This is a traditional ‘Letters to the Editor’ for the people in our union of 240 churches across New Zealand. For more about this: baptist.nz/mailbox Mike Crudge is Communications Director at the Baptist National Support Centre in Auckland. He is also part of Royal Oak Baptist Church.
Letters
Kia ora Editor rāua ko Dr Myk,
Thank you for bringing us your new monthly column looking at the national trends and putting a theological lens on it. I hope this column will bring some often overlooked issues to the forefront of our wider union.
I am a youngish person connected to Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Iriiri Māori, the Orbit network, and a few other Baptist spaces. I do not pretend to be an expert on AI or its impact, but my interest with the AI kōrero is the lack of discourse around the environmental impacts of AI.
You asked "Why not experiment?" and I have a question in response for you to consider;
"Does experimenting with AI have an impact on the whenua that our Kaihanga (Creator) called 'good' (Genesis 1)"?
I would really value a response to this question if you have the time and space to engage with it.
Mauri ora,
Reuben Scott
You can read the column Reuben is referring to here, Trends with Dr Myk: “AI” from 5 June 2026.
Response from Myk Habets
Reuben
That is an important and needed question—thank you for raising it. Any Christian reflection on AI that ignores the impact on creation is incomplete. If the whenua is “good” because God called it so (Gen 1), then our use of technology must always be accountable to that goodness.
First, we need to be honest: we are all already implicated in environmental harm. From smartphones to servers, modern life is energy-intensive, and there is no easy way to opt out without radically reshaping human society. Recognising this, however, is not a counsel of despair. In Christian moral theology, realism is not the same as fatalism. It simply means we act wisely within a fallen and complex world, rather than naively imagining purity is possible.
Second, AI does carry real environmental costs—water usage, energy demand, and infrastructure. These are not trivial concerns. Yet they are not fixed in one direction. Increasingly, such systems can be powered by renewable energy, including hydro, and designed with greater efficiency and sustainability in mind. The question is not simply whether AI has an impact, but how that impact is stewarded.
Third, and importantly, AI itself can be part of the response to ecological crisis. It can assist in climate modelling, resource management, agricultural efficiency, and even help individuals and communities make better environmental decisions. In that sense, it need not be an enemy of creation care—it can be enlisted in service of it.
Fourth, it is highly likely that you are already implicated with AI, without even knowing it, via the computers you use, the organisations you relate with, etc. I think in the developed world, it is no longer a question of whether we should use AI, but rather, how we can use it ethically.
So, the question is not whether experimenting with AI affects the whenua—it does. The question is whether we engage it carelessly, or as stewards seeking the good of creation. Used wisely, it need not be contrary to Genesis 1; it may even help us honour it more faithfully.
Myk
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To the Editor,
I commenced my Carey Baptist College journey back in 2011 and having come from a decade of working for the Northland District Health Board, I was dismayed at how little treaty engagement there was at Carey at that time. As well as silence, there was very little on the campus to indicate our college’s locatedness as a theological college in Aotearoa New Zealand.
As a transition (intentional interim) pastor moving regularly to new churches, some of the first questions I ask when I enter a new church are about connection and location. The first question is “If we were to pick this building up and relocate it anywhere in the world, would people recognise it as a church from Aotearoa New Zealand?” The second question I ask is “If we removed the name off the front of this building and then picked it up and relocated it anywhere in New Zealand, would people recognise it as a church that belongs to the town or city it came from?”
Back in 2011, if our theological college had been uplifted and planted in another part of the world, it would not obviously have been recognised as a New Zealand tertiary institution. Back then, I would visit our chapel and regularly lament at its ‘dislocation’.
It has been gratifying to see this change over the years, and I commend Charles Hewlett’s and John Tucker’s and Carey’s senior leaderships’ commitment to uphold and progress a robust honouring of te Tiriti o Waitangi in college kaupapa and physicality over the past 15 years. But, watching the video of the opening of Te Whare Tōtara recently, I teared up seeing how intentionally our locatedness has embedded – carved even – into the fabric of Te Whare Tōtara. He miharo tenei! E kore rawa te mihi e mutu!
From
Helen Brereton, Transitions Pastor – Whanganui Central Baptist Church
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Got something on your mind to share?
Send an email to: [email protected] or post a letter to: Baptist NZ Letters, C/- Mike Crudge, PO Box 12 149, Penrose, Auckland 1642.
We will occasionally collate a selection of letters to share with the wider Baptist family.
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Read the letters of 2025
December 2025 Letters by Philip Church (Royal Oak Baptist Church), Philip & Paula Hutton, Roxburgh Baptist Church), Stella Furniss (Snells Beach Baptist Church).
October 2025 Letters by John & Liz Murray (Roxburgh Baptist Church), Pam Davies (Oxford Baptist Church), Liz Carter (Otumoetai Baptist Church), and Amir Levy (Dunedin City Baptist Church).
August 2025 Letters by Patrick Baker (Glen Eden Baptist Church), Andrew Baldwin (Petone Baptist Church), Steven Goulstone (Wellington South Baptist Church), and Rob Kilpatrick (Ponsonby Baptist Church).
May 2025 Letters by Kaaren Mathias (Ilam Baptist Church), Robert Jensen (Snells Beach Baptist Church), and Bradley Nicolson (Oxford Terrace Baptist Church).
Photo credit: overlayed image of the ‘Mailbox’ column in the last newsprint version of The Baptist magazine, December 2014, over a photo of a desk.
