. “You could immediately access PVA and it would give you the steps for Book of Order and your real estate policy of the presbytery and it can look that information up very quickly for you. You don’t have to wait until the next meeting while someone does the research.”
The PVA can answer questions with detailed answers. It can also create fliers for upcoming events or short announcements with the proper wording for the bulletin or local newspaper.
“Pastors can use it to plan,” Jeri-Lynne continued. “It’s a good creative planning tool, too.”
Recently, Washington Presbytery used the PVA to assist in updating its sexual misconduct policy. By uploading its existing policy and cross-referencing it with the latest language in the Book of Order, it was able to produce an updated document that was reviewed and approved within 90 minutes.
“It speeds things up,” Jeri-Lynne said. “These aren’t major decision things. It’s stuff that is very administrative and can be technical. It’s easy to miss things. We do check; we’re given references from the Book of Order. Every source that it accesses, it lists, so you can go back and check to be sure. Sometimes there are errors and we have to acknowledge that, work on it and change it, but that’s where the human participation in the process is required.”
For a presbytery like Washington that’s in transition, PVA has been a blessing.
“We’re combining stated clerk and exec roles,” Jeri-Lynne said. “With PVA, I feel it’s doable. I don’t know how people are doing it without it because polity can be so time consuming. But with the help of PVA, I can look up polity questions and within seconds get answers.”
Artificial intelligence programs have been ramping up in usage around the world for the past few years. While its positive effects have been numerous, its downfalls are also well documented. Jeri-Lynne knows PVA will have its skeptics and understands a person’s reluctancy to trust it.
“There are concerns,” she said. “There’s a risk that people will over trust it and use it for everything, so that’s one of the risks. From the beginning we’ve taken that very seriously and talked about how PVA is designed to inform, not replace, human judgement or the authority of the presbytery.
“Every response in PVA is framed to point users back to human leaders. There’s a built-in training requirement, so users understand the appropriate role of it beforehand. It’s a research assistant, not a ruling body. You don’t want to use it for everything you do. It’s not for discernment purposes.
“There’s always an opportunity for error. We emphasize that critical decisions, you want to make sure you work with staff. It’s a starting point for research, not the final authority.”
There are also environmental concerns regarding AI since these programs need large data centers, some of which are powered by nuclear energy and natural gas.
“Ecologically, that has been a question,” Jeri-Lynne said. “Responsible usage. This is a very small tool, so the effect it has is 1,000 questions is equal to driving your car one mile as far as its ecological impact. We must remember that everything we do impacts the environment.
“People question using AI in general for the church, but we’ve always used technology. We adapt and we grow. We learned how to use Zoom during covid, projectors for hymns and the use of computers for many aspects of ministry. Like any of these other technologies, we just need to make sure we use it appropriately.
“We didn’t build PVA to be super clever, we built it to be faithful. We’re always asking the question, ‘Does it serve the mission of the church and the well-being of its people?’ It has a lot to do with responsible leadership in its use and being a trustworthy steward of it.”
Washington Presbytery’s Presbyterian Virtual Assistant program so far has just scratched the surface of its potential. How widespread it goes and the impact it will have on the denomination is unknown. But for now, Jeri-Lynne is excited about what she has seen accomplished and how it can assist other church leaders.
“I feel like for one of the first times we’re on the cutting edge of something in the PCUSA,” she said. “I just really want to see us be a leader in this field of technology for our denomination. I’m really excited about that for our denomination.”